Our last stop on the Paddywagon tour was, as our tour guide said, "Stroke City." Apparently this city is known to Catholic Republicans as Derry, known to Protestant Unionists as Londonderry, and known to everyone who wishes to remain impartial as Stroke City or The Walled City. This is where The Troubles in Northern Ireland essentially began. On Bloody Sunday, January 30 1972, twenty six unarmed civil rights protesters were shot by members of the British Army. Fourteen of them, including teenage boys, died. This re-lit the spark of civil war in Ireland, and Peace talks didn't even officially occur until the late 1990s. The Troubles in Ireland stem back very far in Irish history and are basically the result of British occupation in Ireland. There is an incredibly complex web of groups of political dissonance, including amongst many, the IRA and the Real IRA on the Republican side and the RUC on the Unionist side.
Derry is a walled city, with military barricades inside. The Catholic community resides in Bogside outside the walls of the city, where the Bloody Sunday incident occurred. Derry is still full of graffiti and conflicting Unionist Pro-British and Republican Anti-British sentiment. The murals in the Bogside are the republican visual protest and remembrance of Bloody Sunday and events in the Troubles. However the most shocking thing about the Murals is that they are on the gables of houses. It is totally bazar to see a little boy playing outside his house where a large black and white figure of a man in a gas mask looms above him. There are also Murals in Belfast, which I will blog about later.
But Derry seemed really clean and striving for a peaceful change. For instance, they are building a peace bridge (a wavy walking bridge) across the river that separates the Catholic and Protestant areas. All in all it was a very heavy couple of hours. Though I was so happy to go, since researching the Troubles has been a little side hobby of mine since I've been in Ireland. But! Enough talking about it, look at some pictures!
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| The tourist center refers to Derry as "The Walled City" |
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| Strolling the walls of Derry |
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| The Fountain, the Protestant housing estate. |
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| The Bogside |
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| The Murals- The Free Derry gable |
Like I said, these murals are on the sides of people's homes. I can't really imagine living with these every day.
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| The Peace Mural |
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| Real IRA tag in the Bogside |
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| The memorial for those who died on Bloody Sunday. It tells their names and their ages. Six of them were 17. |
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| Graffiti in an alleyway in the Bogside. |
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| City center Derry. |
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| The British WWI memorial. |
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| I love fall!! |
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