Can we realistically go back to the days before the PC, when the decision to ban or allow a parade was based on which decision would produce least trouble, with the result that each side of any dispute was involved in an arms race (pun intended) of threat and counter threat.
No-one is happy with the current disputes and riots, but bad as these days have been, they are trivial compared to the destruction during the dark days of Drumcree.
Have we forgotten that we forced our march through in 1996 see (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg5G9AvaRNQ ) but the violence increased during the following years until the awful 1998 which saw a policeman kicked to death on the streets of Ballymoney simply because he had been on patrol at a parades dispute, followed by
- 615 attacks on the security forces, which left 76 police offices injured
- 24 shooting incidents
- 45 blast bombs thrown
- 632 petrol bombs thrown
- 837 plastic bullets fired by the security forces
- 144 houses and 165 other buildings attacked (the vast majority owned by Catholics and/or nationalists)
- 467 vehicles damaged and 178 vehicles hijacked, and
- 284 people arrested
- 3 children murdered by Loyalist petrol bombers in Ballymoney - Jason (aged 8), Mark (aged 9) and Richard Quinn (aged 10)
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