Suspension ‘over BBC interview’
A senior Orangeman has said he has been suspended from the Grand Lodge over an interview he gave to the BBC.
However, Colin Shilliday, who said he was hurt by the move, revealed he had already taken the decision to resign.
In his interview, he criticised the reaction of senior orange leaders to the violence following last year’s controversial Whiterock parade.
Mr Shilliday has been a member of the Orange Order for more than 40 years and is a former Grand Lodge treasurer.
However, said he had been growing increasingly disenchanted and in April gave an interview to the BBC in which he said he believed Grand Master Robert Saulters was “completely out of his depth”.
A few days later, Mr Shilliday wrote to his local lodge in County Down informing them he was resigning from the order.
He received no reply, but now he has been told unofficially that at a meeting of the Grand Lodge in Derry on Wednesday, he was suspended.
“I was merely articulating what many other people in public life were saying and what many grassroots Orangemen were saying to me,” Mr Shilliday said on Thursday.
“Many at a senior level within the order were saying those very same things.”
He added: “I just felt that over the past 10 years or so, I really had been living in hope that things were going to get better and that there would be some sort of realignment of the order back to its core principles and the order I joined as a young boy.”
The Orange Order has refused to comment.
