Socialist Republicans Rename Drury Street To Bobby Sands Street

Activists in Dublin from the Socialist Republican party Lasair Dhearg have removed the Drury street sign, named after 16th century British colonialist William Drury, and renamed the street after Bobby Sands. Drury is remembered for his severe repression of the Irish people. Under his command, Irish friars were tortured, humiliated and hanged, among hundreds of other innocents.

Smaller details of public life such as street signage and place names subtly reinforce dominance over the Irish people by the British state, while the inversion of this through replacing those names with figures of resistance such as Bobby Sands reasserts control of our areas back to those it belongs to, the Irish people.

This is a part of Lasair Dhearg’s wider campaign for the “Reconquest of Ireland”. Their campaign sets out to reintroduce Republican ideology to the people of Ireland through a series of tactics. This includes cultural osmosis in iconography such as street signage, community engagement and seizing any opportunity which presents itself for Republicans to reintroduce themselves as a credible force for contemporary change.

As Socialist Republicanism is on the rise across the whole country, the question stands as to whether it can take over control from a moribund establishment Left and constitutional nationalism.