A PROTESTANT shopkeeper who went public about a boycott of his business has now been warned to leave the North. Mr Gordon Laverty's wife, Joanne, was phoned on Thursday night by a caller who said he had 72 hours to get out.
The threat was issued after Mr Laverty told local newspapers how the boycott had seriously damaged his baby clothes shop business in Portglenone, Co Antrim. His comments resulted in a brick being thrown through the window of his shop, and now he has been threatened.
The caller to the Laverty home in nearby Cullybackey said: "Mrs Laverty, we have told your husband to shut up, and he refused. Now he has 72 hours to leave the province."
Mr Laverty, who has two children, said he would defy the threat. "I'm not backing down. We are staying in Ulster and our shop will be open for business as usual. This is the country I was born in and brought up in and, I'm not going to leave because of these scum," he said.
Mr Laverty said the threats were not coming from ordinary Catholics in Portglenone. He believed Sinn Fein and the IRA were behind the threats.
Meanwhile, Mr Sean Farren, the SDLP spokesman on employment and the economy, criticised the boycott Campaign but said the extent of the boycott was being exaggerated. "The evidence would appear to suggest that boycotting is not as widespread as many are claiming," he said yesterday.
"The CBI and the Chamber of Commerce have made it clear that they have no evidence of widespread boycotting of businesses. It is now clear that there are some who have a vested interest in exaggerating the extent to which boycotts exist.
"Claims of a wholesale conspiracy against Protestant businesses are totally without foundation, while suggestions that Southern businesses are boycotting Protestant firms in the North are ludicrous in the extreme.
"Such claims, while lacking credibility, only serve to further deepen suspicion and divisions across both communities. Those, who are making such allegations betray their own political objectives when they issue their own threats to engage in boycotts," said Mr Farren.
