‘Bobby Sands Street’ – Belfast City Centre Streets renamed as part of anti-colonial campaign.
Street signs honouring deceased Republican martyrs including the late Máire Drumm, IRA Hungerstriker Bobby Sands and 1916 Rising leader James Connolly were erected across Belfast yesterday (22nd June) as part of a campaign to highlight British State colonialism, and historic figures associated with it, in Ireland.
Lasair Dhearg spokesperson Pól Torbóid said that they had “compiled a list of place names from across the city” that they say featured “prominent individuals responsible for historic abuses in Ireland”.
Cromwell Road had been renamed after United Irishman Henry Joy McCracken and The Queen’s University of Belfast was renamed ‘Mairéad Farrell University Belfast’ with signage erected across its prominent front gates. Mairéad, a former student at the University, was an IRA Volunteer killed in Gibraltar on active service in 1988.
Joe McDonnell, Bobby Sands and Kieran Doherty, three Belfast IRA members who died in Long Kesh jail on hunger strike in 1981 had their names placed high on the streets surrounding Belfast City Hall; replacing the names of prominent members of the English ruling class on May Street and Donegall Square.
Pól said that, “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.”
“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 immortalised in these street names and statues. It is our duty to end colonialism, to end the normalisation of imperialism and, consequently, the political and economic system that maintains it.”
ENDS
Full list of street names and what they’ve been changed to:
Balfour Avenue – Wolfe Tone Avenue
Cromwell Road – Henry Joy Road
Ireton Street – William Drennan Street
Pretoria Street – Thomas McCabe Street
Kings Bridge – Brian Boru Bridge
Norbury Street – Robert Emmett Street
Norfolk Drive – Máire Drumm Street
Great Victoria Street – Winifred Carney Street
Albert Street – James Connolly Street
Donegall Square South – Bobby Sands Street
May Street – Joe McDonnell Street
Carlisle Circus – Mary Ann McCracken Circus
Donegall Square North – Kieran Doherty Street
Cavendish Street – The Invincibles Street
The Queen’s University of Belfast – Mairéad Farrell University Belfast
