Eastwood sounding like a Drumcree Orangeman over Bloody Sunday walk

The PSNI has some leeway in what offences it chooses to pursue. That includes breaches of parading regulations – they were ignored before and during the Bobby Storey memorial parade, for example.

The leeway narrows considerably if police receive a complaint. It shrinks to almost nothing if the purpose of the complaint is to highlight inconsistent leeway.

That is the purpose, quite openly, of loyalist activist Jamie Bryson’s complaint about events on August 25 in Derry.

Bloody Sunday families, accompanied by SDLP leader Colum Eastwood among others, walked together to Bishop Street courthouse for a hearing on Solder F. Part of the short walk took place in the road and was therefore an unnotified procession. This fact may be petty but it is not in dispute. Police advised participants of it at the time.

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Bryson believes the application of parading law to anti-protocol protests has been no less petty.

“If the Public Processions Act 1998 is to be rigorously enforced against unionists/loyalists, then so too must the same rigour be applied to nationalists and others. We cannot continue with a two-tier system,” he said.

A mischievous loyalist could now begin organising unnotified processions for families bereaved by IRA atrocities for which nobody has been brought to justice. This could easily unravel the parading regulation that was so hard won and has delivered years of relative peace to our streets

The PSNI has a standard fall-back option when put on the spot in this manner: go through the motions of an investigation, send a file to the Public Prosecution Service, and let prosecutors drop the case as too petty or perverse. If the PPS feels put on the spot, it can always pass the buck to a judge.

The courts have previously ruled – in an appeal brought by Bryson, ironically – that key aims of the offence in the 1998 Act are “to minimise disruption to the life of the community and to enhance community relations”, neither of which would be advanced in this case by more than a token fine, assuming anyone was even convicted.

A responsible course of action for Eastwood would be to explain all this while going through the motions himself, making it clear he was attending his police interview because he would not be part of Bryson’s game and risk undermining parading regulation and the PSNI.

Instead, the Foyle MP went to Strand Road station “to tell them that this was a farce and it shouldn’t happen, and that’s the end of the matter” (this is not how police interviews work). He stomped out after being kept waiting for 20 minutes (this is how all public services work.) Then he gave an indignant press conference saying nobody would be attending interviews and challenging the PSNI to come to his house and arrest him.

Police are now in the invidious position of having to knock on the doors of Eastwood and Bloody Sunday families, causing nationalist outrage and giving dissident republicans another rallying cry against the PSNI; or of giving up and proving Bryson’s point.

The only reason the SDLP leader has given as to why he and the Bloody Sunday families should be exempt from parading law is that they have spent “52 years seeking justice”.

Prosecuting Troubles victims for walking to court undoubtedly appears grotesque but that is precisely why consistent application of the law should be defended.

A mischievous loyalist could now begin organising unnotified processions for families bereaved by IRA atrocities for which nobody has been brought to justice.

This could easily unravel the parading regulation that was so hard won and has delivered years of relative peace to our streets.

Unionists who supported that regulation in its challenging early years might feel Eastwood’s conduct to be a particular kick in the teeth. It is fair to suspect, as we head into an election year, that unionist opinion is not the SDLP’s priority.

My first reaction to the Foyle MP’s fulminations was to marvel at how much he sounded like a Drumcee Orangeman.

Eastwood was 14 when the Parades Commission was set up, so the parallel may have escaped him. Orangemen were enraged at being treated like minor offenders because they saw themselves as respectable pillars of the community who had done nothing wrong.

The police and the courts had to impress upon them that they were not too important to be above the law. How extraordinary that the leader of the SDLP might need a similar reminder.