Prime Minister Andy Burnam urged “calm” Sunday as thousands of people gathered in a Northern Irish town seeking to halt a contentious pro-British Protestant march from passing through a mainly Catholic and nationalist area for the first time in 28 years. The tensions spiked after a court in the early hours of Sunday cleared the march by the Orange Order to go ahead. The Parades Commission, Northern Ireland’s independent body regulating contentious processions, had authorized 35 Orangemen to march silently along Garvaghy Road in Portadown, without bands or supporters from 8:00 am Sunday.
Burnham appealed for “calm on all sides,” adding in an interview with BBC television that that “big gains” had been made in Northern Ireland “and we don’t want to see things go backwards.”
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