A hard-hitting series of billboards highlighting the parlous state of the North West economy are being erected in Derry in the run-up to next month’s Assembly elections.
The first ‘Wall of Protest’, as part of a ‘Fifty Years of Failure’ campaign, was installed just a hundred yards from the Magee campus of Ulster University (UU) with campaigners saying the city has been denied a university for five decades.
The 55ft by 7ft billboard demanding a new university for the North West, also highlights disparities that exist between Belfast and Derry, including investment in education, wages, household incomes, road and rail infrastructure and employment rates.
A local business owner has loaned the prime site on Derry’s Strand Road to the campaign.
Several other billboards, all of which challenge Stormont and the main political parties to regenerate the North West, will be installed in the coming weeks.
The non-party campaign is organised by former Derry Chamber president Garvan O’Doherty and the Derry University Group.
A spokesperson said: “It’s time to put an end to the cosy complicity pedalling the narrative that Belfast’s rising tide will lift all boats. It doesn’t; it never has and it never will.
““We would encourage anyone considering voting in the coming elections to study the contents of these billboards and start asking direct questions of the canvassers coming to their door.
“The North West will never regenerate until it has its own independent university. Anyone talking in terms of expanding UU at this stage is deeply deluded. Even if they were interested in helping — which history has taught us is not the case — UU’s money for the next decade and more is pre-spent in Belfast.
“We need to commit ourselves to establishing a new cross-border university, as recommended by the Royal Irish Academy’s expert task-force, as our best way forward.”
The billboards are a reminder to political parties in the middle of an election campaign that local people are conscious of a lack of delivery.
On April 13, Derry Trades Union Council (DTUC) will be holding a Foyle Assembly Elections 2022 Hustings in the City Hotel at 7pm and have formally invited all candidates to attend.
DTUC said this election “must deliver real change for working-class people” right across the Foyle constituency.
DTUC chairman Niall McCarroll said: “Local people need to have the power to actively participate in the task of planning, in decision making and having a voice of real influence which is heard within the political system.
“The Assembly Election of 2022 must bring to an end this continued marginalisation.
“Over recent times we have witnessed the power and mobilisation capacity of local workers, when they decided to take action, withdrawing their labour and going on strike.
“Doing so in open defiance of a political system, which time after time refuses to recognise their place within society.”
He added: “During their election campaigns, local candidates would do well to take this on board and make workers’ frustrations a priority.
“This hustings will provide an opportunity for every election candidate, to detail what their plans are (if elected) for local workers.
“How they will protect, grow and fund local public services and what measures they will put in place to address the low wage economy, which blights this constituency.
“Derry Trades Union Council would like to welcome everyone to our hustings and we would encourage anyone attending to have your questions ready to put to the candidates, let us together find out whose side they are on.”
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