POLICE are investigating a number of allegedly intimidating phone calls made to Highland councillors who had publicly criticised a Loyalist march in Inverness.
The event on Saturday, the second in two years and bigger than that of 2007, passed off without incident but left “a bad taste” for critics John Holden and John Finnie.
The pair each received calls prior to the parade from men with Irish accents keen to respond to the councillors’ public condemnation of Inverness hosting an Apprentice Boys of Derry march.
The council’s city committee, although seemingly universally opposed to the event, was unable to ban it because last year’s was a peaceful affair and it therefore enjoyed human rights protection under European law.
Mr Holden had earlier accused the organisers of “spreading a cancer” with their message. Referring to numerous calls in response, he said: “If they think their threats are going to scare me, I’m made of stronger stuff than that. I will not be intimidated by anyone.”
Irish-born Mr Holden welcomed a post-march offer from organiser Jim Brownlee to discuss their opposing views “at any time”.
Mr Brownlee, on his first visit to Inverness, said Saturday’s parade had been “carried by a degree of decency and dignity”.
He added: “The people here have enjoyed themselves, they’ve behaved themselves – contrary to certain predictions – and it’s nothing less than I expected.
“To use the word ‘cancer’ I think is a derogatory term and it’s borne within himself, not within this association.”
Mr Finnie, an ex-policeman who received a message on his answer machine, said: “People have very strong views about sectarian marches and someone from Northern Ireland chose to share his particular outlook on life by leaving a message on my council answer-phone.
“The individual purported to be a freelance journalist who, contrary to journalists I know, left a five-minute lecture on democracies, the rights of the reformed faith, my fundamentalist understanding of the right to free speech. I considered the content confused.”
Most of Saturday’s marchers came from Londonderry, central Scotland and England. Mr Brownlee believed 30 to 40 of the Inverness Campsie Club’s 50 members had attended. Campsie clubs got their name from Henry Campsie, the first to shed blood in defence of Derry Protestants when the Irish city was under siege from a Catholic-led army in 1688.