Artists including Noel Gallagher show support for Garvaghy Road residents

Actors and musicians sign open letter urging government to protect residents amid impasse over Drumcree parade

Dozens of artists, actors and musicians including Susan Sarandon and Noel Gallagher have expressed support for Garvaghy Road residents in the impasse over the Drumcree parade in Northern Ireland.

In an open letter to the secretary of state, Chris Bryant, they urged the government to protect residents and to appoint an international mediator to resolve the dispute between the Catholic residents and the Orange Order in County Armagh.

“Central to any just resolution must be the primacy and protection of the local community,” said the letter, which urged authorities to safeguard residents from “any form of forced processions that disregard their consent, safety and right to live in peace free from intimidation”.

It was signed by the writer Irvine Welsh, the film-makers Ken Loach and Jim Sheridan, the actors Adrian Dunbar, Maxine Peake and Siobhán McSweeney and the musicians Paul Weller, Johnny Marr and Imelda May, among others.

Twenty MPs and members of the House of Lords signed a separate letter exhorting Bryant to cancel the march.

The 11-day-old dispute fuelled fresh political tension on Wednesday when three unionist parties tabled a motion of no confidence in Michelle O’Neill, the Sinn Féin first minister, and other Sinn Féin ministers. The motion lacks cross-community support and is expected to fail when debated at the Stormont assembly on 12 October.

In the Dáil in Dublin, the Sinn Féin leader, Mary Lou McDonald, accused Bryant of allowing the stalemate to fester and leaving Garvaghy Road residents in “dangerous limbo”. She urged the Irish government to “apply all necessary pressure” on British authorities to prevent the parade.

The taoiseach, Micheál Martin, said he had discussed the impasse with Andy Burnham on Monday and urged renewed talks in Northern Ireland. “We need a mediated resolution,” he said. “The talks that have happened could result in an outcome if we maintain dialogue.”

The march around Drumcree is one of hundreds of parades that the Orange Order holds in Northern Ireland each year to commemorate Protestant forefathers who fell in battles. Critics say they are an attempt to intimidate Catholics.

Attempts by Garvaghy Road residents to block the march in the 1990s led to pitched battles between Orange Order supporters and police and sectarian violence. The dispute subsided after 1998 when the Parades Commission prohibited the route through Garvaghy Road, but last month the commission ruled that a scaled-down parade of 35 Orangemen could march down Garvaghy, reigniting protests by residents.

In a statement on Wednesday, the Orange Order’s Portadown district lodge said its members were ready to exercise a legal right to march the route – for the first time in 28 years – and urged the police to deal with the protesters who impeded them.

“We will not give up that legal right, as to do so would be to legitimise mob rule. We will continue our dignified, peaceful and lawful stand,” it said. “We have yet to see any action taken, as Michelle O’Neill and her comrades continue to flout the law.”