The Drumcree conflict or Drumcree standoff is a dispute over yearly parades in the town of Portadown, Northern Ireland. The town is mainly Protestant and hosts numerous Protestant marches each summer, but has a significant Catholic minority. The Orange Order insists that it should be allowed to march its traditional route to and from Drumcree Church on the Sunday before the Twelfth of July. However, most of this route is through the mainly Catholic/Irish nationalist part of town. The residents, who see the march as sectarian, triumphalist and supremacist, have sought to ban it from their area. The Orangemen see this as an attack on their traditions; they had marched the route since 1807, when the area was mostly farmland.
Drumcree Church; the Catholic area is behind the camera
Some members of Portadown District Loyal Orange Lodge marching in Armagh during the 12 July parades, 2009
An "Orange Arch" in Annalong. Similar arches are erected in Portadown each summer, including one at the end of the mainly nationalist and Catholic Garvaghy Road.
The underpass leading from the town centre (behind camera) to Obins Street (beyond the bridge). The area is known as "the Tunnel".
Portadown is a town in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. The town sits on the River Bann in the north of the county, about 24 mi (39 km) southwest of Belfast. It is in the Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council area and had a population of about 22,000 at the 2011 Census. For some purposes, Portadown is treated as part of the "Craigavon Urban Area", alongside Craigavon and Lurgan.
St Mark's Church of Ireland in central Portadown
Portadown High Street on market day (c. 1900)
The Edenderry area of Portadown in the early 1900s
High Street in the early 1900s