Loyalists planned to set fire to ‘every street corner’

Posted by Jim on September 16, 2017

Loyalists planned widespread disturbances across the Six Counties in
response to council threats against their bonfires, it has been
revealed.

An idea to build bonfires “on every street corner” was considered before
authorities in Belfast backed away from a threat to remove bonfire
material there.

The ‘Grand Secretary’ of the anti-Catholic Orange Order, Mervyn Gibson,
said tensions has been raised following a Belfast City Council
injunction against four loyalist bonfires in Belfast, but that major
disorder had been narrowly averted.

“It’s how the court order is interpreted next year that worries me, in
that people will now be looking to bring this in across other parts of
the province, if that happens they’ll not stop bonfires people will just
move it off council property,” he said.

Gibson also warned that Orangemen remained angry at restrictions on
their parades, despite the relatively peaceful marching season this
year. He again called for the scrapping of the Parades Commission and
for the infamous Drumcree march in Portadown to once again pass down the
predominately Catholic Garvaghy Road.

“I think that Sinn Fein have moved on from parades politically, whereas
we’re still there and dealing with the legacy of the Parades
Commission,” he said.

Meanwhile, the issue of sectarian flags also remains a concern. Unionist
flags erected in June and are still flying in mixed areas of Belfast,
such as the Ormeau Road in south Belfast and now appear a permanent
fixture.

South Belfast resident Dominica McGowan said there is “clear community
support to remove these flags in shared spaces”.

“However, three months later and there is still no sign of these flags
coming down,” she said.

She added: “The Ormeau Road area is a diverse area and we do not feel
it’s fair to mark the territory with unionist flags, so we are asking
for support for the flags to be removed.”

Union flags and and UVF flags were erected on lamp posts at Global
Crescent and Cantrell Close – housing developments that were part of a
Stormont ‘shared communities’ strategy.

In 2014, the PSNI police said that in future the flying of loyalist
flags in the mixed Ormeau Road area would be treated as a “breach of the
peace”.

But in later years when the flags were again erected, the PSNI said they
would only remove flags if there were “substantial risks to public
safety” or a criminal offence was thought to have occurred.

Loyalists also continue to fly an apartheid era South Africa flag in a
County Down village in an apparent statement of racist hate. The flag is
one of several put up in Moneyslane over the summer and remained up this
week.

The flag, which was replaced as the flag of south Africa in 1994, was
used by the apartheid regime during the years of discrimination by the
white minority over the country’s black majority. Three flags contained
in the centre of the banner include the Union Jack.

Sinn Fein councillor Kevin Savage last night questioned the reason for
putting up the flag.

“I would like to know the rationale, what links Moneyslane has to South
Africa, it seems bizarre that this was up there?” he said. “Given its
past and the regime it represented in this day and age it should not
have been flown anywhere in the world.”