Alliance Party MLA promises a new law to tear down paramilitary flags once Stormont is restored
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Paula Bradshaw, representing South Belfast, announced the move today in an appearance on the Nolan Show.
It was put to her by Mr Nolan that there are already existing laws against glorification of terrorism, and the flag-flyers “are just ignoring the law – so what’s the point” of any new legislation.
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Hide AdMs Bradshaw said: “The police have always said that they would go in and support the Department for Infrastructure’s contractors to take them down if there was a request.
“This is the point – they’ve danced around these issues for too long and I think there’s a need for a piece of legislation that would put a firm onus on the owners of the lighting columns, ie, the Dept of Infrastructure, to be proactive and take them down, after the period has expired for them [the contractors] to go up.
"We’re not about banning flags or people commemorating their cultural heritage.
"We’re about ensuring that if flags go up they’re taken down, they’re not left to rot and be disrespected, they’re not used to intimidate people.
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Hide Ad"I’ve had two calls in the last week – one is a woman who lives in a mixed community, she’s in a mixed marriage, and she’s two UDA flags either side of her house.
"I went to the police. The police said ‘oh, we will try to negotiate to take them down’.
"That’s not good enough. We should not be negotiating with thugs who put these up with an intent to intimidate people.
"It’s long past time that we got over that.”
She also said that they department needed a “partner” of some kind to help remove flags – perhaps a local council, or the Parades Commission.
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Hide AdAfter the show she tweeted: "We need legislation that makes it clear whose responsibility it is to remove flags from our public infrastructure, which I will introduce when an Assembly is restored.
“It is long past time that we stopped negotiating with proscribed organisations.”
In very rough terms, the UVF/UDA/RHC murdered upwards of 850 people during the main phase of the Troubles (1969 to 2001, when the IRA began decommissioning its arms), while the OIRA/PIRA/INLA murdered somewhere in the region of 2,000 people.