Peace stands or falls on the walls

Next Saturday, loyalists will take to Derry's battlements. Decca Aitkenhead reports on a decisive moment for Northern Ireland

Walkers picking their way through the drizzle along Londonderry's city wall one afternoon last week paused to study the history lessons on tourist signs with interest. With its cannons and ramparts and thoughtfully labelled heritage, they could be in almost any ancient walled city in Europe, its past chronicled for thesightseers. Any, that is, until they peer down from Butcher's Gate to see spelled out in black along the balconies of two blocks of flats below: NO SECTARIAN MARCHES.

Derry, as all the road signs here remind you, is a historic city - but one whose history has neglected to stay put in the past. The siege which the loyalist Apprentice Boys wish to mark with a march along the walls next Saturday took place in 1689; defiant graffitti in the Catholic Bogside below - "No Consent, No March" - is fresh.

Fresh, too, is the overbearing tension, as the city awaits this parade in the shadow of last month's tense standoff at Drumcree, near Portadown, where the RUC's decision to allow Orangemen to march through a nationalist area led to violence across Northern Ireland and brought the peace process to the brink of collapse. The province is now waiting to see whether next Saturday's parade, to commemorate the defence of Derry against King James II's men by 13 protestant apprentice boys, will tip it over the edge.

But there is a belief in the city that if the nationalist residents and loyalist marchers can forge an agreement before Saturday, the two communities will have set a new direction, not only for this parade, but for the future of all marches and, even, the peace process itself.

"If it goes wrong here, the whole thing could lose control. The whole of Northern Ireland will be put into a situation we haven't seen over the last 25 years. Anything could happen." Alistair Simpson, the softly- spoken, grey-haired governor of the Apprentice Boys, is not an easy man to talk to at the moment. For the first time,he is busy talking to the other side, the Bogside Residents' Group, about the route of the march. That the two sides have agreed to meet, under the chairmanship of John Hulme, the SDLP leader, is a remarkable testimony to their will for a solution.

"People from both sides are coming up to me, shaking my hand, saying 'we're depending on you'. I'm only an ordinary person, and suddenly I've been thrust into the middle of something which will trigger the whole of Northern Ireland, either way. But let me tell you this. What happened there in Drumcree will not happen here."

Local Apprentice Boys number some 250, but up to 12,000 are expected from all over the Province, for the march through the city centre and a service in the Anglican cathedral. Mr Simpson has proposed that only Derry's Apprentice Boys take to the walls; the Bogside Residents' Group will allow only 13, symbolising the number who closed the city's gates during the siege. There is talk of erecting screens to block the view from the Bogside. The discussions go on, behind closed doors. But the term neither Mr Simpson, nor anyone else, will use is "compromise". It has become a dirty word in Northern Ireland's politics, synonymous with defeat. Instead, there is talk of finding an "accommodation" or "agreement".

This may sound like mere semantics. But in a city which cannot even agree on its own name - Derry or Londonderry - the importance of semantics should not be underestimated. For Mr Simpson, seated beneath the gilt-framed gaze of predecessors in the mock gothic grandeur of the Apprentice Boys' Memorial Hall, to be speaking of "accommodation" is extraordinary. "We are doing our best," he sighed, "to find an agreement without either side saying they've won or lost."

Not 50 yards away, in the newly-opened Heritage Centre, the Bogside Residents' Group were holding a public meeting. Representatives of nationalist residents' groups, including veterans of Drumcree's Gavarghy Road unrest, addressed a gathering of some 100 or so local catholics, among them a weary looking Martin McGuiness of Sinn Fein.

What is needed, Donncha MacNiallais, the Bogside Residents' leader, told the hall, is consent - only when local residents have granted this, can loyalists legitimately march through their streets. "This goes," he insisted, "not only for Derry, but for the whole of Northern Ireland."

The hall listened gravely, to talk of negotiation, dialogue, accommodation, the right to celebrate cultural tradition. A small, fair, mild-mannered community worker in his thirties, Mr MacNiallais maintained a quiet authority. Eventually, a big man at the back lost patience. "But how do we stop them marching?" he demanded.

More in disbelief than disgust, a pinched looking woman exclaimed: "I don't even know why you want to talk to the Apprentice Boys. What do you want to talk to those Orange bastards for? That fellow McShane was murdered here not three weeks ago. I think the time has come: a beret for a beret!" MacNiallais did not flinch; the meeting, with an eye on assembled press, shifted uneasily. A motion supporting the principle of consent was passed unanimously.

"Any agreement has to be sellable," Mr MacNiallais acknowledged afterwards, "and that's going to be difficult. People are angry - some are talking about stopping the marchers on the bridge, up on the wall. But we are talking."

Derry has a lot to lose now. The new Foyleside shopping centre, a monument to Marks & Spencer normality; European money; tourism up by 75 per cent; a new hotel due to open next month - the peace dividend hasproved rich.

"Growth since the ceasefire has been truly remarkable," marvelled the city's catholic bishop, Seamus Hegarty. "People looked over the precipice of Drumcree and they didn't like what they saw. They won't throw it all away."

But others fear the worst. "We were naive to believe in the peace," counters Barney Divine, leader of a voluntary centre set up two years ago to foster cross-community relations, and now deeply despondent. "We were deluding ourselves, imagining all that hate and bitterness could just go away. It only took one weekend in July to put us right back to the beginning.

"And for many people, the Troubles are what they know. They were frightened of the ceasefire. They didn't know how to live with it."

Derry is a city only too familiar with historic symbolism. If its people can reach an accord in the next six days, it may come to occupy a new place in the history of the province, as the city where the peace process was pulled back from the brink. Last week's sorry story of its current mayor, however, does not augur well.

Richard Dallas, a unionist councillor aged just 27, was sworn in by the nationalist-dominated council on 6 June, under a commendable system of power-sharing. When Drumcree erupted a month later, Mr Dallas donned the Orange sash and manned a unionist roadblock on Derry's Craigavon bridge. The council was outraged, and, at a bitter emergency meeting last week, voted to strip him of his mayoral privileges.

The young man is defiant. "If everyone dispensed with their tradition and culture, the whole place would turn into something very bland. It might turn into a peaceful country, but God forbid - no one would want to live in it."

Drumcree won't happen here? Perhaps.