4 March 1999 Edition

Resize: A A A Print

Orange Order honours Shankill Butcher

by Dan O'Neill

The family of Con Neeson, murdered at the hands of the Shankill Butchers has reacted angrily to the news that a Shankill Road Orange Lodge has honoured one of the gang Bobby `Basher' Bates.

The Old Boyne Island Heroes have commemorated the killer on a bannerette with the words `In fond memory of our fallen brethren'.

Bates, a former lodge member was killed in June 1997 in an apparent loyalist revenge attack on the Upper Woodvale Road. He was a ringleader of the Shankill Butchers who used knives and meat cleavers to murder 19 Catholics in the mid 70's.

Charlie Neeson, whose brother Con was murdered at the hands of the `Butchers' said he was disgusted that the Lodge could carry the banner during marches. He said, ``I can't understand their logic and their talk about Christianity. I would like someone to give me an explanation about this.

``They are really insulting. They are really provocative. It hurts the memory of those that the Butchers' killed.Something should be done about this. The `Butchers' killed innocent people in a way animals wouldn't even be treated.''

The Shankill Road lodge has named four other dead UVF men on the banner who were also members of the Orange Lodge. They include a UVF man blown up by his own bomb, and murdered UVF commander John Bingham.

It has also been revealed that the man who murdered 16-year-old Catholic schoolboy James Morgan is still a member of the Orange Order.

Norman Coopey murdered the teenager with a hammer in July 1996 after offering him a lift in his car. Coopey and an accomplice then set fire to the boy's body before dumping it in a pit full of animal carcasses in a field at Clough, Co. Down, near the boy's home in Annesborough, outside Castlewellan.

The Orange Order has also refused to suspend Richard Monteith, a well known solicitor. Monteith was found guilty of blocking a road with a tree during the Drumcree stand-off but was elected deputy district master of Lurgan only weeks after the conviction.

An Phoblacht
44 Parnell Sq.
Dublin 1
Ireland