Northern Ireland's marching season begins amid political tension

The annual tradition comes as the Democratic Union Party enters into a controversial power-sharing agreement with Britain's Conservative Party.

Northern Ireland's Marching Season is an annual Protestant commemoration of the famous battle where Protestant King William III of Orange defeated Catholic King James II at the battle of the Boyne on July 12, 1690.
TRT World and Agencies

Northern Ireland's Marching Season is an annual Protestant commemoration of the famous battle where Protestant King William III of Orange defeated Catholic King James II at the battle of the Boyne on July 12, 1690.

Discontentment is growing in North Ireland this marching season after British Prime Minister Theresa May's recent deal with the Democratic Union Party (DUP) that will afford her Conservatives a slim parliamentary majority.

Northern Ireland will receive an extra one billion pounds (1.1 billion euros, $1.3 billion) from the UK coffers over two years, in return for the DUP backing the British government in confidence votes, passing budgets and Brexit legislation.

TRT World's Sara Firth reports.

Trouble at home

Northern Ireland's political scene has been in crisis since the collapse in January of the coalition mandated under a 1998 peace deal that ended decades of sectarian Protestant-Catholic violence in which 3,600 died.

The Irish Catholic nationalist Sinn Fein and the Protestant pro-British DUP have been in talks since a March election to form a new power-sharing government. Each has blamed the other for missing repeated deadlines.

The British government, which is jointly overseeing the talks alongside Ireland's government, warned on Monday that it would have to step in to manage public spending in the province, and might call new elections unless a deal was reached soon.

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