IN a quite extraordinary development, the Arts Council has again awarded substantial sums of money to loyalist bands which took part in a Shankill parade paying tribute to a UVF killer.
That fact in and of itself would be a remarkable and shocking development – but the truth is that it is not a development at all, because we’ve been here before.
Last December the Arts Council awarded £30,000 to three other bands which took part in the same event, the Brian Robinson Memorial Parade, which pays tribute to a UVF killer who in September 1989 murdered innocent Catholic Paddy McKenna at Ardoyne shops.
Earlier this year, we asked the Arts Council a series of questions about the decision last year to fund bands whose contribution to culture and arts is to swagger up and down the Shankill blasting out loyalist tunes in remembrance of a sectarian killer; tunes which can be heard loud and clear across the Crumlin Road by the family and friends of the man Brian Robinson murdered.
In response, the Arts Council told us it had begun a review of the decision to award funding to the three bands. Then the arts and culture body said that the three bands had failed to supply required information about their participation in the Robinson parade on their funding application forms. Then the Arts Council said that it had sought and received from all three bands an assurance of their future commitment to “good relations”, on the basis of which the funding in full was then paid out. The three bands then told us what they think of that commitment by attending the same UVF parade last month. Against that chaotic and unedifying background, the Arts Council has again gone where it shouldn’t have gone in the first place.
This paper is on record as supporting the right of communities to pay tribute to whoever they want to pay tribute to. We have been ill-served by the politics of condescension and superiority down through the years and the simple fact is that such commemorations are going to take place regardless of the disapproval of others. So as long as they are held where they are broadly welcomed or even tolerated, we say let them take place without judgment.
But just as controversial tributes and commemorations should not take place in areas where they provoke opposition and unrest, so those bands which take part in those commemorations should be made to understand that their actions cannot be condoned or enabled with public money. The aforementioned family and friends of Paddy McKenna feel enough pain as they listen annually to the thud of drums paying homage to his brutal killer. But the ultimate indignity is that as they head out to work on Monday morning they are doing so to pay taxes for newer, shinier and bigger drums. Drums with ‘Courtesy of the Arts Council’ written on the skins.
Participation in tributes to illegal organisations should be a bar to funding for bands. It’s a simple rule. One the Arts Council must adopt.
