More than 12 months after the DUP announced that they were going to create a “Unionist Academy” and a “British Cultural and Equality Unit” TUV Party Secretary Karen Boal has questioned what progress has been made.

Miss Boal said:

“Last Summer in a blaze of publicity the DUP published a document - which is still on the party’s website - entitled “DUP Delivering” in which they lauded the supposed advantages of Belfast Agreement devolution. The document also claimed that:

“The Democratic Unionist Party has created two new bodies to fight-back those who would attempt to erode our British identity. Both organisations will strengthen our position to resist those who wage an anti-British agenda”.

“At the time TUV highlighted the irony of the DUP arguing in one and the same document that the Union was stronger than ever, that they had derailed the Sinn Fein agenda and Unionist confidence was at an all-time high while at the same time there was a need for two new units to lead the fightback against the denuding of Ulster’s Britishness.

“Twelve months later another question arises – where are the Unionist Academy and British Cultural and Equality Unit? Back in June of last year Peter Robinson promised that they would be a key part of a “fight back” in the “culture war” against Republicans yet more than a year later the only mentions of either body are in press reports of the DUP’s launch of the document.

“The Unionist Academy was supposed to “help develop a greater understanding of Unionism”. It was to prepare “educational resources” for use in schools and youth groups. What “educational resources” has the Academy produced? Where can one access them? Are there plans to produce more in the future?

“The DUP promised us that the British Cultural and Equality Unit would “take the form of a legal team to advise the public on fighting the removal of British emblems from Northern Ireland society”. What legal experts staff this Unit? Who pays them? What battles against the dilution of Britishness have they been involved in in the past year?

“The leaflet outlining the roles which these wonderful new organisations would play was distributed at Twelfth demonstrations in 2008. Now, after the 2009 demonstrations, surely we are entitled to ask what they have accomplished – if, indeed, they exist.”