Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Bonfire builders in vow to go ‘bigger and better’
Court order pyre ‘will be moving to new location’
A CONTROVERSIAL bonfire will change location and be “bigger and better” next year, builders have vowed.
The Bloomfield Walkway site in East Belfast will be used as a kids’ pyre, with the main one at a different site, it has been claimed.
A Facebook page linked to the bonfire said it will move to the King George Playing Fields, a Belfast City Council operated pitch.
The Walkway Bonfire Bloomfield East Belfast thanked “everyone for the help and support”.
The site was subject to controversy this year after Belfast City Council secured a High Court injunction against the Department for Infrastucture.
Justice Keenan ruled it could be no more than three metres high. On July 11, a large police presence was in East Belfast as masked contractors removed materials from the bonfire site.
The bonfire had been set alight before they arrived, with the builders saying online they had lit it rather than let it be removed.
Trouble followed in East Belfast on the Eleventh night. Earlier that evening police had warned that they believed the East Belfast UVF planned to orchestrate disorder in the area.
Cars were set alight and a security alert forced Belfast City Airport into lockdown.
Assistant Chief
YESTERDAY
Constable Alan Todd said the following day: “The disorder we have seen has been caused by a small minority of people who have no regard for their communities.
“No one wants to see disruption and disorder and the people behind these incidents need to ask themselves just what they are achieving.”
A spokesman from the bonfire said last night: “We’ll be moving next year but there will still be a bonfire on the walkway as we’ve had the bonfire there for many years.
“But as a result of this year with so many police moving in on us we just couldn’t take a chance to have it ruined again.”