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Drumcree: New policing project, Stormont and community relations all on the line

Over many years of reporting, and on many roads in this place, I have seen the scattered debris of politics, policing and parading; seen it at those flash-points and ‘clash-points’ where contested marches have been met by protest.

Rubble on the roads. The spent casings of plastic bullets. The scorch marks left by burned out vehicles. The injured. All of this in twisted picture frames that display and exhibit the opposite of peace.

This is not the debris we are looking at in television coverage and photographs from Portadown.

The shrapnel is in the angry words that are being spoken. And, once again, everything is on the line – the new policing project approaching its 25th birthday, the fractured and fraught politics at Stormont and that thing we call community relations.

Warning: This story contains language some readers may find offensive

The ghosts of Drumcree have been wakened by alarms sounded in the decisions of recent days.

A police source used two words to sum it up: “S*** show.”


BBC News

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