ALICE Toner lived in Ballymurphy Drive, not far from our house in Divismore Park. I was deeply saddened by her death. I knew Alice and her husband Fra all of my adult life. Like my own family, they moved into Ballymurphy shortly after it was built. She and Fra were long-standing republicans.
Alice was born Alice Scullion in 1929. She was from Varna Street in the Falls area. Varna Street is now gone – a victim of redevelopment, but it was situated around where Osman Street is now. Alice was born just eight years after partition was imposed. Her family suffered under the apartheid system imposed by the unionist regime at Stormont. Unemployment and poverty were widespread along with the denial of the vote in local elections and the gerrymandering of electoral boundaries. It was almost impossible to get a house if you were a Catholic.
LAST Thursday Ardmhéara Bhaile Átha Cliath, Alison Gilliland, unveiled a Dublin City Council plaque in memory of the visit to that city in 1845 of the African-American anti-slavery leader Frederick Douglass. The plaque is on the Irish Film Institute (IFI) building in Eustace Street, Temple Bar, which was formerly the meeting house of the Society of Friends.