The Clifton Street Cemetery is one of the most interesting and historic of the graveyards in Belfast. It was created at the end of the 18th century, at a time when Belfast was very much an Ulster-Scots town, and contains the graves of many interesting people, including indutrialists, shipbuilders, newspapermen, ministers and politicians, both unionists and United Irishmen. Many of the complexities and contradictions of Ulster history are illustrated in the headstones.
I have given occasional guided tours of the graveyard in the past and have been asked by a local cultural group to lead another tour this Saturday morning at 10.30am. There is no charge, anyone is welcome to join us and we will be assembling at the gate in Henry Place.
You're a man of many talents...perhaps too many.
ReplyDeleteInteresting listing on the BBC NI’s Sunday Sequence. A historian was on talking about the Irish potato famine. She did not tell me personally anything new, but she reiterated that Protestants suffered as much as Roman Catholics during the potato famine.
ReplyDeleteTherefor any alleged famine song can’t be sectarian, as both sections of the populous of Ireland suffered, any alleged famine song may be in bad taste but how can it be sectarian when Protestants and Roman Catholics suffered and died???
Could this be more evidence of faux offence and be more proof of republican MOPE’ry and BBC anti PUL bias?
A texter give the twist that in my view is the sectarian twist in this sordid tale. The Roman Catholic church, republicans and nationalists have spun the tale that they and they exclusively suffered during the potato famine and they have built an industry around it. Therefore the Roman Catholic church, republicans and nationalists have written out and excluded the Protestant suffering during the potato famine. Therefore excluding the Protestant suffering and the attempt to rewrite the history of the famine to ignore the Protestant suffering can only be described as a bigoted and sectarian attempt to exclude the Protestant story.
Why did the priest, the bishop, the shinners, republicans and the BBC at the time, not mention the Protestant side of the potato famine story???
And explain that any perceived sectarianism in any alleged famine song was therefore missed placed taking the heat out of a tense situation of a republicans making.
Is this the inconvenient truth the Roman Catholic church, republican politicos and agitators don’t want to tell and the refusal to tell that part of our history is continuing the bias and sectarianism???
What is not in doubt and sectarian is that the potato famine was used by republicans as a recruiting tool to swell the ranks of republican terrorist groups.
I mention this as Protestant famine graves are located within Clifton Street Cemetery.
So who are the real sectarian agitators here and who are the naive victims?