The husband of Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman Nuala O'Loan had to be given a police escort from a meeting disrupted by loyalist demonstrators last night.
Mr Declan O'Loan, an SDLP Councillor in Ballymena, Co Antrim, and chairman of the local District Policing Partnership, was jeered by a group of around 50 protesters as he tried to start the DPP meeting in a village hall in Clough.
Despite his efforts three times to get the meeting under way, he was shouted down by protesters singing God Save the Queenand waving Union flags.
Eventually after suffering sectarian abuse, jeering and stamping feet, he gave in and wound up the meeting. Mr O'Loan has to be given a police escort from the village hall.
The protest is understood to have been in response to comments he made about the policing of nationalist demonstrators at a loyalist parade in Ballymena last weekend.
Billy McCaughey from the Progressive Unionist Party, the group which speaks politically for the paramilitary UVF, said Mr O'Loan was not an acceptable chairman as far as unionism was concerned. "Our intention was to ensure he didn't chair the meeting and we are happy with the outcome," he said.
Mr O'Loan said after the aborted meeting that it was "most regrettable" that it had been forced to be cancelled. "It is fundamental to the operation of the DPP that political representatives hold the chair in rotation and each chair deserves to have the support of the whole community in carrying out their function."