Despite a ruling in the Good Friday Agreement which precludes paramilitary involvement in the parades, armed color guards from all loyalist terror groups can routinely be seen taking part. The local police force, the RUC, seems either unable or unwilling to stop this. Given the current climate of continued loyalist sectarian violence and allegations of RUC collusion with these groups, this type of behavior cannot be dismissed as mere name-calling. Even the landscape of the Springfield Road area has taken on the appearance of a community under siege. Houses built over 10 years ago were constructed without windows and with reinforced steel front doors, doors which Frances said are never used.
People come and go through the back entrances.
His personal bodyguard was no less than Combat 18, the neo-Nazi group from England whose original stomping grounds were the soccer terraces of Europe. In an official capacity, she also meets with the Parades Commission, the body set up to settle disputes between local residents and the Orange Order. That has been largely fruitless to date however because the Orange Order refuse to enter into any dialogue. In fact that is one of the biggest problems she has. No-one will talk or listen.