Revealed: Secret IRA plan to defend Garvaghy Road if Orange Order parade forced through
Details have emerged on 30th anniversary of bitter stand-off in Portadown
Most people will have considered the Drumcree parade dispute in Portadown – pictured here in July 1998, the first year it was banned – a relic of the past.
Orangemen pictured behind a British army barricade at Drumcree in July 1998
By Connla Young, Crime and Security Correspondent
July 09, 2025 at 6:00am BST
The IRA had a secret plan to defend Portadown’s Garvaghy Road if authorities forced through a controversial Orange Order parade almost 30 years ago.
The “doomsday” blueprint was drawn up by republican leaders after a march was allowed through the mainly nationalist district in 1997.
Details have emerged on the 30th anniversary of the start of the Drumcree dispute on July 9 1995.
Sources say the ‘defensive plan’ was devised against the backdrop of sectarian murders linked to the parade stand-off and heavy-handed RUC operations targeting nationalist protesters.
At the time, the IRA was on ceasefire and the Good Friday Agreement had been signed earlier that year.
But sources with knowledge of the plan now believe it may have been part of a “double bluff” by IRA leaders to force the British into holding firm against the Orange Order by banning it from the mainly Catholic district.
It is also suggested the IRA was aware that information about the blueprint, which included proposals to arm hundreds of local people with home-made guns, would be passed to the British by informers.
Informed sources say self-confessed agent Denis Donaldson was present when details of the plan were revealed to local IRA leaders.
It is understood Garvaghy Road residents were not aware of the IRA’s plans.
The bitter parading impasse began in the summer of 1995 when Garvaghy Road residents objected to an Orange Order march passing through the mainly nationalist district as it made its way from Drumcree Church into Portadown.
The following year, the parade was banned but after violent clashes, the decision was reversed. Nationalist protesters were forcibly removed from the Garvaghy Road to make way for the march.
At the height of the 1996 dispute, Catholic taxi driver Michael McGoldrick (31) was shot dead by renegade members of the UVF outside Lurgan.
The UVF, under the command of suspected British agent Billy Wright, also brought an armoured loading shovel to Drumcree, which was to be used to smash through RUC lines.
In 1997, the Orange Order was again allowed to march along the Garvaghy Road after the area was flooded with police in the early hours of Drumcree Sunday.
Pictures of nationalist residents hemmed into side streets by heavily armed RUC members sparked a furious backlash from nationalists across the north.
Catholic residents of the Garvaghy Road were also blocked from attending Mass, resulting in local people and priests praying in the open-air at British army lines.
Within days the IRA restored a ceasefire, which had ended in February 1996.
In 1998 the Orange Order was stopped from marching through the nationalist district, sparking several days of loyalist violence.
In the early hours of July 12, a sectarian arson attack carried out by the UVF claimed the lives of Catholic schoolboys Richard (10), Mark (9) and Jason Quinn ( in Ballymoney, Co Antrim.
The murders sent shockwaves across Ireland and made global headlines.
After the tragedy, some Orangemen continued on with their protest while others went home, resulting in the Drumcree dispute effectively coming to an end.
Well-placed sources suggest that despite being on ceasefire, IRA members regularly met to discuss the dispute in the years after it began in 1995.
Both Denis Donaldson, who it is claimed was a representative of the IRA’s ‘general headquarters’, and another veteran republican attended many of the meetings.
Sources suggest that Mr Donaldson was present at a meeting of high-ranking IRA members when the full blueprint to defend the Garvaghy Road was revealed by the veteran republican, who has since died.
It is suggested the secret IRA plan was specifically drawn up to defend the nationalist district in the event the Orange Order was once again forced through in 1998.
Sources say that in the months leading up to the annual dispute, a meeting was held involving representatives from three IRA ‘brigade’ areas, including north Armagh, south Armagh and east Tyrone.
It is said that after the events of 1997 “serious plans were made”.
Significantly, it is suggested that a large array of home-made weapons and other materials were moved into north Armagh for use in any defensive action that was to be launched.
“Preparations were being made to defend the area,” it is claimed.
Hundreds of home-made firearms known as Zip guns were manufactured and transported to various locations across north Armagh, and surrounding areas, in the months prior to the stand-off.
The single-shot weapons were designed to be used by people with no experience of handling firearms.
It is claimed the weapons, which fired shotgun cartridges, were to be handed out to local people and republican sympathisers in the event of a defensive scenario arising.
It is also claimed that the IRA moved “conventional” weapons into the area for use by its own members, who had experience of handling firearms.
Republican “back-up teams” were also going to be organized, which would attempt to move into the Garvaghy Road from several different directions in the event of conflict breaking out.
Sources believe that while the plan was being set out to those republicans attending the briefing meetings, the IRA leadership may in fact have been involved in a game of “double bluff” with the British.
It is claimed that several senior IRA members who were briefed about the plan were sceptical that it would ever be given the go-ahead.
It has also been suggested the IRA was aware that information about the plan was being passed to British intelligence.
This, it is believed, was intended to put pressure on the British government to take a hard stand against allowing Orangemen through the area in 1998.
Denis Donaldson was a familiar face on the Garvaghy Road during the years of the Drumcree dispute.
He is said to have encouraged the defensive plan when it was being discussed at IRA meetings.
Mr Donaldson was publicly exposed as an informer in 2005.
In April 2006, he was shot dead at a cottage near Glenties, Co Donegal.
The now defunct Real IRA claimed it was responsible three years later.
Martin Galvin’s arrest ‘staged at request of Martin McGuinness’
Former Noraid leader was banned from north and Britain
Martin Galvin with Martin McGuinness in Derry.
By Connla Young, Crime and Security Correspondent
July 09, 2025 at 6:00am BST
The arrest of Martin Galvin in 1989 was staged at the request of former Sinn Féin Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, it has been claimed.
The former Noraid director of publicity, who was banned from entering the north and Britain in 1984, was detained while taking part in a stage-managed tour of the Bogside area of Derry five years later.
Mr Galvin, who is now the chair of the Freedom For All Ireland committee with Ancient Order of Hibernians in the US, has recently taken part in a new documentary about the history of Irish Northern Aid, more commonly known as Noraid.
The high-profile group raised millions of dollars cash for the republican movement during the Troubles.
Mr Galvin’s profile was at its height in the mid-1980s when the British government issued an exclusion order banning the New York based lawyer from entering the north and Britain.
In 1984 the Noraid leader was secretly brought across the border by republicans and attended an anti-internment anniversary rally in west Belfast in defiance of the British ban.
As Mr Galvin took to a platform outside Sinn Féin offices in Andersonstown RUC officers moved in to arrest him.
During the police operation 22-year-old Sean Downes was struck by a plastic bullet and died, while Mr Galvin was spirited away from the area.
A year later the Noraid official appeared at the funeral of IRA man Charles English in Derry and carried his coffin along with Martin McGuinness – again in defiance of the ban.
Mr Galvin has now revealed that solicitor Pat Finucane, who was killed by loyalists in 1989, had advised him that the British ban was illegal.
Mr Galvin believes the exclusion order was intended to “undermine Irish Northern Aid” in a bid “to stop the support that was coming in from America”.
Speaking to The Irish News, the prominent Irish American said republicans told him it was necessary to defy it.
“And when the ban was announced…my people in Sinn Féin, noted republicans, they said ‘it’s very important that you not allow this to happen, it’s very important that you come to the north and defy the ban, it’s very important that we not allow the British to get away with undermining American support by a censorship ban against you,” he said.
“So, I was in a position where I felt I couldn’t hold my head up, I couldn’t go back to the north If I didn’t agree to do it.
“So, that’s how it began.”
Mr Galvin reveals he was brought across the border from Co Donegal on foot before he attended the west Belfast rally, at which self-confessed informer Denis Donaldson was a steward.
Donaldson was later sent by the leadership of the Provisional movement to the US to work with Noraid in the years before the IRA ceasefire.
“We couldn’t believe that they would attack a peaceful demonstration in the way they did in front of all the cameras of the world,” he said.
“No-one expected or believed or anticipated that.
“Denis Donaldson was a steward, he would have known that there would have been a peaceful event.”
Mr Galvin explains how he returned to the north in subsequent years.
“That was important, they came back again the next year and it was important to show the British that attacking peaceful demonstrations…would not work and eventually Martin McGuinness had me come over, get arrested and the British after that admitted that they couldn’t do anything and withdrew it (the ban) after I had spent a couple of days in Strand Road (RUC Station).
He said Mr McGuiness, who died in 2017, had asked him several times to allow himself to be captured.
“Martin McGuiness, he had actually asked me to do this for several years,” Mr Galvin said.
“He used to send Pat Doherty, who was respected a lot and who I was good friends with, and asked me to this.
“He had asked me to do this in 87 and 88 and I initially declined.”
Mr Galvin said some republicans advised him against handing himself over.
“I had people in Ireland, Tyrone particularly, telling me ‘look, your claim to fame is you can get away, the British can’t catch you, now you’re going to walk in’.
“But I gradually agreed to do it.
“We were walking around Derry, you can hear newscast ‘Martin Galvin’s now walking around the Bogside in defiance of an exclusion order with Martin McGuinness and other members of Sinn Féin’.
“The idea is Martin McGuinness’s idea, was to test the ban, I was arrested.”
The Irish American said Mr McGuiness believed that if he was arrested British authorities would have to drop the ban.
“They won’t be able to do anything and that was his attitude, and he thought it would make a point,” he said.
Mr Galvin was later taken to Strand Road RUC Station, where he sang the well-known rebel tune, The Foggy Dew, before being brought to London and flown back to the US.
“Tom Hartley had told me one time years before ‘you are a high profile republican, if you ever get caught by them act like one, don’t let us down’,” he said.
“That’s what was going through my mind, so that’s why I marched out singing The Foggy Dew.”
Noraid: Irish America and the IRA is on RTÉ One on Wednesday at 9.35pm.
TRIBUTE ACT: The Shankill Star cap badge features the name of Brian Robinson
JUST over a week until the Twelfth and the incitement is building. Sorry, the excitement. The excitement is building.
In the same way that the BBC doesn’t broadcast Kneecap live, the Twelfth isn’t broadcast live any more. But unlike its Glastonbury output, the acts the BBC will put on show in the parades on Saturday week are not subject to intense scrutiny. The BBC attends its chosen parades and does happy-clappy features on them featuring old-timers eating ice-cream, toddlers with little tin drums and laughing Orange Lils in union jack cowboy hats without giving us an overview including the more, ah, outré aspects of the big day: the Homeric drinking; the garden-pissing; the Fenian-baiting; the paramilitary worshipping.
The musical participants in the parades are available to the BBC in the Parades Commission filings, just as they are to the rest of us. But BBC Ulster just goes ahead and covers the parades anyway, even though said parades contain loyalist bands that have more scrotes than notes; more bums than drums; more… (that’s enough juvenile abuse – Ed).
Should BBC Our Wee Country be covering these parades even though they know they feature bands involved in a litany of sectarian behaviour over the years? Does a parade containing a band named after a UVF or UDA man become acceptable as long as the BBC doesn’t interview its brigadier? Sorry, its bandmaster?
It’s a moot point this year because the BBC is going to go ahead and pretend again that the Twelfth is a family fun event when half the city’s fled to Buncrana or Benidorm to get away from it. But just so you know what you’re really getting when the BBC does its holiday special round-up on Saturday evening, here are ten of the bands that the BBC will do their best to hide from our gaze.
FINAGHY TRUE BLUES Stopped outside St Patrick’s in Donegall Street to march on the spot and play in breach of a ban on music outside the church. Analysis: Played a hymn and not the Famine Song, so a valuable opportunity lost. Loyal rating: 4/10.
PRIDE OF KNOCKMORE Hours after Pope Francis died, the Lisburn band played ‘No Pope of Rome’ at an Apprentice Boys’ parade in the town. The event was attended by a number of prominent DUP figures who took to social media after the parade to condemn the band. Sorry, (checks notes) to say what a fantastic, fun-filled day it had been. Analysis: A scintillating performance seamlessly blending sectarianism, bigotry and hatred – and doing it on a day guaranteed to magnify the effect. Loyal rating: 9/10.
YOUNG CONWAY VOLUNTEERS Showed Finaghy True Blues how do to do it when they played the Famine Song outside that Mecca of Ulster loyalism, St Patrick’s church. 13 members of the band later arrested and found guilty of playing the racist song claimed they were, in fact, playing the Sloop John B. The band wrote an open letter to North Belfast Catholics assuring them that no offence was meant. Analysis: An incident that would have claimed its own chapter in the Annals of Ulster Staunch if the band hadn’t broke like plates at the first rattle of a handcuff. Loyal rating: 1/10.
HILLHAVEN FLUTE BAND Played ‘The Billy Boys’ and ‘No Pope of Rome’ at a band competition in Banbridge. So far, so what?, I hear you say. Well, when contacted the PSNI refused to say whether it was a hate crime or not, which raised the possibility that the words ‘We’re up to our knees in Fenian blood’ might be redesignated a Work of Outstanding Cultural Merit. Analysis: The Irish News reported that ahead of the event local DUP MP Carla Lockhart had promoted the band competition on her Facebook page. Loyal rating: 7/10
CONSTABLE ANDERSON MEMORIAL FLUTE BAND What better way to show your respect and admiration for the RUC than by playing loyalist tunes outside a Catholic church when you’re not allowed to? The band travelled from Larne to give it the guttie outside that centrepiece of loyalist culture, St Patrick’s church in Donegall Street. Analysis: Again, an outstanding performance destroyed by rank cowardice. Three of six men charged and found guilty over the incident told the court they hadn’t been playing instruments. The ‘I nivver done it so I nivver’ gambit is the curse of the band scene. Loyal rating: 0/10.
TOYE FLUTE BAND A parade turned “ugly and aggressive” after a priest remonstrated with loyalist bandsmen urinating against Killyleagh’s Catholic church. A spokesman for Toye Flute Band hit out angrily after the incident – at the local parish priest. He said the incident “could have ended up much worse but police told the priest to go into his house because he was risking getting into bigger bother.” Analysis: Top loyalism on show here, but blaming the Catholic priest and not the Protestant Pissers takes this to another level. Loyal rating: 9/10.
LANARKSHIRE LOYALIST FLUTE BAND The Saturday evening climax to the Scottish band’s ‘Culture Day’ in a Glasgow council hall took a Deep South turn when the prizes were handed out by a bloke in full Ku Klux Klan regalia. ANALYSIS: No bedsheets with holes cut out for eyes here – only total commitment from the Grand Wizard of Wishaw with a real Ku Klux Kan outfit with a real Ku Klu Klan badge. Extra kudos for the string of poppies behind KKK guy. Loyal rating: 8/10.
CLYDE VALLEY FLUTE BAND As if being named after a treasonous, illegal gun-running venture wasn’t thrilling enough, the Larne band travelled 75 miles to Derry in order to show off their purple shirts with the Parachute badge and the letter ‘F’ in the city where the Parachute Regiment murdered 14 people. Analysis: When they were stopped on the motorway on the home by the police, they acted like it was a bigger injustice than Bloody Sunday, which was a bit whiney and un-Ulstery. Another outstanding performance ruined by lack of bottle. Loyal rating: 4/10.
GOVAN PROTESTANT BOYS Alongside the Siege of Derry and the Battle of the Boyne, a Glasgow band occupying Belfast City Hall goes down in history as one of the great military triumphs of loyal history. Not content with parading in mixed areas in Scotland, the band paraded through Belfast’s most famous public buildings, playing a loyal selection of loyal sectarian tunes. Analysis: Loyal Ulster again snatched defeat from the jaws of victory when the lodge which booked the hall issued a grovelling apology, saying it had no idea the feral Scotchies would get out of their cage. Sorry, leave the function room. Loyal rating: 2/10.
SHANKILL STAR FLUTE BAND Picture the scene: A cross-community event featuring happy children from all over the city. Groups and individuals that are normally on opposite sides of a wall are in a room together chatting happily and getting to know each other over tea and buns. In walks the representative of the band scene in his milkman’s uniform and a cap with a badge bearing the name of notorious UVF killer Brian Robinson. Analysis: It’s all about getting the message out wherever you can and extra kudos come because the message is being spread to the community which the aforementioned Mr Robinson spent so much time trying to kill. Loyal rating: 10/10.
Historic US flag that marked JFK assassination stolen from Derry school Flag that flew at half-mast following 1963 assassination had been displayed to mark US Independence Day
The flag last flew at the US Naval base on the day of JFK’s assassination in 1963. The historic US flag that was stolen from Foyle College in Derry last weekend.
By Mark Robinson July 08, 2025 at 2:32pm BST A historic US flag flown at half-mast to mark the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 has been stolen from a Derry school located on the site of a former US naval base.
Foyle College, which originally occupied two sites on the Duncreggan Road and Northland Road, relocated to a £27m campus on the Limavady Road in 2018.
The new site was formerly home to a US Naval Communication Station between 1943 and 1977 – the oldest such base in Europe at the time of its closing.
It then became a British Army barracks.
A memorial to the former US station was unveiled in the grounds in 2019, complete with the base’s 50m-tall flagpole.
The original US flag was also gifted to the school at the time by the base’s alumni association.
It flew at half-mast on the site in 1963 when JFK was assassinated, before it was taken down that same day and retired.
The flag has since flown at the school twice a year – to mark the anniversary of JFK’s passing (November 22) and to coincide with US Independence Day on July 4.
Last week’s ceremony was attended by Frank Ekstrom, who was stationed at the former US base.
However, the flag was removed from the grounds of the school over the weekend.
Speaking to The Irish News, the schol’s head of history, Melanie Dougherty, said the flag was “historically significant” to both the school and the city of Derry.
“It’s not just some random Star-Spangled Banner that was bought in 2019,” Ms Dougherty said.
“It actually was the flag that properly flew on the base.
“That Naval communications base, it was the place that all the really important Cold War messages went though, such as during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
“We really hope that someone speaks out and tells us where it is and realises the historical significance of it so that we can keep it for the generations to come.”
A PSNI spokesperson said they received a report that the flag was stolen from the Limavady Road school grounds in the early hours of Sunday, July 6.
“This is reported to have occurred at 4am, involving two individuals, both believed to be male,” they added, urging those with information to contact them on 101.
Noel Doran: We will always be grateful to George Mitchell We arguably owe more to the former US Senator than any other American citizen
George Mitchell in a scene from The Negotiator
By Noel Doran July 07, 2025 at 6:00am BST
We have become so used to crude and bellicose statements from Donald Trump on an almost daily basis that it would be easy to forget the very different contributions which have been made by US politicians over the years.
Both the Democratic and Republican parties produced major figures who took a strongly positive interest in Irish affairs in particular, and we arguably owe more to George Mitchell than any other American citizen.
Watching The Negotiator, Trevor Birney’s elegant and beautifully filmed portrayal of Mitchell’s life and times, at the Docs Ireland 2025 film festival in Belfast, brought home the full extent of his remarkable career long before he arrived at Stormont.
He was a distinguished lawyer, turning down Bill Clinton’s offer of a much-prized nomination to the US Supreme Court, as well as holding key posts in elected politics, before becoming Senate majority leader from 1989 to 1995.
However, his greatest gifts were probably as a diplomat, later criss-crossing the globe while working on the Arab/Israeli conflict over many years and serving with both the United Nations and the World Justice Project.
Only in Belfast could a CV like that be regarded with disdain, with the late Ian Paisley declaring in 1995 that the newly-appointed US Special Envoy for Northern Ireland was “a foreigner and a pro-Irish republican”.
Other unionists were also deeply suspicious of the fact that, while Mitchell was born in Maine, his father was Irish, and immediately began to check out his religious background, before establishing that, to their puzzlement, he was actually a member of the Maronite Church, reflecting his mother’s roots in the Lebanon.
Mitchell, as ever, remained calm as his early days at Stormont were marked by boycotts and walk-outs during a prolonged engagement which played out during a period of deep mutual hostility and appeared doomed to end in failure.
He stuck with it relentlessly, displaying endless resilience and patient diplomacy in the face of one setback after another, and was fortunate that he was able to rely on the endorsement of political leaders from both sides of the Atlantic.
Many of them are interviewed in The Negotiator, including Clinton, who never wavered in his support, and the double act of Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair, who first came to power within a month of each other as events started to move decisively in the right direction during 1997.
The reputations of all three have suffered since they left office, but it was striking to see the enthusiasm with which they looked back on their detailed personal involvement in the eventual signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.
Mitchell was typically modest in his assessment of the peace accord in the documentary, saying that it may not have been perfect but it was the best that could be done in the circumstances.
My recollection, as a journalist closely observing the proceedings, was still that, while there was unquestionably an appetite across the board for a breakthrough, the central players were close to exhaustion by the closing stages and there was a prospect that everything could have fallen apart.
If the discussions had collapsed at the eleventh hour, the delicate balance of the paramilitary ceasefires might well have been lost and a return to full-blown violence was by no means out of the question.
We saw what happened in Omagh only four months after the confirmation of the agreement, with 29 people and two unborn children killed in an appalling bomb attack by the Real IRA, although, as the cross-community structures evolved at Stormont, the atrocity signalled that the campaign by militant republicans was close to an end, while many loyalists were more interested in drug dealing and wider criminality.
Mitchell’s role throughout the process was absolutely critical, as witnessed by the outpouring of affection from the audience during his onstage interview with Miriam O’Callaghan at the SSE Arena, which, at the age of 92, may realistically have been one of his last visits to Ireland.
He cannot be held responsible for the upheavals which have repeatedly undermined the credibility of successive Stormont administrations, although public scepticism about the performance of politicians stretches to many other jurisdictions.
Mitchell demonstrated the highest standards which can be achieved through politics and for that he will always deserve our gratitude.
:: The Negotiator will be shown at the Galway Film Festival on July 11 before a screening in George Mitchell’s home town of Waterville, Maine, the following week. It is due to go on general release across Ireland later in the year.
in Ballymoney, Co Antrim.
