"Irish signs are alien to us; the sooner they go, the better" - Residents protest outside Belfast leisure centre where officials warned dual language move could spark trouble
“These Irish signs are not accepted. It’s alien to us; they’ll have to go and the sooner, the better.”
Those are the words of protesters who tonight demonstrated outside a leisure centre where officials warned putting dual language signs up could spark trouble – but did it anyway.
The token demonstration at Olympia Leisure Centre on the city’s Boucher Road saw around 30 people take part, including TUV councillor Ron McDowell.
It’s hoped, however, the small protest will kickstart a grassroots movement aimed at getting rid of the Irish language signs, something that’s become even more of a hot-button issue since Belfast Council this month decided to blitz them across the entire city.
A battle raged for years over whether or not to build bilingual signs at Olympia, with Sandy Row-based Blackstaff Residents Association handing in a 2,600-strong petition arguing that only adding Irish excluded not just Ulster-Scots but all the other languages spoken throughout south Belfast – describing the idea as “discriminatory, divisive and even offensive”.
Council officials warned that adding the Irish language could alienate protestants, unionists and loyalists, and potentially stop members of that community going. One year ago, however, politicians voted to plough ahead with them.
Every month, the Blackstaff Association holds a meeting at the leisure centre. At the start of October, right as the council debated its controversial city-wide Irish language scheme, the residents group walked through Olympia’s gates to find Irish signs had gone up.
As Billy Dickson from the association explained, residents of the Sandy Row and Donegall Road areas campaigned for years to have the leisure centre built, following from the site being in community use as ad-hoc sports grounds for decades. Now appalled to see Irish signs inside and out, they were moved to kick off the protest.
"We don’t have any emotional attachment to it; it’s not our culture, not our tradition, it doesn’t mean anything to us,” he told the News Letter, “yet it’s being imposed on us.
“We don’t want to see it; this signage is unwelcome and divisive, and it’s being forced on a community that has no history with it.
“The new signage will never be accepted,” he said. “As long as they remain, they will be contentious and cause ongoing resentment in the local community – that’s not something that should not part of the experience of using a local leisure centre.”