The Protestant Orange Order claimed on Friday night that one of its parades came under attack in north Belfast during the first major event in the city of the Ulster marching season.
Earlier, Orange Order members abided by a ruling from the Parades Commission, the body that adjudicates on controversial marches in the region, that their bands not play music past a Catholic church in central Belfast.
Loyalists marched past St Patrick’s church in Donegall Street to the beat of a single drum on their way into the city centre. Last month, Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall visited the church as part of their royal tour of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, where they met Catholic parishioners.
A spokesman for the Grand County Grand Orange Lodge of Belfast said Orangemen and women alongside their bands paraded with “dignity and showed respect” at St Patrick’s Church.
The Orange Order spokesman said: “This was in stark contract to the actions of republicans, who attacked an earlier Orange feeder parade with stone and bricks.”
Police are investigating reports of attacks on the feeder parade on the street that is behind the church. However, the incident was on a minor scale compared with the violence of recent years around north Belfast Orange parades, most notably at shops off the Crumlin Road where the loyalist Woodvale area faces the staunchly republican Ardoyne district.
St Patrick’s church has become the latest flashpoint in the Ulster marching dispute after a loyalist band from Belfast’s Shankill area was filmed playing a sectarian tune while wheeling around the front of the chapel two years ago.
Earlier on Friday, the Orange Order lost a judicial review in Belfast high court against the Parades Commission’s decision that bands passing by St Patrick’s only use a single drum beat and not play any songs.
The disputed part of the parade is linked to a wider night of loyalist cultural celebration known as the Tour of the North in the city.
