An Orange Order parade passed by a nationalist neighbourhood in north Belfast on Saturday morning without incident.
Locals staged a protest against the parade, carrying banners saying “rights marched over”.
The parade travelled past the Ardoyne shops on Crumlin Road after being permitted by the Parades Commission, with several restrictions applied.
The application for the event at the once volatile parading flashpoint came after a deal between Orange lodges and nationalist residents broke down earlier in the summer.
The parade involving three lodges was organised to mark Orange Heritage Week.
It began in the unionist Woodvale area and proceeded from the junction of Woodvale Parade and Woodvale Road along the Crumlin Road before ending at Ligoniel Orange Hall.
The parade fell silent as it passed the Ardoyne shops, where the residents’ protest was staged, before the music and drums resumed further along the route.
The Parades Commission had ruled that no music or drumbeats can be played as the parade passes the contentious section of the route.
One band and over 100 people including children took part in the parade, which began at 9am.
Local residents protest ahead of members of the Orange Order taking part in a parade from Woodvale Road along the Crumlin Road passing the Ardoyne shops in Belfast (Brian Lawless/PA)
The Crumlin and Ardoyne Residents Association (Cara) had applied to hold a protest, which was attended by dozens of people as well as Sinn Fein MLA for North Belfast Gerry Kelly and Sinn Fein MP for North Belfast John Finucane.
Mr Kelly said he was “very pleased” that the parade and protest were peaceful.
“I absolutely do not understand and still can’t understand how the Parades Commission who made a decision on 13 July, that parades should not go up, and this is the same parade, the same lodge, the same band, at the same time, and then they said that it should go ahead, and people in the area don’t understand that as well.”
He said that residents keep asking him “are we going to go back to what it was?” and said that Cara had said the parade had “done damage to the process of reconciliation”.
“The people down here who live in Woodvale and all of that, there is very good relationships, especially you’ll see it around Christmas and around other times, they come together on an ongoing basis.”
As part of the 2016 deal between the lodges and Cara, outward parades were able to proceed along the road passing the Ardoyne shops on the morning of July 12 each year, but without return parades to the Orange Hall in the evening.
A total of five morning parades each year were agreed as part of the deal.
Cara claims Saturday’s parade was effectively a return parade to the Ligoniel Orange Hall and is outside the terms of the 2016 agreement.
However, the lodges insist the parade is not a breach of the 2016 accord.
The Parades Commission, which is the government-appointed adjudication panel for controversial marches, said its ruling to permit the parade was a “carefully considered and finely balanced judgment” and represented a “fair balance between the needs of the community and the rights of the individual”.
The area has previously witnessed serious loyalist and republican rioting when tensions linked to parading boiled over on the main date in the loyal order calendar, the Twelfth of July.
A 24/7 loyalist protest camp was set up at the sectarian interface in 2013 when the Parades Commission prevented Orangemen belonging to the three Orange lodges from passing the Ardoyne as they returned from traditional Twelfth commemorations.
An Orange Order parade makes its way along the Crumlin Road on the morning of the Twelfth this year (Brian Lawless/PA)
Nightly protests were held in the nearby unionist Woodvale/Twaddell area in the years after that, with a protest parade every Saturday.
The policing operation at the site cost in excess of £20 million over three years.
After protracted negotiations, an accord between the three lodges and Cara was reached in 2016.
It saw the Orangemen complete the outstanding return leg of their 2013 parade on a morning in September 2016, after which the loyalist camp at the interface was dismantled and all associated protests ended.
From that point on, the lodges agreed not to apply for any more return parades on the Twelfth until a wider agreement on the issue was reached.
In return, Cara agreed not to protest at the lodges’ already permitted outward parade on the morning of the Twelfth.
That deal fell apart in the summer, with Orangemen bemoaning what they characterised as a lack of progress towards achieving a long-term agreement that would enable evening parades on the Twelfth.
Orangemen subsequently applied to the Parades Commission for permission to parade past Ardoyne on the evening of the Twelfth this year.
The application was turned down.
At the time Cara accused the lodges of jeopardising the “peace and normality” that had returned to the area since 2016.