THREE bands which took part in a UVF commemoration parade have been paid Arts Council funding in full despite withholding information about their participation in the hugely controversial event in their applications for money.
We reported in February that the three bands – Freeman Memorial Flute Band, Monkstown YCV Flute Band and Shankill Road Defenders Flute Band – had been awarded around £10,000 each for new instruments by the Arts Council, despite their participation in a parade paying tribute to UVF killer Brian Robinson. The UVF man shot dead innocent Catholic Paddy McKenna at Ardoyne shops in September 1989. The highly contentious annual tribute parade takes place in the Shankill/Woodvale area and music pumped out by the bands is heard in nearby Ardoyne, where memories of Paddy McKenna’s murder are still vivid and raw.
The money paid to the bands was paid in tranches and in February we asked the Arts Council if the funding not yet disbursed would still be paid. They told us that the decision to fund the bands was to be reviewed. It also emerged that the three bands had omitted required information about their participation in the parade on their funding application forms and that due diligence checks by the Arts Council on applying bands had failed to discover easily found information online about the bands having taken part in the Brian Robinson event.
The Arts Council review is now complete. No sanctions have been placed on the bands and all three have received every penny of their funding, despite their role in the parade and despite their failure to provide the required information – information which would almost certainly have seen them disqualified by the Arts Council’s good relations criteria.
The Arts Council told us this week: “The bands have confirmed their continuing commitment to good relations and grants have been allocated in line with their Letters of Offer.”
But questions are being asked about how the bands can confirm a “commitment to good relations” when participation in the Brian Robinson parade – and the withholding of information about it – was a blatant breach of the Arts Council’s good relations guidelines. And there are concerns about the precedent the decision has set for other bands considering participating in parade tributes to illegal organisations.
