ON A cold and stormy Saturday morning in Strabane, about 200 people are out protesting.

They have spread themselves out along the white line running up the middle of Main Street and they are waving large Irish tricolours.

They are objecting to their town competing for a UK Town of Culture award.

This would bring a grant of £3m to Strabane to stimulate cultural activity, music, theatre and the arts generally. They are not objecting to the money, but they are objecting to the label on the award: the UK reference.

Strabane is in the UK. It is a border town west of Derry, by the River Mourne, where it joins the Finn to form the Foyle. There is a view of the hills of Donegal. It is a depressed town, but it is surrounded by beautiful countryside.

It was also a troubled town during the violence of the IRA campaign between 1970 and 2005.

It is the only Irish town since the Second World War that has been bombed from the air. That was when the IRA dropped two milk churns full of explosives from a helicopter onto the police station.

So there is a legacy of militant republican culture here, though it is fractured.

Sinn Féin is happy with the UK Town of Culture bid. So, I suspect, are most people.

I asked one of the protesters what his objection was, and he complained that the........

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