Signs of Change in Ireland
 
Citizen's committees are removing or renaming
British
imperialist figures and institutions in Ireland as
part of the
movement for empowerment and against British
colonialism.
 Streets surrounding
Belfast City Hall including May Street and
Donegall Square were renamed after three Irish
patriots, the
hunger strikers -- Joe McDonnell, Bobby Sands and
Kieran Doherty
-- who laid down their lives inside the H-blocks
of Long Kesh
internment camp in 1981 for the rights of
political prisoners and
the cause of Irish freedom. Another street honours
James
Connolly, the Communist leader at the centre of
the 1916 Rising
for independence. Queen's University was renamed
"Mairead Farrell
University Belfast" with signage erected across
its prominent
front gates after the former student and IRA
volunteer, killed in
Gibraltar on active service in 1988. The names
also serve as an
important reminder of the ruthless brutality of
the British
government in Ireland under the leadership of
then-prime minister
Margaret Thatcher.
For years there has been sharp criticism of the
way the
colonial period is remembered in the Republic of
Ireland. Some
statues have been removed officially and others
"unofficially."
One such case was the statue of Horatio Nelson,
built in the
centre of what was then Sackville Street (later
renamed O'Connell
Street) in Dublin, Ireland. Erected in 1809 when
Ireland was
forced to be part of the United Kingdom, it
survived for more
than 40 years until March 1966. It was frequently
pointed out
that a statue to the British admiral had no place
in Dublin after
Irish independence was achieved and signing of the
Anglo-Irish
Treaty in 1921 which divided the island. After
years of
inconclusive discussion the issue was dealt with
when the statue
was finally toppled with gelignite, as was that of
a large statue
of George II and his horse brought to ground at
Stephen's Green
in 1937. Nelson's remnants were later destroyed by
the Irish Army
but its head is preserved in a museum.
Recently campaigns have been underway in Ireland,
like that in
Cork, to remove the name Queen Victoria, known as
the "Famine
Queen," from street signs. That her main statue at
Leinster House
in Dublin survived until 1948 (26 years after the
creation of the
Free State) is something of a miracle. She was
monarch when
Ireland was beset by a famine organized by filthy
rich landowners
and millions starved or emigrated. After gathering
dust in
Ireland for some years, Victoria got a trip to
Sydney, Australia
to be "planted" outside the Queen Victoria
Building despite some
bids from Canadian buyers. Writing in the Irish
Times the
following month, Myles na gCopaleen (Brian
O'Nolan/Flann O'Brien)
was not overly bothered with its removal -- her
statutes were
more harmful than her statues, as he put it.
"Besides, look at it
this way," he wrote. "Time has given the mere
Irish their
revenge. The fact is that Victoria has turned
green. Of hue she
approaches our decent Irish letterbox. And it is
the price of
her."
In Belfast, the spokesperson for the current
committee
changing street and place signs in Belfast, Pól
Torbóid, said
their list of place names from across the city
featured
"prominent individuals responsible for historic
abuses in
Ireland."
"Belfast's streets, littered with the poverty of
its people,
its homeless and jobless; are also littered with
the names of
those whose attitude to Ireland was one of
subjugation, and who,
by force of arms, forced a political and economic
system upon our
people, which became the foundation for partition,
and for the
current economic struggles faced by the Irish
people, Torbóid
said.
"These street names, monuments to those who
delivered misery
across our nation in one form or another, also
serve as monuments
to the political and economic system that they
helped to build in
Ireland.
"These street names, the symbols of oppression,
hate and
servitude, must be stripped away. "They must be
replaced with the
names of those who sought to build a better
Ireland, the names of
those who fought against oppression, against hate
and against
servitude."
"They must be replaced with the names of heroes:
of normal
people. Not lords. Not kings or queens; but rather
those who
weren't the heirs to vast riches.
"Those whose only inheritance was that which they
tried to
carve out of a political system that railed
against them.
"It is our inheritance as Republicans to end the
oppression
immortalized in these street names and statues.
"It is our duty to end colonialism, to end the
normalization
of imperialism and, consequently, the political
and economic
system that maintains it."
May 15, 1937, a statue of King George II lies
destroyed
in Stephen's Green. Inset photo shows statue
as it previously
stood.
 
Statue of Nelson (left) in Dublin was blown off
its pillar in 1966;
statue of Queen Victoria (right) is removed from
Leinster House in
1948.
This article was published in
Volume 50 Number 23 - June 27, 2020
Article Link:
Signs of Change in Ireland
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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