Monday, June 29, 2009

Sinn Féin Protest British Armed Forces Day in Craigavon

Local Sinn Féin members held a protest against the marking of British Armed Forces day at Craigavon Civic Centre, this past Saturday. The protest comes after the recent decision by unionist members of Council, to fly the specially commissioned flag. The issue has been contentious for sometime and is currently under investigation by the Equality Commission.

Sinn Féin Councillor Johnny McGibbon commented,

“It is worth noting that the decision to fly this flag was taken without any equality or legal advice. The UUP and DUP decided to use the opportunity to mark out territory and send a signal to the nationalist/republican community that they are not welcome in Craigavon Civic Centre. The ripple effect of this type of poor leadership can be seen in Lurgan and Portadown town centres, where the erection of illegal bunting and flags has made the town centre economically barren.”


Spokesperson for Ógra Shinn Féin, who helped organise the protest, Tiarna McCorry said,

“The nationalist experience of the recent conflict is part of our history and cannot be dismissed. Equality in civic and public spaces is the right of all sections of the community. Today’s protest was organised to highlight our dissatisfaction for this triumphalist display, and to publicly show our support for the families and victims of state violence and collusion.”

1 comment:

Tom Shelley said...

I'm actually open-minded about whether or not I should be taking up space with this sort of thing, but I have raised my standards for when I'm going to do this and some of my songs (poems) are really good. One of my best, Danny Morrison had me do a comment on a page of the Bobby Sands Trust web-site with a link the post containing that song (of course, the other hunger-strike song I showed him he didn't respond, but it wasn't as good as the first and was based on lyrics that Ice-T wrote, so he might not be into that kind of thing).

For an explanation of what songs/poems I'm talking about, see http://devlin-mcaliskey.blogspot.com/2009/01/just-call-me-billy-bragg.html

The one that is relevant to this post is really good. It's called "Surf Fermanagh" based on a 1980s American progressive song called "Surf Nicaragua." My version is from the perspective of an anti-occupation Brit. It's the second to last of seven songs at http://devlin-mcaliskey.blogspot.com/2009/02/even-more-lyrics.html

Tom