SENIOR members of the Arts Council will meet to review a decision to grant funding for new instruments to three loyalist flute bands which took part in the North’s largest UVF commemoration event.
We've identified three bands who between them have been awarded just under £30,000 by the Arts Council to purchase new musical instruments – despite having participated in September’s Brian Robinson Memorial Parade. They are Freeman Memorial Flute Band, Monkstown YCV Flute Band and Shankill Road Defenders Flute Band.
The Brian Robinson parade is a large-scale tribute to a UVF killer who in September 1989 shot dead an innocent Catholic, 43-year-old Patrick McKenna, at Ardoyne shops. While making their escape on a motorbike, Robinson and his driver were ambushed by a two-car SAS unit which forced them off the Crumlin Road. Robinson (27) – the pillion passenger and gunman – was shot dead.
The Shankill comes to a standstill on the first Saturday in September every year as scores of bands and thousands of spectators turn out to pay tribute to the UVF killer. Blood and thunder loyalist music blasted out by the bands – including an array of notorious anti-Catholic tunes – can be heard for hours in the nearby community of Ardoyne, where Mr McKenna lived.
The three bands given money for new musical instruments took part in the September Brian Robinson parade – just three months before the Arts Council announced in a blaze of publicity in December that the bands were among those granted funding.
WINDFALL: The three bands and the funding granted to them as listed on the Arts Council website
The organisation’s Board will discuss the decision to fund the bands at a meeting on Monday morning. The Arts Council have told us that the three bands failed to disclose in their applications – as required – their participation in the Brian Robinson parade, and that's bound to be high on the meeting agenda.
Meanwhile, North Belfast SDLP Councillor Carl Whyte has written to the Chair and Chief Executive of the Arts Council demanding an explanation for the payment of grants to the bands and asking whether there are any ways in which funding already paid can be recouped.
TRIBUTE BANDS: The list of participants in the Brian Robinson parade with the grant recipients underlined
Bands applying for funding are required to sign up to an Arts Council ‘Equality of Opportunity and Good Relations Commitment’. Groups applying for funding under the ‘Musical Instruments for Bands’ scheme will not be considered unless they sign up to a broad range of undertakings in relation to equality and community relations. Taking an active part in a parade for a UVF sectarian killer appears to be a clear breach of a number of the commitments required of applicants by the Arts Council. In order to qualify for the funding, for instance, all three bands had to tick a box indicating ‘Yes’ to a requirement to ‘promote good relations’ between ‘people of different religious belief.’
Among the application criteria is a requirement to provide the Arts Council with:
•‘A complete list of the band’s activities in the last 3 years.’
•‘A list of the band’s plans/activities in the coming year.’
But an Arts Council spokesperson told us: “None of the bands referenced the Robinson Parade in any of the mandatory enclosures.”
Three other bands which successfully applied for funding have taken part in previous Brian Robinson parades, but it’s thought the three bands which took part in the 2024 parade will come in for particular scrutiny as they made their application for funding in the same year as they joined the tribute to the UVF gunman.
The Arts Council press office told us: “We have been advised that the issue will be discussed at the next Arts Council of Northern Ireland Board meeting on Monday 17th February.”
The Arts Council says that in an attempt to weed out applicants not promoting good relations it will “check the content of newspapers, websites, including social networking sites, and other documents to establish that the organisation is acting within the ethos of good relations. Where evidence is found that an applicant is not acting in the interests of good relations, applications will be considered ineligible or, if evidence is found after an award is made, funding will be withdrawn.”
But while information about the bands taking part in the Brian Robinson parade is freely available on the Parades Commission website, in the case of the three bands it was missed in the Arts Council check. Footage of bands playing in the Brian Robinson march is also accessible on a number of band-related, open-access loyalist websites.
Payment for the instruments is made in two tranches, the Arts Council told us. The first and largest payment goes out ‘on receipt of a supplier’s invoice’, the second ‘upon proof of payment and delivery’. The first payment has already been made to the bands, but it’s expected the board will discuss at Monday’s meeting whether or not the second payment will be made as well as Cllr Whyte's request for the Board to look into recouping money already paid.
Cllr Whyte said: “The news that flute bands who play at UVF memorial parades are in direct receipt of public money from the Arts Council will come as a shock and surprise to the many arts groups struggling to survive at a time when they receive little or no direct funding.
“Arts Council rules require that groups who receive funding are required to promote good relations – taking part in a paramilitary parade clearly breaches this requirement. I have written to the Chair and Chief Executive of the Arts Council today asking for a full investigation as to how funding was provided and if the funds provided can be recouped and redistributed to bands and other music groups who do not take part in UVF or other paramilitary parades or events."
