HC Deb 21 July 1884 vol 290 c1741
LORD ARTHUR HILL

asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether his attention has been drawn to a paragraph which appeared in The Belfast News Letter of the 14th July, describing the conduct of the police at Glenarm (county Antrim), on the 12th July, in pulling down an Orange arch; and, under whose orders the police were acting when they destroyed the arch alluded to in the newspaper paragraph?

MR. SEXTON

asked whether the Catholics were not a majority in the place referred to; whether, in order to insult the Catholics, the Orangemen hung the arch on the house of the parish priest?

MR. TREVELYAN,

in reply, said, he had not seen the newspaper report referred to; but he had ascertained that the arch was put up against the wishes of the persons to whose houses it was attached, and that on a former occasion a serious disturbance arose in consequence of an arch having been erected in the same place. The District Inspector and a magistrate whom he consulted feared that a riot would occur if the opposite party interfered with it, and the police were therefore directed to take it down, which they did quietly and without causing any local excitement.

MR. SEXTON

Was it a fact that the arch was suspended at the house of the parish priest?

MR. TREVELYAN

I do not know.

MR. SEXTON

Well, I know.