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Tag Archives: Anne Stewart

Northern tensions won’t die while Foster continues to channel Trump

REPORTS of rioting across Northern Ireland have provided an uncomfortable reminder for one Clare resident of the long years of violence prior to the Good Friday Agreement. Now resident in Kilkishen, Anne Stewart grew up as a Catholic in Newtownabbey, a Loyalist stronghold just north of Belfast. It was one of the areas where young people came onto the streets to antagonise the PSNI last week, and the widely-viewed clip of a rioter becoming engulfed in flames was recorded there. Anne feels that Arlene Foster has to take a share of the blame for the recent violence, as she feels the First Minister’s language raised tensions beyond snapping point. “Arlene Foster kind of provoked the situation, she was kind of like Trump there for a while, provoking and getting the young kids out on the streets. “They were throwing petrol bombs at the PSNI, which is ridiculous. I think Sinn Féin are keeping very quiet and picking their words around …

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‘We were told to get out by the UDA at gunpoint’

GROWING up a Catholic in Loyalist- dominated Newtownabbey on the fringes of Belfast in the late 1960s and early 1970s meant an uneasy childhood for Kilkishen- based artist Anne Stewart. So traumatic was it that after leaving  she didn’t return to the area for over 40 years, until she made a trip back there in 2018, but she has used the difficulties of her early life for inspiration for a new exhibition, Memories of Displacement in a Divided Community, which goes on display at Scariff Library this Thursday. The majority of the exhibition consists of pictures of the pupils of her alma mater, Stella Maris in Newtownabbey, who lost their lives during the bloody conflict. “There is one portrait of Bobby Sands from a photograph; the rest are distorted photographs of the students,” she says. On Tuesday, she was busy closing off sources of natural light at the library, so that viewers will get a real sense of the work when …

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