Jamie Bryson is the poison dwarf of Irish politics, and I say that as a member of the vertically challenged community. He is the driving force behind the attempt to reassert loyalist ethno-supremacism by forcing an Orange march along the Garvaghy Road. With impeccable political timing loyalism has chosen the period around the 90^th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street in east London to take this struggle back onto the streets.

The issue is identical despite the distance in time and space. In both cases far right organisations want to show their control by marching through areas where they know they are not welcome. Mosely and his Blackshirts sought to intimidate Jewish and Irish migrants and challenge the Communist Party; Bryson and his Orangemen want to show the nationalist minority in the area that they are as inferior as a Polish Jew was to a Blackshirt

In total, twenty-one people were murdered by supporters of the Orange Order in the years before the march was stopped in 1998. It was only when loyalists burned three children to death that unionism’s political leadership accepted that they could no longer force the issue.

Bryson’s recent book Culture War is a barely readable manifesto for loyalism written by someone who, as this clip from a radio show demonstrates, attends commemorations for UVF loyalist murderers and calls groups like the UDA “counter-terrorists”. My experience of their “counter-terrorism” is described here. In the previous disputes about the assertion of loyalist supremacy Unionist leaders like Ian Paisley and David Trimble openly collaborated with known mass killers. Bryson has assembled the same parties and his tactical innovations have been to keep the loyalist gangs away from the cameras, a relentless use of the courts and an initial compromise in which he proposed that thirty-five Orangemen walk the route.

He picked an easy target with the Parades Commission, a group of sinecured government appointees who made their decisions by WhatsApp chats. It was entirely predictable what would happen if the Orangemen were given permission to walk along the Garvaghy Road. People there remember the murders and the riots. They also understand that the only reason that ever exists for forcing one of these marches through a nationalist area is to intimidate and show who is in control.

Just as with Cable Street, which the British left is marking this coming weekend, the community organised to defend its area and its dignity. They refused to be intimidated by the police and they did not let a far-right, expressly anti-Catholic organisation with a deep connection to murder gangs walk where they are not wanted.

With the exception of a tiny handful of marginal, often corrupt, and mercifully incompetent individuals, there is absolutely no desire among nationalists in the six counties to see a return to any form of violence. Bryson is only about 30% as clever as he thinks he is, but the DUP and TUV politicians to whom he is providing strategic thinking must know that they are standing behind the far-right mobs which conducted the recent anti-migrant pogroms in the six counties. Carla Lockhart of the DUP was happy to be photographed standing among them and these people will resort to violence and potential murder unless the TUV and DUP stand them down.

Orangemen are able to march without objection in much of Ireland. However, the message from Garvaghy Road has to remain ¡No Pasarán!