Loyalist Apprentice Boys Apply for Another Unwelcome Ardoyne March

national | rights, freedoms and repression | press release

Friday November 12, 2010 04:12

by Ardoyne Republican - Greater Ardoyne Residents Collective (GARC)

Yet again Greater Ardoyne residents face the prospect of another sectarian march being forced through their community.

Yet again Greater Ardoyne residents face the prospect of another sectarian march being forced through their community.

The Ligoniel Walker Club has applied to the discredited Parades Commission for a parade to take place on December 4, 2010 between 8am - 9am. What the Apprentice Boys application fails to state is that unwelcome marches in the area inevitably result in serious riots. It also doesn’t mention that this particular parade through the Ardoyne area is to facilitate the local branch to get on buses which will take them to a demonstration in Derry City.

Here are some facts;

The Apprentice Boy’s Club is based in the Unionist Ligoniel and Ballysillan areas. It wishes to march through the Nationalist Greater Ardoyne community. Not only passing through an interface area but also the homes of local residents murdered by Loyalists including the actual place where Ardoyne man, Paddy McKenna was killed by the UVF in 1989. The march will then proceed to the Unionist Woodvale area, where the Club and bandsmen will board buses and travel to a city over seventy miles away for a demonstration.

The Greater Ardoyne Residents Collective acknowledge that the Ligoniel Walker Club are an integral part of the North Belfast community. So Greater Ardoyne residents, therefore we challenge the ABOD to answer the following questions:

• Why does the Ligoniel Walker Club not board coaches outside their hall in the Ligoniel/Ballysillan area and travel onto Derry thus reducing tension?

• Why insist on parading through Ardoyne?

• Why persist on a band named after UVF Killer, Brian Robinson?

• Have the Greater Ardoyne community not made it abundantly clear that the use of this band grossly insults local people as it commemorates the person who killed Ardoyne resident, Paddy McKenna in 1989?

• Due to the unwelcome nature of the parade and band would it not make common sense for the ABOD Ligoniel Walker Club to withdraw its application?

• Of what benefit will the December 4 march be to the entire populace of North Belfast?