Ogra Shinn Féin goes postal

Sinn Féin’s youth wing has been causing controversy over attempts to literally ‘green’ the north - one postbox at a time.

Members of Ogra Shinn Féin have been painting the traditional red postboxes green.

The group says it is restoring the postboxes to their “rightful colour” and saving the south’s postal service An Post work in the event of the removal of the border.

A spokesman for Britain’s ‘Royal Mail’ said that far fewer than 50 of their postboxes had been painted green and many of those had already been repainted red.

East Derry DUP assembly member Adrian McQuillan criticised Ogra Shinn Féin’s actions as a “form of denial that a united Ireland is further away than ever before”.

“The fact that members of Sinn Féin’s youth wing have been reduced to running around painting postboxes demonstrates just how flattened the united Ireland pipe dream has become,” he said.

“Clearly this is an attempt by the leadership of Sinn Féin to prove to their own people that they still have militant credentials despite the fact that they are serving in the Stormont assembly, administering British rule in a Northern Ireland that is still under British sovereignty.”

An Ogra Shinn Féin spokesman said its activists were repainting the postboxes to “assert proudly and very visibly that we live in Ireland”.

“This is a practical manifestation of the all-Ireland agenda, a novel way in which young nationally minded people can promote their Irishness and highlight the folly of partition.”

The Royal Mail spokesman said repainting any green postboxes “will be carried out as part of our ongoing maintenance programme”.

In the past postboxes around the Queen’s University area of south Belfast have been painted green but always repainted red at Royal Mail expense.

There have also been reported incidences in the south of the green An Post letterboxes being painted red.

Urgent Appeal