The Portadown Lodge makes its ritual application to the Parades Commission for permission to parade down the Garvaghy Road.

This is ritually refused and a ban accepted with ritual civility. There is a token presentation at what is now, compared with the fortifications of a decade ago, little more than a symbolic police presence, a protest registered, a civil acceptance of the facts of life and a withdrawal to the warmth and comfort of the Lodge.

All very civilised and yet far from the spirit and the ultimate purpose of the peace process — respect for all traditions, and the ability and willingness of people to live together in peace and harmony and mutual respect.

People, should, after all, have the right to honour their dead in their own way, especially those who died in great wars. What they are not entitled to do is to turn a church parade into an exercise in triumphalistic pageantry which makes another community feel threatened or insecure, or simply marginalised and disrespected.

It was the conflict of these rights which created the trouble at Drumcree over the years, and a deep-seated truculence and refusal to compromise on both sides, which elevated a local event into a running sore on the body politic that attracted international attention.

However, and this is in part a reflection of the peace process, partly of the sense of well-being that people, and especially businessmen in towns with a thriving retail trade (much of it from across the Border) partly from sheer 'fed-upness', the potential flashpoints are declining in number and intensity by the year. Drumcree itself, having lost some of the historic cast of characters, is dying of boredom.

None of this is to discount the assiduous and painstaking work that has been done, not only during this marching season but in the months leading up to it, by politicians and community leaders on both sides, to secure agreement on routes, and to minimise and canalise the possibility of protest. Much of that work is done without the intervention of the Parades Commission, which might yet become unnecessary, and represents the working out of the Good Friday Agreement at local levels. A feature of the process is that whatever rapprochement, real or simulated, has been achieved between party leaders at the top, it has taken a long time for this to trickle down the chain where there is not only fear, insecurity and the memory of recent hurts and historic animosity, but also a deep-seated sectarianism.

The celebration at the Boyne, the mock sword play between Bertie and Paisley, was highly symbolic in its way and very important for the future, but unless and until some of the same degree of mutual respect begins to manifest itself in the dreary terraces of north Belfast and the drumlins of north Armagh and east Tyrone, not only will the problems rumble on for another generation or two but an opportunity to eradicate the virus of sectarianism will have been lost.

It is in this context that the meeting of Gerry Adams with Portadown Orangemen, under the chairmanship of a local businessman, is both groundbreaking and significant. Significant too is the fact that after the first disclosure by way of leak, it caused hardly a ripple in the media.

Normality takes strange shapes. Another apparently impenetrable barrier has been pierced, indicative of a general, if slow, metamorphosis in society. It can only be a good thing that people are reaching out across political and cultural divides in an attempt to understand each other. It is, of course, at street or community level that these things will be sorted out, to enable parades to take place in a way which is acceptable to all, which can indeed be celebrated as the Boyne itself is now celebrated and to enable the removal of the 'peace walls' which survive as a monument to fear and insecurity.

The most lasting barriers are in the minds of men and it requires dialogue, interchange, the beginning of understanding and a development of trust to secure their removal. That senior members of the Orange Order in Portadown should have met with Gerry Adams is an important milestone in this process.

Also important are the facilitators, the usually anonymous people who make this sort of meeting possible. In the literature they are known as 'third men in areas of conflict' — not however, the sort of Harry Lime white guys.

They are people of integrity and courage, trusted by both sides to keep their confidences and brave enough to take on roles involving danger not only to reputation but, in some cases, to life. Brendan Duddy, who acted as a conduit between British diplomacy and the IRA, is a case in point — a silent hero of the peace process. In the current case Mr Ian Milne is indeed a Portadown businessman with impeccable Orange connections.

He has been active over the years in explaining the culture and ethos of the Orange Order in courteous and civilised terms to anyone willing to listen. The inability or unwillingness of the Order to explain itself in particular situations — or even in general — and its insistence on standing on perceived legal rights of passage through contested territory, has been a considerable source of the heat and hostility engendered by marches. This has been compounded by the refusal of antagonistic local communities to express their concerns or their perceptions in other than politicised slogans.

In facilitating meetings of this sort, Ian Milne has rendered a service to society. It is an example which could usefully be followed by others like him on both sides.