Orange Order dealt a blow over right to march

The North's Human Rights Commission has told the Orange Order it has no automatic right to parade under European Law.

In a report published today, the Commission said rights have to be balanced with the freedoms of others.

The report will be a blow to the Orange Order. Its legal advice has been that once the European Convention on Human Rights was ratified in London, it would have the right to parade.

Lawyers, including the UUP leader, David Trimble, had pointed to the convention as one way of vindicating their traditional routes in, for example, Portadown and the Ormeau Road.

But today's report said that the right to free assembly, while including the right to annoy and give offence to others, to impede traffic and to parade, does not always include the right to provoke others, to offend religious sensibilities or to protest if hangers-on threaten violence.

It said the court can help but cannot provide easy solutions and there is no simple answer to the parading problem.