A SIGNATORY to the letter sent by the Orange Order to residents of the Garvaghy Road in Portadown last Wednesday has said that if a public meeting between the two sides ever took place he hoped Mr Brendan McKenna would allow it to be organised and that it would happen "without his personal involvement". Mr McKenna (Mac Cionnaith) is a prominent spokesman for the residents.
The Rev William Bingham, county grand chaplain to the Orange Order, said he feared that a meeting such as that suggested by Father Eamon Stack, of the Garvaghy Coalition, could be "orchestrated" and that people attending it "might not be free to speak their minds".
However, he and others concerned were prepared to look at all suggestions made in good faith. For now, he said, they were "waiting to hear from folk in Portadown" in response to their letter.
Speaking during a break at yesterday's Presbyterian Assembly in Belfast, Mr Bingham said it was intended, to collate replies to the letter "with a view to determining what is offensive (about the parade) and the elimination of that offence".
Whereas the Orange Order felt that the rights of any community were not negotiable, its members were willing to face up to their responsibilities as to how they exercised their rights.
Mr Bingham said that the absence of Mr Harold Stacey's signature to the letter was not significant. Mr Stacey, who is a deputy district officer of the Orange Order in the area, is abroad at the moment.
Mr Bingham pointed out that Mr Stacey was at a "different level in the order" to those who had sent the letter, which had originated from "officers at county level such as himself". But Mr Stacey was "behind them all the way" in what they were doing, he added.
An editorial in yesterday's Irish News raised concerns about the absence of Mr Stacey's signature from the letter, pointing out the high profile he had taken at Drumcree in recent years.
Mr Bingham ruled out a suggestion, made at the Presbyterian Assembly on Tuesday, that Orange Order prison chaplains should be free to speak to "those with criminal records" on representative groups. The order would not get involved in negotiations with any organisation which was "a front for Sinn Fein/IRA", he said. "No one in the order will step outside that."
However, the order would work towards a resolution of the parades issue "with any constitutional person of vision with an understanding of the problem."
