Violence marks anniversary

Press, 12 August 1985, Page 6

Violence marks anniversary

NZPA-AP Londonderry

Catholic youths went on a rampage in Londonderry yesterday and 15,000 Protestants marched through the city in the annual commemoration of a Protestant victory over Catholics 296 years ago. Violence flared before and after the members of the Apprentice Boys Organisation held their parade. Youths in the Catholic Bogside district hurled stones and bottles in earlymorning riots. Eight police

officers were wounded, the authorities said. Tensions were increased by the brief appearance on Saturday of Martin Galvin, an American sympathiser of the Irish Republican Army, at a funeral in Londonderry for a guerrilla killed on Tuesday when his homemade grenade exploded in his face.

Mr Galvin, publicity director of the New Yorkbased Irish Northern Aid Committee, or Noraid, helped carry the coffin for about five minutes and then disappeared into the crowd.

He defied the British exclusion order banning him from Northern Ireland, but the police made no effort to sieze him.

His presence at an I.R.A. rally in Belfast in August last year led to a charge by the police firing plastic bullets that killed one man and wounded 20 people. He also escaped from them then.

Many of the Apprentice Boys marchers wore orange sashes in memory of William of Orange, the King who brought Ulster under Protestant rule in 1690.

Thousands lined the streets to watch the parade, which commemorates the actions of 13 boys who closed the city gates to stop the Catholic Army of King James II from entering in 1689.

Rioting after an Apprentice Boys march in 1969 led to the deployment of British troops in the province and set the stage for the sectarian and political violence that has claimed at least 2400 lives.

The parade went off peacefully, but rioting broke but shortly after the march

ended at the city walls overlooking the Bogside district.

The police had arrested five people during the earlymorning riots. During the afternoon violence British troops in armoured personnel carriers entered Bogside after some 100 youths had erected wood-and-brick barricades and hurled stones and bricks at the police. Officials said that the soldiers had fired about a dozen plastic bullets to break up crowds, but no-one was reported injured.