Dublin - Event Notice
Thursday January 01 1970

British Embassy Protest Against Royal Visit

dublin | rights, freedoms and repression | event notice

Saturday January 26, 2008 10:46

by éirígí - éirígí

British Queen Not Welcome in Irealnd

éirígí have announced the details of their latest public protest in opposition to the proposed state visit of the Commander-in-Chief of Britain’s armed forces to the Twenty-Six Counties.

Outside Ahern's Office

éirígí are inviting people to demonstrate their opposition to this latest attempt to ‘normalise’ Britain’s interference in Irish affairs by joining the protest, at 2.30pm on Saturday, February 23 at the gates of the British embassy in Dublin.

The British embassy protest is the latest in a series of such events with the most recent one being a well-attended demonstration at Bertie Ahern’s constituency office in Dublin on January 5.

On that occasion, Ahern refused to leave the building because of the protest, despite the best intentions of the large amounts of uniformed and Special Branch Gardaí who were in attendance.

éirígí’s campaign to prevent Elizabeth Windsor, who masquerades as the ‘Queen of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’, making a state visit to the Twenty-Six Counties was launched in response to comments made by Mary McAleese in June of last year when she stated that a visit to the southern state by the head of the British Army could “happen sooner then people think”.

McAleese’s remarks were supported by Bertie Ahern in Decmeber 2007 when he said in an RTÉ interview that an official state visit to the Twenty-Six Counties by Windsor was “inevitable” and stated that an invite would probably be extended once “outstanding security issues” had been resolved in the Six Counties.

In the interview, Ahern made no mention of the ongoing British occupation of the Six Counties and the military presence that that entails.

There is a long and proud history of protest at the British embassy in Dublin. In the aftermath of the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972, enraged citizens burned the embassy building, which was then located on Merrion Square, to the ground. At the height of the 1981 hunger strike, An Garda Síochána shamed themselves when they launched a vicious attack on a peaceful demonstration that was making its way to the embassy, which had by then been re-located to its current location in Ballsbridge.