Last-ditch effort to save stolen flag fails

A last-ditch attempt to save a flag stolen from Londonderry’s Protestant cathedral from being burned on a bonfire in the city failed, an independent councillor has said.

The replica crimson flag – flown to mark the 1689 siege of Derry – was taken from St Columb’s Cathedral in the run up to the bonfire in the Bogside, which was lit on Friday night.

Independent councillor Gary Donnelly said efforts to have the Apprentice Boys’ flag returned had failed and he believed it was burnt on the fire.

Apprentice Boys’ governor William Walker said he was “saddened” by the theft and it was “hard to believe that anyone would enter the grounds of a church to steal anything”.

Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) MLA Gary Middleton said the flag was of symbolical importance to the city’s unionist community.

It is flown twice annually during events relating to the city’s 1689 siege, marking the Relief of Derry in August and the shutting of the city’s gates in December.

“To go into a church premises and steal that is completely unacceptable,” he told BBC Radio Foyle.

“To hear it has been burnt is deeply upsetting for many people across our communities.”

Donnelly said some items had been handed back following mediation before the bonfires were lit but the attempt to save the replica crimson flag had come too late.

He said he believed it could have been saved if there had been “reciprocal gestures”.

However, he said he believed a US flag, stolen from the grounds of a school built on the site of a former US naval base, had been saved.

The flag, gifted to the school by members of the former US naval communications station, was taken from Foyle College on the Limavady Road in early July.

It had been gifted to the school by members of the former US Naval Communications Station.

Donnelly said it had been secured, was in a safe place and there was now “a process under way that that will be handed back”.

Bonfires on 15 August are traditional in some nationalist parts of Northern Ireland to mark the Feast of the Assumption, a Catholic holy day.

Some bonfires are also lit in August to commemorate the introduction of internment without trial of republican suspects during the Troubles, which was brought in by the UK government in 1971.