CIAO DATE: 9/07
Culture and Conflict: Volume 56 (Winter 2005)
With roots going back to the 18th century, parades in Northern Ireland are ritualised and festive community marches that often give rise to rioting and public disorder. Thanks to specific know-how regarding demonstration and counter-demonstration techniques: mass occupation of public space and how routes and dates can be influenced and modified, militants can turn the public highway usually used for traffic circulation into a potent political manifesto. These meetings therefore tend to consolidate the link between individual political affiliation and religious belief, to build a specific social order directly in competition with the regulation of local authorities and to amplify the pressure of the population on political representatives and their attempts to implement reforms. Community marches not only reveal tension, they are often the root cause of the tension. Since the signature of a peace agreement in 1998, parades have become a conflict after the conflict and they thus slow down, impede and even block initiatives to find a peaceful solution to the Northern Ireland problem and to the implementation of the agreement itself.