Relative Calm Marks End of N. Ireland Marching Season

The last major parade of Northern Ireland’s Protestant marching season was held in relative peace Saturday, but a bomb hoax and scuffles soured the intended pageant atmosphere.

Police in riot gear were sent into the center of Londonderry, Northern Ireland’s second city, after scuffles broke out between supporters of the Protestant marchers and Roman Catholic Irish nationalists.

Cans and bottles were hurled at police by youths on both sides of the sectarian divide, but order was restored as the 12,000 marchers headed out of the city to waiting buses.

They crossed a bridge where masked men had earlier abandoned a hijacked van in a bomb hoax. British army experts carried out two controlled explosions, but no bomb was found.

Only the local branch of the Apprentice Boys was allowed to parade along the city walls, which overlook a Catholic estate where residents have campaigned against marches for years.

A handful of drunken teenagers threw stones and heckled 300 of them as participants marched to the sound of a single drumbeat from a military-style band.

Pipe bands stayed silent out of respect for Catholics. On previous occasions, hundreds of Catholics have harried the parade, but barely 20 people turned out.

The Apprentice Boys turned the start of this year’s march into a pageant, with hundreds of volunteers dressed in 17th century clothes reenacting the siege of 1689, in which troops loyal to King William III of Orange, a Protestant, helped fight Catholic invaders.

The organization is named after 13 apprentices, or trainees, who slammed shut the gates of the city against the invading troops.

King William gave his name to Northern Ireland’s main Protestant marching organization, the Orange Order, and he went on to defeat the overthrown King James II on the battlefield to entrench Protestants in Ireland and on the British throne.

The Orange Order canceled three disputed parades this year to avoid inflaming sectarian tension after the first major march, near Portadown, exploded into violence.

This year was the first time the Orange Order has canceled key marches, and the move was followed by a July 20 cease-fire by the Irish Republican Army guerrillas who have waged a three-decade war against British rule in Northern Ireland.