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The first leg of the most controversial Orange parade of the Ulster loyalist marching season passed off peacefully on Tuesday morning.

After violence on Monday night, there was a heavy police presence on Belfast's Crumlin Road as officers separated loyalist marchers and nationalist demonstrators as the parade passed by the Ardoyne shops.

Amid driving rain and the drone of a police helicopter overhead the Orangemen and two loyalist bands were accompanied by two rows of protesters shortly before 8.30am on Tuesday. As marchers reached the nearby Protestant Twaddell Avenue they were given a heroes' reception by local loyalists.

Attention now turns to Tuesday evening, when the parade will return up the Crumlin Road past the nationalist area. A rally has been organised for Tuesday afternoon in Ardoyne with some demonstrators vowing to block the Crumlin Road to prevent the Orangemen's return.

Violence overnight in Belfast saw 22 police officers injured as nationalist youths attacked the security forces hours before the biggest day in the Orange Order's calendar.

Plastic bullets were fired and water cannon was deployed to deal with a mob of up to 200 youths in the Broadway area in the west of the city. The rioters attacked police lines separating the area from the loyalist Village district close to the M1 motorway.

Baton rounds were also fired during street disturbances in the Oldpark area of north Belfast close to a so-called peaceline separating nationalist and loyalist communities.

Police were also investigating reports that gunshots were fired in the area but there are no reports of any injuries.

A bus was hijacked on the Falls Road with the driver dragged from the vehicle and passengers ordered off it. It was then driven at police lines on the Donegall Road, but crashed a short distance away. A van was also set alight on the Donegall Road.

About 40 people gathered in North Queen Street near the city centre and petrol bombs have been thrown at police.

There was a minor disturbance on the Shore Road after a barricade was erected across the road at Greencastle Station.

Up to a quarter of a million people are expected to attend or watch the annual 12 July parades across Northern Ireland, the biggest of which will take place through Belfast.

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didn't the ulsters come from scotland, thus explaining their loyalties to the crown or something?

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miles?

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Originally Posted by Dødherre Mørktre:
miles?

Have had a few really busy days in work here, taking my time doing up an answer to this one in fits and starts..... :-P

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Originally Posted by Dødherre Mørktre:
didn't the ulsters come from scotland, thus explaining their loyalties to the crown or something?

Well, that's part of it, the early history would be based around that time, Ulster was mostly settled by Scots Protestants and so has always been more pro-british than the rest of the conuntry. back in 1924 when ireland gained its freedom from the UK, Ustwer was still so fiercly pro-british that they threatened to rebel if they became part of the Republic, so an agreement was reached to leave them as part of the UK. And so Northern Ireland was born. As ye may have guessed, not everyone in the 6 counties of Northern Ireland was overly happy with this, so society up there was divided along mostly religious lines, with the catholics wanting the north to join the Republic as one nation (hence the term "Republicans" or "Nationalists" and the protestants wanting to stay loyal to the british crown (hence "Loyalists". The Loyalists pretty much controlled the country, with catholics being very much second class citizens and discriminated agains in nearly every aspect of society, all the way up to when The Troubles started in the 1970s (and really all the way up to the Peace process in the late 90s).  

(there we go, a short potted hsitory of over 80 years of strife and unpleasantness in what, 6 lines?)    

The marches that are kicking off this strife are an annual thing, a series of parades by the Protestant Orange Order (sort of like your Rotary clubs, but of a more religious bent) commemmorating the victory of Wiliam of Orange in the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 which ensured the continuation of Protestant rule in Britain and Ireland. These marches have always been seen as sectarian and triumphalist, as they quite unsubtly celebrate the victory of Protestantism over Catholicism, and their choice of routes has always involved them passing though catholic/natioanlist areas as if to deliberately rub their noses in it. In terms of aggravating feelings and raising tempers, imagine if the KKK had an annual parade celebrating the birth of the Confederacy that passed though black neighbourhoods in cities thought the south, and you're getting there. Most pass off peacefully but a few have become flashpoints over the years as the catholics staged protests and the police had to step in to keep the peace - in the late 90s especially there were standoffs at various marches, the most famous being at Drumcree in 1998: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drumcree_conflict#1998.

It has been quiet enough for most of the last decade, but it does boil over occasionally. Most of the violence these days isn't motivated by religion or nationalism - there's still the hard-core "believers" on either side who kick off the violence to begin with but after that most of it is caused by troublemaking opportunists who are just looking for excuses to break and set fire to things and to throw stuff at the cops.

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so this takes place in ireland itself?

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Originally Posted by Dødherre Mørktre:
so this takes place in ireland itself?

Yup, in Northern Ireland, not the Republic.

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Originally Posted by Kieran Colfer:

Originally Posted by Dødherre Mørktre:
so this takes place in ireland itself?

Yup, in Northern Ireland, not the Republic.

oh, that's what i was asking. but i thought belfast was in ireland itself.

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Originally Posted by Dødherre Mørktre:

oh, that's what i was asking. but i thought belfast was in ireland itself.

Belfast is the capital of Northern Ireland. Physically, it's on the island of Ireland all right, but politically it's a different country to mine :-)

(sort of goes back to that video of "the UK vs England Vs Great Britain" here... :-P)