Great day marred by stone throwers

The Brethren had travelled en masse to the annual Twelfth celebrations, this year held in Macosquin, and had enjoyed an entirely incident-free day, but the return journey was marred by two separate incidents of stonethrowing and spitting.

The first incident took place while Brethren from the City Grand Orange Lodge were travelling through Greysteel on the return journey to the City.

“There were 53 people on the bus going home and in truth it was fortunate there was not a fatality, as the bus came under attack from stonethrowers as we passed through Greysteel. Then when we were parading back to Society Street via Ferryquay Street one of the members of LOL 1912 was spat on. He was the banner carrier this year and was unabel tot get out of the way of hecklers who had gathered on the footpath outide the Richmond Centre,” said the spokesman for the City Grand Orange Lodge, Victor Wray.

“We have discussed these incidents internally with the City Grand Officers and we will be taking them up with the PSNI as a matter of urgency. We particularly want to discuss the matter of deploying our parade stewards more effectively so that Brethren are not subjected to this type of abuse,” he said.

“That said, we had a great day, from we left the city in the morning, and we thoroughly enjoyed the family day at Coleraine, hosted Macosquin district. We were well treated by our Coleraine hosts, with food in the demonstration field for the religious service and the hospitality and fellowship. We want to thank everyone involved for arranging a fantastic demonstration and family day out,” Mr Wray said.