Melody & Part Flute Bands

Plans to effectively ban marches in Glasgow city centreare “a dishonest sham” that will be opposed in courts, the leader ofScotland’s Orange Order said.

Ian Wilson, Grand Master of the Grand Orange Lodge of Scot-land,said Glasgow City Council’s proposals on a new policy governing allparades in the city were an attempt to bully his organisation intogiving up their right to celebrate their traditions.

His views were supported by Jim MacLean, his counterpart in sisterorganisation the Grand Black Chapter, who described the proposals as“an unequivocal attack on the Protestant Loyal Orders” that would be“fought tooth and nail”.

Meanwhile, trade union leaders, whose demonstrations account forseveral dozen held in the city each year, believe they have been caughtup in a policy meant for other groups such as the Orange Order and someIrish Republican groups.

It comes a day after the local authority launched a four-weekconsultation on its proposals, which as well as seeing parades keptaway from the city centre would see the policing costs of alldemonstrations publicised, organisers encouraged to consideralternatives to processions and an insistence on events with 1000 ormore people assembling at and progressing to a public park.

Processions where groups march back to where they started from,could be axed, while small parades that feed into a main processioncould be curbed as the council moves to develop standard routes.

Mr Wilson, whose organisation had 252 marches in the city last year– more than 50% of the total – said the proposal to ban parades fromthe city centre was an attack on human rights.

Although local authorities pay for half of all policing, Mr Wilsonsaid the councils “should not be using the cost of police resources asa tool to prevent us from parading”.

He added that the consultation document was “dishonest, backed with dodgy statistics and … sham”.

“We will reply to them as they suggest. However, as we have beendenied our repeated requests for discussion, we are sure that our viewswill fall on deaf ears and we will once again need to resort to thecourts and human rights legislation to protect our freedoms,” he said. Dave Moxon, deputy general secretary of STUC, said that althoughmany of the recommendations were sensible, there was a concern thattraditional union parades, such as the May Day demonstration, could bemoved from the city centre, as EIS and anti-war protests already had.

Councillor Jim Coleman, who is spearheading the plans, said: “Theproposals are a significant step forward in how we handle processions,of all kinds, in a sustainable and transparent way.”

Published on the 1st of September 2010

Article taken from the Evening Times