Loyalist posters in Cookstown a reaction to 1916 Easter Rising hype

Posters erected in the Monrush housing estate in Cookstown were a reaction to 'the hype surrounding the Easter Rising,' a loyalist source has said.
Posters which went up in the Monrush housing estate in CookstownPosters which went up in the Monrush housing estate in Cookstown
Posters which went up in the Monrush housing estate in Cookstown

The posters declare: ‘100 years of Irish Republican Murder and Ethnic Cleansing and We Are Still British’ - and went up on walls and bus shelters in the estate in days leading up to Easter.

“A few of them have been torn down since but they are a simple expression of the unionist/loyalist position after all the years of violence directed against them,” the source told the Mid Ulster Mail.

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“The people of Monrush themselves were targeted by the Provisional IRA when a van bomb was driven into the estate.

“That was 25 years ago and a number of residents – women and children – came close to getting killed while trying to flee from their homes.”

It is understood the erection of Irish tricolours at Westland Road South (beside the public cemetery) has also raised tensions.

DUP Assembly candidate, Ian McCrea said he fully understood the frustrations and anger of the unionist community in Monrush and elsewhere in Mid Ulster to events.

Mr McCrea felt people should have been focusing on the real message of Easter.