Thursday, September 04, 2008
The Lengths A Mayor- And Some Senior Council Officers- Will Go To….
The case of the UUP Mayor of Lisburn, the leading loyalist and the Stoneyford beacon continues to rumble following the revelation that Mayor Ronnie Crawford invited loyalist Mark Harbinson into his chamber to help fill in his application form for money for the controversial 11th Night event in the village (Andersonstown News story not yet online.) The Mayor also called on the services of two senior Lisburn Council officials (Director of Leisure Services, Robert McKnight and Good Relations Officer, David Mitchell) to assist the leading loyalist figure in completing the form, which secured £2,400 worth of funding from the Community Relations Council (CRC) for the beacon gathering in the village. Mayor Crawford then attached a personal letter of recommendation to the application and arranged for a courier to collect the application form from Council premises (the issue of whether ratepayer’s money was used for this courtesy has not yet been confirmed by the Council.)
The funding was subsequently withdrawn by the CRC when it was revealed that the Mayor had lit the beacon with a poster of the local Sinn Fein MLA on top of it. Of course, the village residents who days earlier had been intimidated from their homes by local loyalists remain far from impressed. The loyalist figure involved in organising the beacon gathering, Mark Harbinson, had just weeks earlier been arrested and questioned about a series of attacks and threats on another catholic family, who also fled the village.
Since the rendezvous in the Mayor’s parlour, Harbinson’s Pride of the Village flute band have applied to march on five evenings in the month of September, including in their proposed route the two mixed housing developments in the village which have been the setting for the on-going sectarian attacks in recent years, which has led to eight families fleeing the village as a consequence, but no prosecutions to date. The Parades Commission have taken firm action against the proposed September parades, something which has deeply angered long-time Harbinson associate, TUV councillor Cecil Calvert (pictured with the loyalis figure, the Mayor and two other ‘revellers’ at the 11th Night gathering above.)
Ironically, the latest information has come to light as a DUP and Sinn Fein-supported Council investigation into the role played by council staff in securing the funds continues as the former party’s ties with Mr. Harbinson have well and truly been cut following the latter’s well-publicised failure to become a party member some years ago. At that time, the resentful loyalist went on Radio Ulster’s Talkback programme to complain about how, as a party election worker, he had felt betrayed by the DUP, though he did thank the local representatives who supported his application.
The animosity between Harbinson and the DUP was confirmed at last year’s beacon gathering, when then DUP Mayor, James Tinsley, claimed he had been intimidated at the event by loyalists. Days prior to this year’s beacon burning, loyalists erected a large banner mocking the DUP councillor at the site of the beacon.
Chris Donnelly @ 09:14 PM
Mark Harbinson has been so anti UUP since the Belfast Agreement and now he is runing cap in hand to get funding from them rather strange????????
Posted by on Sep 04, 2008 @ 10:40 PMis that Harbinson in the rangers jacket?
Posted by on Sep 04, 2008 @ 10:46 PMstandard fair i would say t & J
Posted by on Sep 04, 2008 @ 10:48 PMFor some reason, the film Deliverance has entered my consciousness. Can Harbinson play the banjo as well as the flute?
What a shower of prats.Posted by on Sep 04, 2008 @ 11:14 PMChris Donnelly....at least they were only burning a poster....not Orange Halls or murdering folk like your mates in Sinn Fein / IRA
Posted by on Sep 04, 2008 @ 11:36 PMNo William they were burning GAA halls and murdering people, but oh yeah uniopnism doesn’t dooooooo that do they?
Posted by on Sep 04, 2008 @ 11:40 PMHarbinson’s Pride of the Village flute band have applied to march on five evenings in the month of September.
They’ll only get marching the first evening, 9 September. Next day we’ll all be obliterated when the Hadron Collider sucks us all, including the entire solar system, into a black hole. Good riddance I say. It’s hard to march out of an event horizon.
Posted by on Sep 04, 2008 @ 11:52 PMChris, just a couple of very minor points.
If a councillor requests a member of staff to assist a member of the public in filling out a form for grant assistance, they are pretty much duty-bound to do so.
Indeed, any member of the public doesn’t even have to go to the lengths of asking the Mayor or any other Councillor. They can pretty much walk in and ask for said assistance, regardless of the cause for which they are asking assistance.
The Good Relations officer being almost vilified in this piece for assisting a member of the public to fill out a form for Good Relations funding, does not really reflect fairly on his position. He’d be duty-bound to do so unless there was a conflict of interest to his post. Which in this case there was not.
Can we focus therefore on the politicians in this thread? It’s only fair. I find the “report demanded” by elected representatives frankly appalling. Equally the same scenario could have happened if the officer had refused to assist.
If there’s a flaw here, it’s in the chain of command. Councillors are supposed to issue instructions through the Chief Executive, which then goes down to director level and on then to the officer in question. Perhaps that happened.
The sooner there is a mandatory code of conduct for these reprobates, the better.
By the by, a Good Relations officer in a council is not a “senior” position.
Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 12:24 AMRaven does what you’ve just meticulously detailed explain the ear to ear grins on each of their faces? Im sure you’ll dig up an amendment somewhere in council legislation where it is demanded councillers must have such a hearty big grin on their ‘bakes’.
Or perhaps you may care to put down the double standards, do they not become heavy after a while?Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 12:38 AMYes, RepublicanStones, you’ve said it well. There’s too much of Raven’s disingenousness in Northern Ireland. If one wishes to find an officious way to excuse ugly sectarianist conduct, one usually can. Doesn’t make that conduct right or indeed honourable.
Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 01:03 AMThe dup need to house train some of their own
Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 09:04 AMFrom the Gentry to the Scum;
Unionism… sectarian to the core.
Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 09:08 AMCan someone explain to me:
a) why Cllr Crawford is still Mayor of Lisburn (as civic rep of all the people)? and
b) why Cllr Crawford is still a member of the Ulster Unionist Party ("For All of Us")?This is a big test for the UUP - if they are serious about removing the sectarian baggage with the Tory link, then they, well, need to remove the sectarian baggage…
Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 09:42 AMThis is the same Cllr Crawford who is a big fan of the Maze Stadium proposal...’shared future’ and all that!
lol! what a prick.Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 09:55 AM...and there was me thinking that this was an innocent happy photograph of an inaugural meeting of a new Weight Watchers’ group.
Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 09:55 AMI focused on the comment made about the Council officer. I don’t think that the following....
“Can we focus therefore on the politicians in this thread? It’s only fair. I find the “report demanded” by elected representatives frankly appalling.”
“The sooner there is a mandatory code of conduct for these reprobates, the better.”
...disingenuous, and I think that hammering a Council officer does nothing but take the focus off the real issue. My post does not “explain the ear to ear grins”. Nor did it set out to.
Ultimately, the “report” demanded will show that an elected official requested assistance from Council officers, and it was duly given.
Perhaps y’all would be happier, if instead of addressing the points I did, join in the happy bleat of “I condemn”...?
Seems to be the increasingly instant response on threads like this.
Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 10:11 AMThe man to Crawford’s left looks amazingly like another sitting UUP Councillor (Alderman, actually) and ex-MLA from Lisburn.
Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 10:39 AMRegretfully the UUP will have to stop maverick coucillors behaving in this deplorable way. Both the Brush and Mayor Biscuit have used Harbison to further their political advancement by various means amongst others poster erection at election time. The real question that requires an answer is whether Harbison was or is a member of the UUP? This type of political behaviour cannot be tolerated in the UUP and within its new rules disciplinary action should be instituted by the UUP officer team who should carry out a full investigation.The days have long gone when Unionist politicians hid under the veneer of qualification or so called justification that paramilitaries and their accolytes are SonsofaGun but they are then given lattitude as they are our SonsofaGun. It will no longer wash with the electorate. The hopefully proposed Conservative and Ulster Unionist party will not tolerate such bigotted and openly sectarian acts of provocation.
There is no doubt that voluntary house training that other parties of all shades should enter into. If they continue within their own insular outdated systems of single issue and YAABOO politics will in the long and hopefully short term lose them electoral support from all thinking and right minded voters.
However this should not concern a modern secular Conservative and Ulster Unionist party. People like these Jekyll and Hyde personalities should go and find their true and real political homes elsewhere.Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 10:50 AMRory
...and there was me thinking that this was an innocent happy photograph of an inaugural meeting of a new Weight Watchers’ group
You made me splutter into my coffee mug with this one! Fabulous. And I’m no lissom lass meself.
Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 11:28 AMStoneyford - what a filthy working class shite hole,full of horrible little sectarian Prole thugs.
Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 12:08 PM“Harbinson’s Pride of the Village flute band have applied to march on five evenings in the month of September.”
But the Parades Commission has placed such a heavy restriction on the parade that it is as close as it can come to being banned. Only allowed to march 100 metres, no music allowed, not allowed through the village and it all has been restructed to 15 mins.
Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 12:54 PMStoneyford - what a filthy working class shite hole,full of horrible little sectarian Prole thugs.
No it isn’t. It’s a nice wee town, that plenty of upwardly mobile people from West Belfast would like to move to. Unfortunately certain elements don’t like this.
Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 02:11 PMwhy are people surprised at this should we not be more concerned about what mark “british agent” harbinson gets away with when involved in guns and intimidation?? we should concentate on why any democratic politician would allign themselves to a paid british agent or does that reason answer my question!!
Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 04:39 PMWell said gareth.
BTW, what are holding proudly aloft in the photo? Anybody know? Is it the election poster they subsequently burned of Paul Butler?
LOL - the code word is ‘friends’. How apt!Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 05:38 PMChris,
A quote from our First Minister, Mr Robinson, on his talks with the leaderships of the UDA and the UVF:“All participants in these discussions acknowledged that the priority is to strengthen political stability, create economic and social prosperity and improve the wellbeing of the unionist and loyalist community” (my emphasis).
It’s still their wee country after all. So much for an inclusive, democratic, modern Northern Ireland. It seems that the rest of us are still interlopers. They have learned nothing.
Posted by on Sep 06, 2008 @ 01:07 AM
