Another marching season nears an end. More tense then many, it has left some communities as divided as ever. That we are trapped in our history, that nothing ever changes, its just the same old 'traditional' confrontation.
Some simple figures suggest the situation is more complex.
Statistics collected by the RUC since 1985 show that the number of parades has increased quite considerably. In 1995 there were 2581 parades categorised as 'loyalist' and 302 as 'nationalist', giving a total of 2883. As such, in 1995 there were 684 more loyalist parades than ten years earlier, and 79 more nationalist parades. Whilst some years show a particularly big jump, for instance 1990 the tercentenary of the Battle of the Boyne, there does appear to be a long term trend upwards. So the figures show that there are more loyalist parades than there used to be, and also that the proportion of loyalist parades as opposed to nationalist parades has increased.