Bloody Sunday Trust and Apprentice Boys meet over Derry parade

A group set up to help the families of the victims of Bloody Sunday has had a “cordial and constructive” first meeting with the Apprentice Boys since a controversial parade in Derry.

The Bloody Sunday Trust and the Apprentice Boys met on Wednesday.

It followed a parade on Saturday, August 10, in which a loyalist flute band wore emblems in support of Soldier F.

The ex-paratrooper is to face a court next for two murders and four attempted murders on Bloody Sunday in Derry 1972.

Thirteen people were shot dead when members of the Army’s Parachute Regiment opened fire on civil rights demonstrators in Derry.

Clyde Valley Flute Band from Larne, County Antrim, wore the regiment’s emblem and the letter F on its shirts during the Apprentice Boys parade this month.

The annual August parade in Derry is one of the North’s biggest and marks the anniversary of the ending of the Siege of Derry in August 1689.

The Apprentice Boys said after the parade that it recognised the potential upset caused to nationalists by the display of the Parachute Regiment emblem.

The Bloody Sunday Trust responded by saying that the wearing of the symbols was a “setback” to relations between unionists and nationalists in Derry.

They met on Wednesday for the first time since the controversy and in a joint statement afterwards they said they would “continue to work to restore relationships in the city”.

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