THE Arts Council has refused to comment after we revealed this week that three loyalist bands it funded to the tune of £30,000 have broken a commitment not to take part in parade tributes to UVF killers.
And it has claimed that it had no knowledge of bands it funded again taking part in UVF memorials – despite being supplied by us with information about the parades in question.
It was announced at the end of last year that the three bands – Monkstown YCV, Shankill Road Defenders and Freeman Memorial – had each been given £10,000 by the Arts Council for the purchase of new instruments. The grants were green-lit despite the fact that the three bands had just three months earlier taken part in the annual Brian Robinson Memorial Parade on the Shankill.
After we informed the Arts Council earlier this year of the three bands’ participation in the city’s biggest UVF commemoration, a review of the decision to fund the bands was launched. The Arts Council found that the three bands had omitted their participation in a September 2024 UVF Shankill parade from their application forms. Despite this, the Arts Council decided that the failure to provide information about the UVF parade on the application forms was not disqualifying and it would be going ahead and releasing the second tranche of the instrument funding to the bands.
In a desperate effort to save face, embarrassed Arts Council chiefs told us they had sought and received an assurance from all three bands of their future commitment to “good relations”. But that commitment was trashed on Saturday past when all three bands again took part in the annual Brian Robinson parade through the Shankill/Woodvale area.
The shiny new Arts Council-funded flutes and drums were used to belt out loyalist band tunes which could be heard across the road in Ardoyne by the family and friends of Paddy McKenna, the innocent Catholic gunned down outside local shops in September 1989 by Brian Robinson. The sectarian killer was himself shot dead by a British army undercover unit which intercepted the motorcycle on which he was pillion passenger as it made its way along the Crumlin Road.
The decision by the three bands to once again take part in the Brian Robinson parade was an unmistakable two-fingered salute to the Arts Council, who went out on a limb for the bands by paying out the funding in full despite the arts body’s admission that the bands had filed incomplete applications.
NO SECRET: The Arts Council says it has no evidence of commitments being breached, but the bands' attendance at this year's UVF parade is on the Parades Commission website
But when we asked the Arts Council this week about the bands’ use of their new instruments in the glorification of a sectarian killer and the breach of their commitments, the arts body fell silent.
“We won’t be making a formal response to this right now,” the Arts Council said.
It continued: “To date, the Arts Council has not received any reports or evidence of breaches of good relations commitments on the part of any awardee in relation to the parade in question.”
Why this claim was made is not entirely clear. We’ve supplied the Arts Council not only with information about the three funded bands taking part in Saturday’s UVF tribute, but about their inclusion on the Parades Commission list of bands participating in a July Shankill tribute to UVF killer Trevor King.
But the final part of the Arts Council statement is perhaps the most baffling. After claiming it had no evidence of the bands taking part in UVF parades this summer, the Arts Council told us that the Parades Commission section on the Brian Robinson parade deemed it not to be sensitive. The same section reveals the participation of the three bands in the 2025 Brian Robinson parade – something which the Arts Council now claims it has no evidence of.
“We understand that none of the parades which took place in Belfast on 6 September were considered sensitive by the Parades Commission,” the Arts Council said.
Parades Commission rulings on sensitivity are not a comment on the appropriateness or nature of a parade, they are merely statements of geographical reality. The Brian Robinson and Trevor King parades are deemed not to be sensitive simply because they are entirely confined to a heavily loyalist district and broadly welcomed there.
After the refusal of the Arts Council to comment, we’ve asked the Department for Communities – under whose auspices the agency operates – to provide us with a response.
