News

Loyalists plan march in mixed area of Belfast to honour UDA killers

The march was first held in 2014 after the Housing Executive spent £11,000 building a new memorial
The march was first held in 2014 after the Housing Executive spent £11,000 building a new memorial The march was first held in 2014 after the Housing Executive spent £11,000 building a new memorial

LOYALISTS are planning a march through a mixed community to glorify notorious UDA members linked to numerous sectarian murders during the Troubles.

The parade off south Belfast's Ormeau Road will take place on Friday, just days before the anniversary of the killing of Joe Bratty and Raymond Elder.

The pair were linked to a gun attack on Sean Graham bookmakers along the same street in 1992 in which five Catholics were killed.

Now in its fourth year, the parade was first held in 2014 after the Housing Executive spent £11,000 building a memorial beside its flats on Candahar Street.

In previous years a temporary plaque bearing Bratty and Elder's names has been fixed to the monument and UDA flags have been flown from lampposts.

The Housing Executive has said it was intended as a First World War memorial garden, but has rejected calls to remove the structure despite it becoming the centrepiece of an annual UDA commemoration.

Bratty and Elder were shot dead by the Provisional IRA on Ormeau Road on July 31, 1994.

The march – which is expected to involve about a dozen bands – will take place from 7.15pm to 8.30pm on Friday, three days before the 23rd anniversary of their deaths.

The Parades Commission has banned it from several streets, including Ormeau Road.

Alliance councillor Emmet McDonough-Brown criticised the planned march, but welcomed the Parades Commission restrictions.

"A parade of this nature would be inappropriate in any context, but is particularly so in the context of the diverse and mixed community that exists on the Ormeau Road," he said.

"In previous years this coat-trailing exercise has raised tensions, with residents recalling substantial paramilitary trappings from previous events. The organisers must do more to challenge these displays.

"The commemoration of the UDA members in this fashion also risks re-traumatising their victims and does nothing to promote reconciliation."

Organisers had intended to start at Blackwood Street before moving along Deramore Avenue, Ormeau Road, Ava Avenue and Burmah Street.

But the Parades Commission has banned this section. Instead, participants will move from Blackwood Street to the rest of the planned route – Kimberley Street, Sunnyside Street, Annadale Flats, Haywood Avenue and Haywood Drive.

In its ruling, Parades Commission said it had received "strong representation opposed to the parade's purpose and associations with the UDA".

Other issues raised were "alcohol-related anti-social behaviour and disruptive loud music being played in residential streets late into the evening".

The organiser told the Parades Commission the march was to commemorate local people killed in both world wars and during the Troubles, and would involve a tribute to Bratty and Elder at the memorial garden.

"The organiser asserted that acts of commemoration are an important issue for all those impacted by violence of the past," the parades body said.

"The organiser pointed out that many republican parades and other acts of commemoration of the dead occur in republican areas with overt paramilitary displays and trappings."