Party Processions Act

Party Processions Act (1850), the most controversial of a series of measures designed to outlaw provocative sectarian meetings and parades, passed in the aftermath of the bloody confrontation at Dolly's Brae (1849): it was complemented by the Party Emblems Act (1860), passed after a sectarian riot at Derrymacash, Co. Armagh. Although the legislation was at first grudgingly accepted by the Orange leadership, the rise of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and increasingly frequent Fenian processions, brought a shift of attitude. In the 1860s William Johnston of Ballykilbeg (1829–1902), a minor landlord and radical Orange leader, led a campaign of defiance. Johnston's imprisonment for leading an illegal Orange procession between Newtownards and Bangor, Co. Down, on 12 July 1867 reinvigorated demands for the act's removal, and the measure was repealed in 1872. In contemporary Northern Ireland, the question of the right to march remains a deeply divisive one, the underlying issues of territorial supremacy and civil rights remaining much the same as in the mid‐19th century.

Alvin Jackson