“They don’t want all this, they don’t want to live in the past.” History hangs heavy here, though, and prospects for the young are bleak. “The vast majority in Creggan are amazing people,” says Sara. In Nando’s, it was like a meeting of the Northern Irish branch of the UN – and Lyra was the common denominator Recently, there has been an attendant rise in punishment shootings of those accused of drug dealing and joyriding. Fifty years after the Troubles began in this city, local youths are once again being recruited to the cause of violent Irish republicanism.
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These estates were on the frontline of the Troubles in Derry and, alongside the civil rights murals that mark the beginning of the Troubles, there are now others eulogising the IRA’s “Men of Violence”, and a sculpture of Easter Lily, the symbol of Irish republicanism, now stands near the Free Derry wall. The Creggan is their turf, a sprawling housing estate on a hill above the Bogside and the Free Derry wall. “They” are the New IRA, who remain a palpable presence in Derry despite the public backlash directed at them after they admitted responsibility for Lyra’s death.
“This is my city,” she replies, “and I am free to go where I want they are not going to take that away.” Before we leave, I ask Sara if she is sure she wants to revisit the site. O n a cold, grey afternoon in late February, I go with Sara Canning to the Creggan housing estate in Derry, where, almost a year ago on the night of 18 April, 2019, her partner, the young journalist Lyra McKee, was shot dead while observing a riot there.