Belfast Council this week saw bitter exchanges during a discussion over draft proposals to change city centre by-laws covering street preachers, performers and protestors.
At the council’s full meeting on Tuesday, March 1, elected members took part in a tense and impassioned debate over a draft plan by the council to change by-laws concerning noise and amplification used by groups and performers in the city centre.
The chamber agreed to a Sinn Fein proposal to forward the first draft proposal, which has not yet been made public, to the Stormont department for consultation. A proposal by People Before Profit to return the draft back to a council committee, supported by the DUP, failed to pass.
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Significant issues have been raised in recent years around the activities of buskers, preachers and various interest groups in the city centre, primarily within the retail core.
Those activities include the use of amplification equipment, the display of offensive images, and it has been alleged some groups have used hate speech, including homophobic messaging.
It is believed the draft proposal involves requirement for a licence for any individual or group using amplification in the city centre, with fines up to £500 for those failing to comply.
DUP Councillor Dean McCullough defended the street preachers. He told the chamber: “This typifies this council, which wants to act as the speech police. We already have domestic law in place that deals exactly with what you are talking about.”
He said: “If there is hate speech, report that to the PSNI, and let them do their job and investigate it. In terms of hate speech, I have heard hate speech directed at preachers. I have seen video footage of preachers having food and drinks thrown at them, being physically assaulted in the street.
“I keep hearing this reference to hate speech, and to hate preachers. I don’t hear that. Anytime I am in the city centre, I don’t hear that, it is not my experience. My experience is preachers who preach hope, and want to offer hope to everybody, regardless of where they come from.
“I will commend those who are constantly being demonised. They are the same people who are out at nights, giving their time freely, voluntarily, helping the homeless, helping those trapped by addiction, who need that help and counsel.”
He added: “It is absolutely their human right to preach the word of God from the Bible, every single divinely inspired word. It is absolutely the human right for those to lobby for life, to fight for the right to life of unborn babies.
“I will say to councillors, you have absolutely no right to be offended. There are many many things that offend different people. If we are getting into legislation for offence, then where do we stop?”
Last month Belfast city centre shop managers told a council committee workers were being traumatised by street preachers with amplifiers and were leaving their jobs.
They made a call for councillors to change local by-laws, so that amplification would be forbidden on city centre streets. 40 business impact statements from businesses affected have been forwarded to the council.
SDLP Councillor Séamas de Faoite told the council: “I am frightened about what is happening to young people in our city centre, what they are being subjected to, and what they have to listen to. It is far from hope - it is hate.
“The sad reality is the existing hate speech legislation in this jurisdiction does not cover enough of these incidents to be able to allow the police to prosecute them appropriately.
“I have submitted well over an hour’s worth of video evidence to the PSNI in relation to some of the behaviour of preachers. Some of the things they have said to me personally, because I am gay, some of the things they have said to other people who have challenged them on their language outside this building. And how they have behaved towards children.”
He said that on one occasion councillors had to intervene to stop young people from confronting preachers “who told them they were going to hell.”
He said: “That is not a welcome space for this city. We have debated this issue, the prospect of by-laws, and the existing legislation around hate speech for so long now, that this keeps bouncing back and forward from full council and committee.
“Meanwhile, the behaviour that demonises young people in this city, that demonises LGBT people, that demonises women and couples that have been through the pain of a miscarriage, continues to go on unchallenged.
"And the agencies pass the parcel - whether it is the council or the PSNI or the prosecution service, or the departments involved - nobody wants to take responsibility for this issue.
“I am appealing to this council to stop putting people in the position where they have to listen to this torrent of abuse as they go about their daily lives, as they go to work, or school, or university.”
The draft by-laws proposals will now go to the Department for Communities for “informal consultation” before returning to the council for further discussion on potential amendments, in advance of the by-laws being issued for wider public consultation.
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