Ulster marches back to the abyss

Drumcree last year cost pounds 25m, scared off much-needed investment and destabilised Northern Ireland to an extent which the IRA at its peak could only dream of

To say that tomorrow's march at Drumcree is a defining moment is actually gravely to underestimate its potential importance for Northern Ireland's future and the prospects for peace. It has the capacity to wreck the place.

If things go well the sense of relief generated could put new life into the hopes for progress. If they go badly it could be as calamitous as last year, or even worse. The sobering fact is that few think it will go well. Ever since Drumcree 2, as last July's confrontation is known, it has been clear that Drumcree 3 could pose similar problems to the political and security authorities, and indeed everyone else.

Some may question whether all this doom and gloom is justified: after all, there always seems to be trouble in Northern Ireland - so why all the fuss? The answer is that it has the dangerous potential to develop into prolonged confrontation between the security forces and militant loyalism. And there is no guarantee that the violent republicans will stay on the sidelines.

John Major's government reacted to Drumcree 2 with denial, in effect pretending that nothing of any great moment was happening. In the midst of the crisis Sir Patrick Mayhew, then Northern Ireland Secretary, famously told an incredulous BBC interviewer to "Cheer up, for heaven's sake."

Sir Patrick has gone, leaving Labour and the security forces to pick up the pieces. The RUC, far from cheering up, privately acknowledged that law and order had broken down. The Chief Constable, Ronnie Flanagan, later said: "Northern Ireland cannot withstand another summer like this. The country ... crept right to the edge of the abyss."

Another senior police figure said privately: "We were on the brink of all-out civil war. We kid ourselves that we live in a democracy - we have the potential in this community to have a Bosnia-style situation."

Catholic confidence in the RUC was close to collapse. Police sources acknowledged that nationalist faith in the force had never been as low since internment without trial was introduced in 1971.

A senior Presbyterian minister summed it up as "Northern Ireland's Chernobyl, with almost a meltdown in community relations".

The poison released into the political atmosphere has barely lessened over the course of the past year: one example of its effects was the recent jump in the Sinn Fein vote.

Drumcree last year cost pounds 25m or more, frightening off much-needed investment and destabilising Northern Ireland to an extent which the IRA at its peak could only dream about. Since then prominent figures have been pleading that a re-run must be avoided at all costs. Over the past year there have been dozens of private and public initiatives aimed at averting a replay. Yet all seem to have foundered on the bedrock of intransigence and the grim determination not to allow the other side anything that could be regarded as a victory.

Pushing the march through will enrage nationalists both locally and elsewhere, driving further divisions between the RUC and the Catholic population and inevitably bringing nationalist rioters on to the streets. Halting the march and attempting to re-route it is guaranteed to lead to Orange disorder, with loyalists blocking roads and initiating disturbances on a major scale.

The Government has indicated that it will use troops to keep open ports and airports which last time were closed down, but no one can be fully confident that even the combined resources of the RUC and the Army could cope with a full-scale loyalist rising. Whatever happens, there are dozens more marches in July and August which the losers may try to turn into re-matches.

A majority of Protestants and Catholics, including many with relatively hardline positions, fervently wish to avoid trouble. But the starkness of the options for the march - either it goes down Garvaghy Road or it does not - means that even many of these people are torn between preserving the peace and asserting their own community's rights.

There are also many who are positively spoiling for a fight and looking forward with great relish to street disturbances. One cause of much relief is the fact that the leaders of the major loyalist paramilitary groups are not intent on trouble. If it develops, however, many in their ranks can be expected to wade in.

The smaller Loyalist Volunteer Force, by contrast, has openly vowed to kill civilians in southern Ireland if the march is not allowed through, and will probably engage in violence in the north as well. The number of active terrorists in its ranks is relatively small, but the group has a network of contacts among some of the hundreds of militant "Kick the Pope" bands. While not actually armed these can cause huge damage in street clashes.

Violence from the IRA or the smaller INLA group also cannot be ruled out; nor can the possibility of simple rioting from hooligans on either side, fired up by a heady mixture of political tensions and beer.

The prospect of trouble could hardly have come at a worse time for both the peace process and the multi-party talks. Tony Blair appears to have the IRA boxed in, politically at least, with his recent abandonment of the weapons decommissioning requirement. He has also put David Trimble and his pivotal Ulster Unionist party under pressure, in essence telling them that in the event of an IRA ceasefire he must face the prospect of talks with Sinn Fein. At this crucial moment nobody really knows whether the IRA is contemplating a ceasefire, and nobody knows whether Mr Trimble will, to coin a phrase, bite the bullet on decommissioning and stay in the talks or walk out. The lack of a new ceasefire would obviously be a setback for the peace process; an Ulster Unionist exodus would be a severe blow to the talks.

Drumcree could be decisive here: for a defeat for nationalists would get the IRA off the hook and might well postpone a ceasefire. The corollary is that a defeat for Unionists would make a walk-out from the talks more likely.

The upshot is therefore that one stretch of highway in an unattractive County Armagh town has been vested with huge historical and contemporary significance. Drumcree 2 did terrible damage to the fabric of the state and the moral authority of government: the widespread fear is that Drumcree 3 will do it again.