‘Madness’: Standoff in Northern Ireland town as protesters block first Orangemen march in decades

The attempt to hold the Protestant parade through a Catholic section of Portadown followed the lifting of an almost 30-year ban on the contentious route. Around 2,000 protesters blocked the way into a Catholic area in a Northern Irish town that a Protestant parade was due to walk down on Sunday morning (September 27) after the lifting of an almost 30-year ban on a route that was a flashpoint of sectarian disputes.