The police prevented an early morning attempt by the Orange Order to make a controversial parade down a road which had previously been blocked by protesters.
A group of men tried to march from Drumcree Church down the mainly-nationalist Garvaghy Road in Portadown in the early hours of Monday but a line of police Land Rovers stood in the way.
They had been unable to make the permitted parade on Sunday morning because protesters had gathered on the Garvaghy Road. The stand-off continued throughout Sunday, with the Orangemen waiting at the church, around a mile from the road, for the go-ahead from police.
Sinn Féin First Minister Michelle O’Neill joined the protest, prompting Democratic Unionist Party leader Gavin Robinson to accuse her of acting unlawfully.
Northern Ireland Secretary Sir Chris Bryant called for “compromise”.
Breandán Mac Cionnaith, from the Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition, said he was meeting the secretary of state and chief constable on Monday, and that he would not prejudge those conversations.
Nigel Dawson, who is the Orange Order’s Portadown district master, told BBC News NI there was frustration.
He said they had a legal right to parade down the Garvaghy Road and the police should facilitate their route.
“We have been open and honest, and were seeking mediation to seek a resolution suitable to both sides that would bring this to a successful conclusion,” he added.
Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) MP Carla Lockhart, who came back to Drumcree in the early hours of Monday, said the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s chief constable needed “to take a grip of this very quickly or his position will become untenable”.
The Drumcree parade, which in the 1990s sparked some of the most serious disorder in Northern Ireland’s history, was due to go ahead for the first time in 30 years after a series of legal challenges.
Since 1998, the Orange Order had been banned from completing its Drumcree march – and until this year had been repeatedly refused permission to finish the route by the Parades Commission, which was set up to adjudicate disputes.
The Orange Order is a Protestant pro-British organisation, while the area where it wants to walk – specifically along the Garvaghy Road – is largely Catholic and predominantly inhabited by pro-Irish nationalists.