Posters call for loyalist protest suspension ‘as a mark of respect to the Queen’

The posters say: “We would ask all PUL protests are postponed as a mark of respect to the Queen and the Royal Family.

“The continued opposition to the NI Protocol and all the other injustices against the PUL community will take place again after the period of mourning.”

The emergence of the posters ensured a planned protest in Antrim on Friday evening did not go ahead as had been planned.

The same posters are on display throughout Belfast, Co Antrim and other areas in NI where protests were planned.

When the News Letter asked to speak to the author of the posters, a spokesman said : “It was put together by a of Shankill Ex prisoner’s who bought and erected them in an attempt to ease tensions and bring the trouble to an end”.

The spokesman added that the group were not willing to speak out as “the fact it worked is enough for them”.

Prince Philip died at Windsor Castle on Friday, aged 99.

A period of national mourning will end after 17 April, when Prince Philip’s funeral takes place at Windsor Castle’s St George’s Chapel.

A national minute’s silence will be held to coincide with the start of the service at 3pm.

The Queen has said private prayers for her beloved Duke of Edinburgh as she attended a Sunday mass in Windsor Castle.

The monarch, who is head of the Church of England, has a deep Christian faith and will be drawing on this in her time of grief.

The Queen is understood not to have attended the worship in the private chapel, where the duke’s coffin remains at rest, draped in his personal standard and adorned with a wreath of flowers.

The mass was also not in St George’s Chapel, which is currently closed and is where Philip’s funeral will take place on Saturday.

Philip and the monarch’s second son the Duke of York has told of the depth of his mother’s grief, saying she described the death of her husband of 73 years as “having left a huge void in her life”.