Young activists leave their mark on Newcastle

When visitors come to Newcastle, they often take home a little souvenir of the place – postcard, stick of rock, that sort of thing.

When Ógra Shinn Féin came calling, it looks they decided to leave us something to remember them by.

The young party activists made Newcastle their base for the national youth camp over the weekend of 18-20 June. By their own account, they had a wonderful time, as indeed do most visitors to our part of the world.

Unfortunately it looks like some of their number decided to leave their mark on Newcastle, in the shape of 6-metre long graffiti in the middle of the town.

What hot political issue demanded the urgent taking of spray-can in hand? Global poverty, climate change or the state of the economy, perchance? None of these seemed uppermost in the minds of the young graffiti-artists.

“Equality for the Easter lily” is the pressing concern which makes it onto the hoarding just off Central Promenade, just yards from Newcastle Methodist Church. We wonder if the painters had been sufficiently attentive during the weekend session on “community outreach and the importance of building relations between unionist and republican communities“.

Of course, maybe the political scribes weren’t from Ógra Shinn Féin at all, although whoever was responsible was kind enough to refer us to a website: www.osf.ie. And OSF certainly appear to have a solid track record on lily equality.

Here’s hoping Newcastle SF councillor and MLA Willie Clarke can get the problem sorted.