A bright afternoon in early spring, almost a year after the Good Friday Agreement; we are being plied with tea and explanation just off the Garvaghy road. As it happens, the first of the year's Orange parades to Drumcree church is scheduled for this day. It will not pass up or down the Garvaghy road, and there will be no trouble. But this afternoon the Garvaghy residents feel penned into their little group of estates. They will not leave by the top, or country end, for there lies Dumcree and in any case it is the long way round to town. But they say they are reluctant to leave also by the lower end. The town centre lies across the railway and the Northway bypass. It is hostile territory, and their faces, especially those of the young men, are known. Some time ago a woman, in labour, had to be taken to hospital by a circuitous route because the direct ones were impassable due to the political situation. She lost the baby. On days like this, the residents tell us, they feel a sense of being besieged. There are many days when they feel like this. But they wish to emphasize that this is only the latest phase in a long siege. The Catholics of Portadown have felt ghettoized on the western edge of their own town ever since they settled long ago in ‘the tunnel’, the Obins Street area, across the tracks from the main part of town. A recent compendium on world conflict situations describes Portadown as ‘mixed’. This is demographically true but socially misleading. It is a Protestant town with a Catholic appendix. A grumbling one.

Later, at Drumcree, Harold Gracey of the Portadown Orange Order is in his caravan beside the church. A notice says he has been there for 253 days.