A public meeting to protest against a series of murders and maimings in the city was held on the Grosvenor Road in West Belfast on 11th May.
The protest was organised by the Workers’ Party following the murder of Dan Murray near the site of the meeting two days earlier. This murder was one of eleven serious armed attacks across Belfast in the pervious six months in which four people died and several others, including a seventeen-year-old boy, were seriously wounded.
WP North Belfast representative, Gemma Weir told the meeting, “Right across Belfast we have to respond as a community. We all have to stand up and say no to murder, no to attempted murder and no to maiming’.
Joanne Lowry challenged those responsible and those who support them to explain themselves. “West Belfast was blighted by these type of attacks for almost thirty years. Yet eighteen years after the Good Friday Agreement we not only have murder on our streets but we have the remains of a culture which supports and justifies it,” she said.
The meeting was also addressed by SDLP MLA Alex Attwood, Sinn Fein MLA Fra McCann and a representative of the of the Labour Cross Community Alternative.
