Plans to axe city parades ‘a sham’ says Orange Order

Wednesday 1 September 2010

Plans to axe city parades ‘a sham’ says Orange Order

Plans to effectively ban marches in Glasgow city centre are “a dishonest sham” that will be opposed in courts, the leader of Scotland’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 all parades in the city were an attempt to bully his organisation into giving up their right to celebrate their traditions.

His views were supported by Jim MacLean, his counterpart in sister organisation 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 for several dozen held in the city each year, believe they have been caught up in a policy meant for other groups such as the Orange Order and some Irish Republican groups. It comes a day after the local authority launched a four-week consultation on its proposals, which as well as seeing parades kept away from the city centre would see the policing costs of all demonstrations publicised, organisers encouraged to consider alternatives to processions and an insistence on events with 1000 or more 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 procession could 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 from the city centre was an attack on human rights. Although local authorities pay for half of all policing, Mr Wilson said the councils “should not be using the cost of police resources as a 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 been denied our repeated requests for discussion, we are sure that our views will fall on deaf ears and we will once again need to resort to the courts and human rights legislation to protect our freedoms,” he said. Dave Moxon, deputy general secretary of STUC, said that although many of the recommendations were sensible, there was a concern that traditional union parades, such as the May Day demonstration, could be moved from the city centre, as EIS and anti-war protests already had. Councillor Jim Coleman, who is spearheading the plans, said: “The proposals are a significant step forward in how we handle processions, of all kinds, in a sustainable and transparent way.”

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