The DUP needs to offer leadership today rather than attempting to refight the Drumcree dispute that happened a quarter of a century ago, SDLP MP Claire Hanna has said.
Members of the Orange Order held a protest gathering on the 25th anniversary of a march being banned from passing a mainly Catholic area on the Garvaghy Road in Portadown.
DUP MP Carla Lockhart said it was a "very sad day that 25 years on from this dispute we're still in the same situation where Orange feet are not welcome on a particular stretch of road".
The 1998 ban followed several years of violent clashes across Northern Ireland.
Tensions, and the violence around Drumcree abated as people across the north reacted with horror to the murders of the three Quinn brothers, Jason, Mark and Richard, in a loyalist arson attack on their home in Ballymoney on July 12 that year.
Large scale protests continued until 2001 but have been much smaller since.
"I think you might as well ask to refight the Battle of the Boyne, that is a fight that is in the past," said Ms Hanna, MP for South Belfast.
"That dispute, as anyone who was around at the time will know, was profoundly damaging to community relations. There were awful scenes around it and awful consequences.
"I think the DUP need to get their heads around the world we are living in today, and to offer leadership around the world we are living in today."
Residents of the Garvaghy Road long campaigned against the march and were able to stop Orange Order members parading past their homes in 1995 and 1996, leading to widespread violence by loyalists.
In 1997, the then RUC and the British Army locked down the Garvaghy Road to allow the march to pass through the area. This led to violence by nationalists.
Orange Order members held a short protest on Sunday. Grand secretary Mervyn Gibson said the protest will be held each year and called for the Parades Commission to be disbanded.
On the protest, Mr Gibson said: "It's great but also sad to see that brethren have been standing here for 25 years - 25 years and everybody thinks its sorted."
He added that it was not "sorted and that brethren would remain here until there is a resolution".
"That resolution is for the brethren of Portadown to find with those who are prepared to listen to them, with those who are prepared to compromise with them, with those who are prepared to talk with them, Mr Gibson added.
"The Parades Commission has a major part to play and they have failed Portadown district, they have failed Northern Ireland in so many different ways. It is time for them to go."
He also called on the Secretary of State Chris Heaton-Harris "to exercise some influence to see a resolution here".
The parade on Sunday morning set off from Carleton Street Orange Hall in Portadown town centre for a church service at Drumcree Parish Church.
Ms Lockhart, the Upper Bann MP, told BBC's Sunday Politics programme: "I want to see a society where our culture is respected, our identity is respected, and I think it is no big thing to ask that the Garvaghy Road Residents Association enter in to some form of mediation.
"Unfortunately for many, many years their intransigence has actually been rewarded by the Parades Commission.
"We can't move on if there is no respect or tolerance for a 10-minute walk down a route which has changed enormously over the last 25 years."
