...the "Peace" Wall "defending" the Fountain Estate.
An estimated 97 per cent of Protestant residents have left the city-side of the River Foyle during the last thirty years, leaving Londonderry the most religiously segregated city in Western Europe.
A "debate" has been "raging" on Slugger O’Toole about the topic over the last few days, but given its overwhelmingly Irish nationalist commentariat, "the truth" as delivered from the US, Australia, the Republic, or even Belfast hasn’t really been that illuminating or sympathetic to those who’ve left homes and areas that their families had lived in for generations.
Hopefully that will be remedied by this programme(BBC NI,Wednesday 9th January, 10.40pm) when we will be hearing from those able to give first-hand accounts (ie your actual ex-"Derry" Prods) about why this sad exodus took place. There will also be contributions from DUP MP Gregory Campbell, journalist, civil rights activist Eamonn McCann, Church of Ireland Bishop James Mehaffey, former UUP Mayor of Derry Jack Allen and former SDLP Mayor John Tierney.
Unfortunately, the man, who may have the best inkling why so many protestants no longer felt safe in the city of their birth, the Commander-in-Chief of the republican death squads which roamed the streets of the city for over two decades, picking off their various “military” and “civilian” targets... must have been unavailable for comment.
Full-diary connected with his new promotion. Probably.
2 comments:
Looking forward to seeing the programme and hearing what people who generally don't get heard have to say, but we should be a bit sceptical about people's own stories on their pasts. Which is not to deny that violence simply must have had a role in the story of Derry's, er, demographic changes.
There's a famous, probably apocryphal, sociology story of Irish people being interview as they got off the boat at Ellis Island. When asked why they came they talked about jobs and opportunity. But if Irish people who were in the US twenty years were asked why they came they tended to announce that the Brits drove them from the land, bejaysus.
My grains of salt about tomorrow's programme don't just count for these particular people. Memories are unreliable across the board and tend to involve a degree of unwitting self-mythologising. And that's before editors narrow coverage down to the most interesting and outspoken respondents. My feeling is we'll know a bit more about facts but a lot more about ruined lives and bitterness.
Looking forward to seeing the programme and hearing what people who generally don't get heard have to say, but we should be a bit sceptical about people's own stories on their pasts.
The Unionist community in places like Derry and the border counties have been let down by their own political representatives (in contrast to the many SF-sponsored victims' groups on the"other side") and perhaps by their own reluctance to reopen old wounds, they are a people whose narrative hasn't been told and for that main reason the programme is welcome.
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