Lurgan – Page 2 – Paddy Duffy Collection

Our Only Crime Is Loyalty

2024-08-132026-08-29Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

These are the boards at the chip shop (formerly a Spar and before that a Mace) in the centre of the Mourneview estate, Lurgan.

Above, and in detail below, are the pieces from the front of the shop, in Pollock Drive. Anti-clockwise from bottom-left:

First: “Believe, we dare not boast,/Believe, we do not fear/We stand to pay the cost,/In all that men hold dear.//What answer from the North?/One Law, one Land, one Throne/If England drive us forth,/We shall not fall alone!” Kipling’s poem Ulster.

The first stanza also appears in a Belfast RHC mural, and other lines from the poem have been used elsewhere: We Perish If We Yield | The Terror, Threats, And Dread.

Second: YCV

Next (tall piece): A company, 1st battalion, Mid Ulster brigade UVF – Lurgan as well as Broxburn (outside Edinburgh) and Thornliebank (near Glasgow).

Next: PAF plus (out of frame in the wide shot) “When injustice becomes law resistance becomes duty.” The same panel was seen in Ballyclare, though for the 1st East Antrim battalion rather than the Mid Ulster brigade.

Above: A tribute to the Ulster Volunteers from the area: the 9th battalion Royal Irish Fusiliers joined the 108th brigade in the 36th (Ulster) Division; the 5th battalion joined the 31st brigade and the 10th (Irish) Division. This board goes back to (at least) 2011.

Finally (top left), a UDU/UDA board, to 1 company, D battalion, South Belfast. All of the remaining pieces are UVF/PAF.

Around the corner, in Mourne Road, a gallery of photographs of the Craigavon Protestant Boys (Fb) past and present, with a plaque in memory of Victor Stewart. “Our only crime is loyalty.”

In the adjacent Spelga Park: “Unbowed & unbroken – our only crime is loyalty – Mourneview/Gret estate bonfire” with an unusual combination of shamrock and Orange lily.

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Copyright © 2024 Paddy Duffy
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Ard Mhacha Abú

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The people of Kilwilkie (Lurgan) supported the Armagh team in their (successful – RTÉ video) bid to win the All-Ireland senior football championship, repeating their former and only previous win in 2002 – see also Ard Mhacha (in north Belfast) and Ádh Mór Ard Mhacha (in Armagh) and (from 2023) The Core Of Armagh.

Levin Road, Lurgan

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Copyright © 2024 Paddy Duffy
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My Brother Is Not A Criminal

2024-08-132024-09-08Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

IRA volunteer Raymond McCreesh, originally from Camlough, died on May 21st, 1981, after 61 days on hunger strike. “In proud and loving memory of ten brave Irish soldiers who died on hunger strike in 1981 for their five just demands. I gcuımhne ar ıobaırt [íobaırt] cróga na staılceoırí ocraıs 1981 ní dheánfar [dhéanfar] dearmad orthu.”

This is a new version of a long-standing board to McCreesh in Taghnevan Drive, Lurgan. For the previous (painted) version (from 2009) see M05408.

The Lurgan Ambush

2024-08-132024-08-28Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

“Fuaır sıad bás ar son saoırse na hÉıreann. Óglach Sean Burns, Óglach Gervase McKerr, Óglach Eugene Toman. “But they dared to hold their heads up high and never once did fail to declare their wish for freedom like true sons of the Gael” – The Lurgan Ambush (A poem by Ita Green [set to music at Irish Folk Songs])”.

The IRA volunteers were three of the six people shot in Lurgan in three incidents in November and December of 1982; the others were Seamus Grew, Roddy Carroll, and Michael Tighe. The deaths of the three would be investigated by the RUC and then by the Stalker Inquiry into the shoot-to-kill policy (RN); an inquest was begun by the Coroner in 2007 (BelTel | Madden-Finucane). Under the Legacy Act, which came into effect on May 1st (2024), the inquest has been suspended and the case transferred to the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (Irish News).

Taghnevan Drive, Lurgan

Lurgan Town Was Rocked By Sorrow

2024-08-132024-11-06Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

“Lurgan town was rocked with sorrow/On that bleak November day/Hushed tones and tears were mingled/When great numbers stopped to pray.” These lines come from ‘The Lurgan Ambush’, a poem by Ita Green [set to music at Irish Folk Songs], paying tribute to IRA volunteers Sean Burns, Eugene Toman, and Gervaise McKerr, who died together on the night of November 11th, 1982, when the car in which the three were travelling was hit by 109 bullets from officers at an RUC check-point.

The ECHR ‘asmissibility’ report gives a full account of the incident and the subsequent investigations into it, including the Stalker enquiry into ‘shoot-to-kill’.