A Tricolour hangs in the refuse site at Springfield Road
A Union Flag hangs from a post at an amenity site on Agnes Street
A fresh flag row has erupted on the edge of 2015.
Again, it is a threat-riddled rumpus which Belfast City Council is finding impossible to ‘bin’.
Just over a year ago there were ructions over both Union Jacks and Tricolours being flown at council waste depots.
Two of the binyards at the centre of the bitter dispute were at Springfield Avenue in the lower Falls area of the city and Charlotte Street in loyalist Donegall Pass.
Union flags also went up at the Council’s Agnes Street depot on the Shankill.
And the dispute sparked at least one death threat to a Council worker at the Springfield Avenue yard. He got a sympathy card and a bullet in the post.
Now that particular depot is back in the spotlight.
Because the Sunday World has learnt that recently a Protestant employee of the council was appointed to manage the Springfield Avenue facility.
But just hours after he started there graffiti naming and threatening him appeared on a nearby gable wall.
We understand that the manager was removed from his new posting, for his own safety, by City Hall bosses after the threatening graffiti was reported to them.
Now there is fear, consternation and apprehension among many City Council waste management workers that the sectarian-tinged depot flags dispute may flare up again.
Workers at the various council depots where flags went up have consistently denied that they erected them, pointing to ‘outsiders’ intent on ‘tit-for-tat’ flag raising on the walls of council properties.
The whole dispute was a follow-on from the major Union flag protests sparked two years ago by the City Council vote not to fly the giant Union Jack from the dome of the City Hall throughout the year, but only on designated days.
That major protest, which resulted in vicious street rioting, has petered out, with only a token second anniversary rally outside the City Hall shortly before Christmas.
When the flags bust-up at council binyards was at its height in the past, veteran Alliance Councillor Mervyn Jones said that all the council’s properties should be neutral venues ‘and should not have any flags like that flying”.
Yesterday, when contacted by the Sunday World, Councillor Jones, a member of the Council’s Health and Environment Committee, said he ‘definitely’ condemned this latest report of intimidation at a council depot.
“Belfast Council appoints people purely on their ability to do the job,” he said.
“We strongly support this ethos. Thankfully, the workforce have continued to do their jobs throughout this problem.
“Obviously, we on the council would want them to continue to do that.”
An official report of the latest development at the Springfield Avenue depot which, again, has absolutely nothing to do with the employees who work there, is expected to land on the desks of the Environment Committee members in the next couple of days.