The Five Demands

Unionists challenge police over tricolours (News Letter)
Published on Tuesday 12 July 2011 10:14
Pacemaker Press Intl 11-07-2011: The violence that erupted in Ballyclare on Saturday night was inexcusable, a senior PSNI officer has said. Assistant Chief Constable Alistair Finlay said police would apologise when in the wrong but violence did not have to be “inevitable”. “There were some parts of the process we could have undertaken differently and we will look at that,” he said. Trouble flared following the removal of union and paramilitary flags near a Catholic church. Picture By: Arthur Allison.
UNIONISTS have challenged the PSNI’s record on allowing tricolours to fly across the province after officers removed Union flags in Ballyclare over the weekend.
The removal of the flags was followed by widely condemned loyalist rioting.
DUP MLA Paul Girvan said a number of loyalist paramilitary flags were removed, but that Union flags and an Ulster flag were also removed.
“As a result there was a bit of a backlash from the community and those who put the flags up,” Mr Girvan said.
But puzzled unionist politicians yesterday queried police treatment of contentious Irish tricolours in Armagh, Ballymena, Enniskillen, Kilkeel and Newcastle.
Deputy Ulster Unionist leader Danny Kennedy appealed for calm in the run-up to the Twelfth.
But he said he was “very concerned” at the large number of Irish tricolours on Friary Road in Armagh – the main arterial route for Orangemen and their supporters to make their way to the field in Killylea today.
Mr Kennedy accused republicans of “deliberately attempting to raise the temperature” in advance of the Co Armagh Twelfth demonstration and urged Orangemen to ignore the provocation.
He said tricolours fly permanently along the ring road and outwards along the main arterial route towards Omagh and the west.
In 2009 Lord Morrow challenged then roads minister, Conor Murphy, over why tricolours and dissident republican emblems remained on his department’s lamp posts on the same road one year after he had been asked to remove them.
Lord Morrow said yesterday: “Any time we ask police to investigate they say they will take the appropriate action but it doesn’t happen. There are terrorist signs up along this main arterial route in Armagh and the police have refused to take them down.”
DUP MP Ian Paisley Jnr said police have declined to get directly involved in the issue of tricolours flying in a mixed area in north Ballymena for the best part of a decade.
“This is an annual problem in a mixed area,” he said.
“Police say it is up to the local community to sort it out but in a mixed area this really does create tensions.”
In Enniskillen, UUP councillor Robert Irvine said tricolours fly semi-permanently on the Cornagrade Road, which he said is the main route into the town from Omagh.
“Objections have been raised by people who have to travel through on their way to work and negotiations have been ongoing with community groups since the start of the year but police have not intervened to remove any tricolours,” he said.
Elsewhere, DUP MLA Jim Wells said tricolours are flown on the main street of Newcastle every Easter weekend which he said is “very intimidating” for mixed tourism over that period.
In Kilkeel, UKIP councillor Henry Reilly said nationalists on Scrogg Road put up tricolours right up to a unionist area and burn Union flags annually on their internment bonfire.
“Last year they also burnt a Union flag on St Patrick’s Day,” he said.
“Police declined to intervene but this is highly provocative to Protestants. I am concerned that there is a growing perception among young Protestants that the PSNI are being used by Sinn Fein to implement political policing,” he said.
A police spokesman said the PSNI works within the Joint Protocol in Relation to the Display of Flags in Public Areas along with four Stormont departments and the housing executive.
“Police work proactively with these agencies to have flags removed through a process of consultation and negotiation,” he said.
“The police also independently and unilaterally act to remove flags when it has been determined that the display of a flag is such to justify enforcement without consultation and negotiation.
“Displaying a flag bearing the name of a proscribed organisation could be interpreted as Showing Support for a Proscribed Organisation, contrary to The Terrorism Act 2000.
“Displaying a flag such as the Union flag or tricolour may constitute an offence in certain circumstances, ie if the flag is displayed in a manner likely to lead to a breach of the peace, or is displayed in a provocative manner in the vicinity of a parade or procession.”
Assistant Chief Constable Alistair Finlay during a press conference yesterday on the violence in Ballyclare.