SF remove posters

The Sentinel recently ran an article highlighting the protestations of Fountain resident William Jackson, who was offended that the republican party's Westminster candidate Martina Anderson's posters were attached to parts of the war memorial itself.

Mr Jackson said at the time that he felt the appearance of the posters was akin to "sticking two fingers up to the war dead."

When the Sentinel initially addressed Mr Jackson's complaint to Sinn Fin, a spokesman for the party said: "It's called democracy and unionism needs to get used to it. The Diamond doesn't belong to any one section of the people of Derry."

Some days after the initial article appeared it transpired that the Sinn Fin election posters had been removed from The Diamond.

A spokesman for Sinn Fin told the Sentinel: "The party has an arrangement with the City Centre Initiative that if there is a genuine objection to the positioning of any of our posters that we will remove them. Which we did in the case of the War Dead Memorial.

"We will consider everyone's sensitivities so long as it is not just party point scoring.

"While we believe that postering is part of the democratic process and all parties should be free within reason to equal access to positions of prominence, local sensitivities need to be taken into account.

"In the case of the posters at the Memorial Cenotaph to the British war dead, we decided that although the objectors may have been political opponents wishing to make mischief, we also took into account that they may have come from someone who had a genuine and individual sensitivity to political posters being displayed in the vicinity of the Cenotaph. We believe therefore, that all such posters should be removed."

Speaking on the development with the posters William Jackson said: "I am very pleased that they took them down. I had no political agenda in mind here at all. It was just a matter of them being placed on a cenotaph to the war dead that remember came from both sides."

"The posters were doing no good at all there, and that applies to all the posters at the Diamond."