'Overwhelming': Major parade to take place in Newry marking 50 years in existence for band - and honouring an RUC man murdered in 1994

Loyal Sons of Benagh’s parade has had conditions imposed – something which has happened regularly since the parade began in 2003.

These bar the marchers from Sugar Island and Trevors Hill in the city centre on the grounds that it would risk disorder (partly due to the many pubs in the area).

In all there are 58 bands listed on the 11/1, plus a very specific 2,630 participants, though Gareth Wharton – a veteran member of the band – says on the night it could be closer to 40 bands.

Marchers on Friday will also unfurl a new trophy this year in memory of one of the band's founding members – Alan Wharton – for best overall band on the night.

He is a relative of Gareth, who says that almost all his family members have some involvement with the 70-strong band, 21 of whom belong to the rural lodge of LOL302 in Benagh, to the east of the city.

Now aged 48, he was just 13 when he joined 35 years ago.

He told the News Letter he is “overwhelmed” about the pending parade.

"It’s grown massively,” he said. “I’ve paraded with the band in good times and in bad times, and at the moment it’s in a great place.”

It is preparing for a trip to the Somme in June, in memory of 19-year-old private Henry Rainey, who fought there and never returned.

Today he is remembered on the band’s bass drum.

50th anniversary merchandise will be for sale at the starting and finishing points of the parade, which will begin at 7.30pm at Newry Hockey Club and ends at RL Mitchel Orange Hall.

On the way, the parade will stop and lay a wreath at Newry PSNI station in remembrance of Constable Gregory Pollock.

Constable Pollock was a 23-year-old Protestant from the townland of Shinn, west of Rathfriland in south Down, who was a member of Benagh Orange Lodge.

He was killed by an IRA mortar bomb which hit his patrol in Londonderry on April 20, 1994.The book Lost Lives says Constable Pollock's killers were believed to have detonated the device from the grounds of a chapel.

Constable Pollock's father had been blown up in the IRA's bombing of Newry customs office in 1972, but survived (it killed nine people: three IRA men and six civilians, five of them Catholic).

It is far from the only parade this weekend:

FRIDAY:

• Edenmore Flute Band along with as many as 30 other bands will be parading in the centre and south-west of the town of Limavady from 8.30pm.

SATURDAY:

• At Randalstown at 7pm, a large parade is taking place involving perhaps 20 bands. It begins with a march by Randalstown Sons Of Ulster only at 7pm from Randalstown Memorial Orange Hall, before joining up with the other bands from the bridge on Shanes Street, before returning to the hall.

• In Annalong, the Single Star Flute Band will begin its march at 7pm alone, before the remaining 30-or-so bands join in the main parade from Marine Park.

• Meanwhile the Enniskillen Fusiliers Flute Band at on the march in their hometown from 8.45pm, alongside about 19 other bands from the Shore Road car park to the Diamond and back.

• Ballynanny RBP 163 will be on a short parade from noon in Ballygawley.

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