Orange lodge which opposed GAA presence at children’s sports camp hosts loyalist band which took part in UVF parade

Goldsprings True Defenders Flute Band took part in a parade to remember suspected UVF killer Trevor King earlier this month

A Co Down Orange lodge that raised “significant concerns” about the involvement of children in a summer sports camp hosts a loyalist band that recently took part in a parade to commemorate a suspected UVF killer.

Goldsprings of Comber LOL says residents in the north Down town raised “significant concerns regarding the proposed or perceived move of the GAA into the local community”.

The lodge issued a statement after it emerged children from East Belfast GAA were due to take part in a Sports Summer Camp at the grounds of North Down Cricket Club on Friday.

The intervention from the Orange lodge has resulted in the cross-community sporting event being cancelled by the organisers.

Goldsprings True Defenders Flute Band took part in a parade to remember suspected UVF killer Trevor King

It has now emerged that Goldsprings of Comber LOL has close links to Goldsprings True Defenders Flute Band.

In a recent social media post the band, which describes itself as ‘Blood and Thunder’, referred to taking part in an upcoming parade “along with our Lodge Goldsprings of Comber L.O.L 1037″.

A social media page linked to the band also states that it holds practice in “Comber Orange Hall” every week.

Earlier this month the loyalist band took part in a parade to remember UVF commander Trevor King on the Shankill Road in west Belfast.

King died three weeks after an INLA gun attack on a group of loyalists on the Shankill Road in June 1994.

Two other loyalists, David Hamilton, and suspected informer Colin Craig, also died from their injuries.

A former loyalist prisoner, King had been active in the UVF for more than 20 years when he was killed.

Described as a ‘lieutenant colonel’, the senior loyalist was charged in 1984 with the separate murders of Catholic men Gerard McClenahan and Anthony Molloy as part of the supergrass trials before being acquitted.

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