THE Orange Order have insisted they won’t back down over plans to walk through Glasgow on the first Saturday of July – despite it clashing with Scotland’s biggest music festival.

TRNSMT, the three-day festival in Glasgow Green, was a huge success this year, drawing more than 100,000 music fans to the city, and organisers have already booked in and started selling tickets for July 6-8.

However, the first weekend in July is traditionally the annual County Grand Orange Order Parade, when members from all over the country flock to the city to celebrate Prince William of Orange’s victory over King James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.

The march starts off in the city centre and ends up in Glasgow Green.

Robert McLean, executive officer for the Grand Orange Lodge in Scotland, said: “The march will definitely go ahead.

“Why should we change now because a pop festival has just appeared? Glasgow Green’s a public space.

“The council agreed years ago that they would always accommodate a march on the first Saturday of July.

“I’m sure a solution will be found.”

A fellow Lodge member said that they would not “cave in”.

He added: “It’s a problem for the city council to sort out.

“Police Scotland won’t be able to cope with the two events at the same time, we’ve been told, so something is going to have to give.”

Council bosses, who relish the city’s position as a Unesco city of music, would likely rather have TRNSMT take place, which passed with relatively little trouble considering the numbers.

Earlier this year the local authority were forced to say they would consider banning future Orange Order marches after footage of revellers showed them appearing to sing the anti-Irish “Famine Song”.

The lyrics accuse Irish Catholics of being paedophiles and call for them to “go home” because the “famine is over”.

In 2009, appeal court judges ruled that the song was racist, with the chorus displaying “malice and ill-will towards people of Irish descent living in Scotland”.

A spokesman for Glasgow City Council said at the time: “The European Convention on Human Rights enshrines the rights to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression.

“However, these rights are not absolute. They must be balanced by the responsibility to ensure the rights of others are not infringed.”

TRNSMT was held in Glasgow Green between July 7 and 9 this year, a week after the Orange Order’s march.

It was a major success, with around 100,000 people watching Biffy Clyro, Radiohead, Kasabian, The View, Belle and Sebastian, among

others.

At the time, Geoff Ellis, the DF Concerts boss, said the festival had made a positive impact on the city’s economy.

“As TRNSMT becomes a firm favourite in the festival calendar, people will look back on this first year with the knowledge that they supported it and helped it grow right from the beginning.

“I think the economic impact for the city has been in excess of £10 million, based on previous studies that we’ve done.”

Commenting on the clash, a spokesperson for DF said: “We have no comment to make on TRNSMT 2018 at this stage, our next announcement will be the line up, but it’s obviously too early for that yet.”