UUP Spokesman questions logic of restricting Black Parade but allowing Masked Republicans with Guns in City Centre
Ulster Unionist Parades Spokesman Michael Copeland today described the Parades Commission determination regarding Number 4 Grand Black Chapter as hopefully the dying throes of a failed entity.
In a statement Mr Copeland said,
“Given the recent events in Belfast City Centre during a so-called truth march which saw masked and, for all we know, armed men prancing around apparently unmolested by the Police - in circumstances considered by the Parades Commission as not worthy of comment or determination – we now have a restriction placed on the playing of music on the lower part of the Newtownards Road in the last Saturday in August. This is a section of road which in terms of postal addresses is 100% Unionist.
Once again the Parades Commission which is singularly silent regarding the twelfth of July is attempting to confront and browbeat the more elderly and perhaps more dignified membership of the Royal Black Perceptory, at the behest of those serial objectors who apparently have no difficulty with the events in Belfast City centre previously described.
In this allegedly democratic society, churches should be beacons of tolerance, mutual respect and the defenders of freedom of Assembly and expressions of belief. This determination has reduced St Mathews to nothing more than a pawn to be repeatedly used by the Parades Commission as a convenient excuse in its campaign against one section of our community. “