Protestant Marchers Avoid Catholic Area

Taking their cue from last week’s sweeping peace accord, Protestant marchers avoided a hostile Roman Catholic neighborhood in the capital, Belfast, that has frequently been a sectarian battleground. This symbolic start to the British province’s always divisive “marching season,” which runs from Easter Monday to late August, demonstrated the kind of retreats that will be required for the peace agreement to survive in coming months. After police blocked the early morning march by 20 members of the Apprentice Boys, the marchers handed the police commander a letter of protest. But rather than mounting the kind of lengthy standoff that in past years has ended in violence, they and an accompanying band boarded a bus to join another parade in a mostly Protestant town.