Rally to celebrate the closure of Mountpottinger Barracks – Bígí Linn!

Northern nationalists have been brutalised, intimidated and suffered degradation throughout much of the last century.

No more so than the besieged people of the Short Strand, a nationalist ghetto subjected to poverty as a result of an intentional and sectarian campaign of underinvestment and marginalisation by the Stormont government.

The marginalised and deprived residents of the nationalist Short Strand did not only have to contend with hunger, and poverty, but also where routinely attacked by loyalist mobs, backed by the ‘protestant parliament.’



Many Short Strand residents would be beaten, arrested, and murdered in state backed loyalist pogroms, even in the early 2000’s when loyalists went on the rampage attacking the minority nationalist enclave in East Belfast, ably assisted by the PSNI.

Yet the people of the ‘Strand’ remained steadfast, resilient, and unbowed throughout. A proud people, who suffered much but endured and overcome all that was thrown at them.

An everlasting symbol of this oppression, brutality, deprivation and murder, was the Mountpottinger barracks, first built in 1902 to contain and keep a watchful eye on those ‘unruly fenians.’

From the beginning of the peace process, Sinn Féin and Ógra Shinn Féin have consistently called for the demilitarisation of this eyesore and oppressive fort, to be dismantled so that the land could be utilised for community use.

So it is a momentous occasion that Mountpottinger barracks is indeed being put beyond use, consigned to the bigoted dustbin of history from which its long-term resident the RUC has also been consigned too.

Let us come together with the Short Strand residents to celebrate the closing of this monstrosity and symbol of oppression on Monday 31st August at 7pm. It is going away you know.

Bígí Linn!