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"The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men." Samuel Adams
The Statue of Liberty had long been an icon of New York and America. The promise of Liberty. We took the Center Line Cruise around Manhattan. Here she is plain & simple & nonartsy in all of her glory
History of Virginia Dare
Perhaps one of the reasons that so many artists and writers have taken creative liberties with the image and story of Virginia Dare over the centuries is because so little is known about her.
Virginia's history begins with the marriage of her mother, Eleanor Dare, to a local bricklayer and tiler, Ananias Dare. Eleanor and Ananias were both born in London, Eleanor in 1563 and Ananias in 1560, and were married at the historic St. Bride's Church on London's Fleet Street. (A memorial to Virginia Dare was eventually built at the English church and can still be admired today.) Their story may have ended there, with no worldwide recognition, if it wasn't for the commission given to Eleanor's father, John White.
In the 1580s, England began making colonization attempts in the New World, focusing on the northern and relatively undiscovered region that is present day America. Sir Walter Raleigh led the expeditions, under the command of Queen Elizabeth I, and after several successful trips to Roanoke Island, including an initial settlement of soldiers, sailors and workingmen that was sent to the colony in 1584, Raleigh deemed it was time to send a settlement of men, women and children to the New World.
He named his friend and fellow explorer of the region, John White, as the new governor of this colony, and leader of the nearly 150 Englishmen and women who would sail across the ocean to create a permanent home on Roanoke Island. John White was a good choice, as he was the mapmaker for the very successful expedition to North Carolina led by Richard Greenville in 1585, (an expedition which led to the friendly treaties with Chiefs Manteo and Wanchese), and White was optimistic about the colony's potential success. This optimism is evident by the fact that he recruited and brought his own daughter and his son-in-law along as new Roanoke Island residents - Eleanor and Ananias Dare.
White's optimism, however, may have been a bit premature. The first 1584 settlement of soldiers sent to Roanoke Island returned home little more than a year later due to dwindling supplies, and deteriorating relations with the local Native Americans. Apparently a fight between the settlers and the one of the local Native American tribes had led to months of animosity, and the settlers were concerned about an impending attack. So despite the fact that they had built homes, various buildings, and a fort, (Fort Raleigh), they deserted the colony and hitched a ride home back to England with Sir Francis Drake, who was passing through the area.
John White and his band of settlers departed for the New World in 1587, with a pregnant Eleanor Dare included in the voyage, and landed on Roanoke Island on July 22, 1587. After unloading the ship, it soon became clear that establishing a permanent settlement was not going to be an easy endeavor. There were no soldiers or sailors from the original colony left behind to help the new arrivals adjust, and within days White realized just how bad the local Native American relations had become.
While the colonists and White worried about their next move, and struggled to build better local relationships as well as a home in the foreign land, a glimmer of hope came into the colony. Eleanor Dare gave birth to a baby girl, Virginia Dare, on August 18th, 1587 - the first English citizen born in the New World. Virginia was baptized in the colony the following Sunday, and was noted to be strong and healthy, despite the desolate conditions of the new settlement.
White was obviously delighted, but just a couple months after Virginia's birth, he realized that the colonists needed help in the form of fresh supplies and additional men to protect them from the hostile locals. He set sail back to England in late 1587, grudgingly leaving his new granddaughter behind, but planning to return within a year.
Approximately 115 men, women and children were left to wait at the Roanoke Colony, including the infant Virginia. White, unfortunately, was stalled in England and unable to return promptly because of the ongoing Spanish War, and he wasn't able to set sail again until nearly three years later, arriving on Roanoke Island on Virginia's third birthday.
White was heartbroken to discover, however, that his granddaughter and the entire colony was gone, with the majority of the settlement left perfectly intact and empty. One of the colonists had carved "CROATAN" and "CRO" into village trees, but other than this cryptic clue, there was no sign of where they had gone, or what had happened to them. White searched the coastline from Roanoke to Hatteras Island, but there was no sighting of the 115 men, women, children, and the Lost Colonists were never seen or heard from again.
Virginia Dare, who had originally made news around the world as the first English child born in America, was now famous just three years later for her shocking and mysterious disappearance. In the centuries that followed, thousands of historians, artists and writers tried to unravel the mystery of Virginia's fate, but clearly, there were no answers in sight.
This all changed, however, in 1937 - amazingly the year of Virginia's 350th birthday celebration - when hand carved stoned were found in Georgia and the Carolinas, dated and signed by Virginia's mother, Eleanor Dare. Within the next four years, a total of 48 stones were found, penned and signed by Eleanor Dare, and when put together, they chronicled a fascinating life in the wild after the colony disappeared. According to the stones, Eleanor's husband and daughter Virginia died in 1591 in a savage Indian attack, and hungry for revenge, Eleanor went on to marry a rival Native American Chief. She eventually gave birth to a second daughter named Agnes, and remained a tribe member until her death in 1599. Many historians found it quite unbelievable that these stones were uncovered, and as it turns out it was, though it took nearly a decade to prove without a doubt that the whole affair of the Dare stones was an elaborate hoax.
While this is one of the few cases about Virginia's hypothetical fate trying to be passed off as the absolute truth, the stone carvers were certainly not the only folks in history to create stories and legends about the Roanoke Island resident. A number of novels have been written over the past centuries, with Virginia as a heroine who moves to Jamestown and marries a local settler, or is turned into a deer by an Indian witch doctor, or even gets involved in a love triangle with John Smith and Pocahontas. In science fiction works, she has been kidnapped by aliens or transformed into a modern vampire slayer, and in advertising she has been the face of a range of products from Virginia Tobacco to Flavoring Extracts.
Clearly, despite her brief appearance in history, Virginia Dare is a celebrated figure in American culture. As an icon of America's earliest roots, and later a subject of its longest running mystery, this Outer Banks local continues to fascinate and inspire artists and visitors alike, even today.
Source:http://www.outerbanks.com/virginia-dare.html
History of the Elizabethan Gardens
In 1941 the Fort Raleigh National Historic Site became an official attraction for Outer Banks visitors, and just 4 years prior, the Lost Colony Outdoor drama opened within the Fort Raleigh grounds. Within years, both of these Outer Banks treasures had attracted thousands of visitors from all across the country, and in 1950, four very important Lost Colony show attendees would make their mark on Roanoke Island.
Mrs. Charles Cannon, married to a North Carolina philanthropist, Mrs. Inglis Fletcher, (also a distinguished North Carolina historian and author), and Lady and Sir Evelyn Wrench, who was the founder of the English Speaking Union, had just visited the site and had taken in an evening show. Touring the grounds beforehand, it occurred to them that a two-acre garden on the outskirts of the Fort Raleigh site could lead to additional visitors, but more importantly, could stand as a natural and cultural monument to the Lost Colonists and Sir Walter Raleigh.
They proposed the idea to the local North Carolina State Garden Club in 1951, and were met with enthusiastic agreement by its thousands of members. The initial concept was a modest one. The four original proposers as well as the Garden Club aimed to construct a simple two-acre garden that represented the typical garden of a late 1500's colonist - not a show-stopping display garden by any means, but rather a modest parcel of land that would have vegetables, grains, and other staples of a colonist's diet and lifestyle.
But the plans changed when an assisting contractor, E.W. Reinecke, told members of the Garden Club about a prestigious historical garden he was dismantling at an estate in Georgia. The statues and fountains at the location were originally to be donated to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, but Reinecke suggested that the Garden Club contact the landscape architects involved, Innocenti & Webel, to see if this arrangement could be changed.
The Garden Club followed through with the suggestion, and the members were surprised to find that the Innocenti & Webel landscapers were delighted with the idea of donating the historic statues to the site of England's first American colony. As a result, the original plan of a simple garden was revised to make way for the ancient Italian fountain and pool with balustrade, wellhead, sundial, bird baths, and stone steps and benches that the architects, as well as the original Georgia estate's owner, The Honorable John Hay Whitney, had reserved especially for the new Outer Banks garden site.
With these donations serving as an abstract guide, the Webel landscapers designed an Elizabethan Era garden, slightly revised and remodeled for present times. Ironically enough, and perhaps serving as a good omen for this new direction, construction for the gardens began on the exact date that Elizabeth II was crowned, June 2, 1953. The task was an arduous one, and it wasn't until over seven years later, on August 18th, 1960, that the gardens were officially opened to the public on Virginia Dare's 373rd birthday.
Since the gardens were first established, a number of remarkable pieces of art, statues, plant species, and even the bricks themselves have been donated to the gardens from generous benefactors around the world. As a result, the gardens are an incredible collection of the old world and the new, with ancient English blooms and local trees and shrubs, all in an incredible setting that feels miles away from modern North Carolina, despite it's quiet location tucked away on Roanoke Island.
Dublin streetscape with all its imperfections, crooked street signs, lamps and cables. This is the old Dublin steeped in history where Pimmico and the Coombe intersect the general area is known The Liberties. Image was taken on the Holga with Tri-X dveloped in ID 11.
For the curious some more information here en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Liberties,_Dublin
Ralph “Feather” Featherston, a Washington, D.C. black liberation activist, reacts to a New York U.S. federal judge setting a $25,000 bond for SNCC chair H. Rap Brown August 19, 1967 on charges of arson and inciting to riot.
William Kunstler, a prominent civil liberties attorney who was representing Brown, is on the right.
Featherstone was later killed the night of March 9-10, 1970 by a bomb blast along with William H. “Che” Payne while driving south on U.S. Route 1 about a half mile from the courthouse in Bel Air, Md. where Brown (later Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin) was to stand trial on charges stemming from a 1967 speech in Cambridge, Md.
Featherstone was traveling in a direction away from the courthouse at the time of the explosion.
Friends say the pair were on their way to meet Brown and speculated that the blast was intended to kill Brown as well.
Brown went underground after the blast and skipped his trial. He was arrested a year-and-a-half later on separate charges. The original Cambridge charges of arson and inciting to riot were ultimately dropped.
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and Maryland Gov. Marvin Mandel reached a conclusion after a 4-day investigation that Featherstone and Payne were killed by their own bomb which they intended to use to bomb the Bel Air courthouse. They also pointed to a bomb that exploded at the Cambridge, Md. courthouse March 10, 1970—the day after the pair were killed.
Black activists disputed the hasty conclusion and pointed to a number of discrepancies including the fact that the car was driving away from the courthouse when it exploded.
No further official investigation was ever undertaken and the two men are regarded as martyrs within the black liberation movement.
Featherstone was a native of Washington, D.C. who was born May 26, 1939.
He graduated from the Washington Teachers College (later merged into the University of the District of Columbia) after which he taught speech therapy in five District elementary schools.
He quit teaching and joined the civil rights movement, heading south in 1964 to take part in “Mississippi Freedom Summer” and becoming one of many rights workers in setting up “Freedom Schools” and conducting voter registration in Mississippi.
When he first came to Mississippi, he joined other rights workers in searching empty houses, ravines and wells for the remains of three civil rights workers who were missing and presumed dead. The three, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were later found to have been kidnapped, tortured, murdered and buried in an earthen dam by Ku Klux Klan members that included an FBI informant.
In August 1964, Featherstone established a Freedom School in Macomb, a small town in the southwest part of the state.
The Freedom School held classes for adults and children all day during the summer and at night during the school year both to bolster the poor education system in the state and to prepare black people for the literacy tests they faced when seeking to register to vote.
The school was set up just after white supremacists blew up the headquarters of a coalition of civil rights groups in the town and taught black history, literature, critical thinking, black pride, other languages and civil rights strategy and tactics.
Featherstone told the Washington Post that students get a tough dose of civil rights talk, but not blind hatred. “When students start talking this trash about hating all white people, I say, ‘Hold on a minute. White people have been with us a long time, and many have been willing to give their lives for our cause.’ Then I just point to a teacher as an example.”
He later worked in Selma before returning to Mississippi. In June 1966, he was attending a memorial service for the three slain civil rights workers when the service was attacked by white supremacists.
Featherstone, then a field secretary for SNCC, called the FBI office in Jackson and told them “We are armed and returning fire. You can do what you want about it.”
While in Mississippi, Featherstone helped initiate and manage a black cooperative catfish cannery that produced fertilizer and canned fish for consumption.
In 1967 he was elected SNCC’s program secretary at the same time that H. Rap Brown (later Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin) was elected chair.
Featherstone also served on SNCC’s overseas trip committee, which selected SNCC representatives for international gatherings. During that period he traveled to Cuba and Japan as part of SNCC’s outreach.
In 1968 he returned to the District of Columbia and conceived, helped set-up and run the Drum and Spear Bookstore then located on 14th Street NW. The group of activists who set up the store was composed of many former SNCC activists, including his future wife Charlotte Orange.
The shop was located in the midst of the ruins of the corridor burned out after the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King.
The Chicago Daily Defender wrote:
“The shop was well planned and appointed and carried a good stock. A rehabilitation job made it even more attractive and a mecca for seekers of black literature and ideas.”
“The tall young manager [Featherstone] was remembered for his flashing smile and cool demeanor. He seemed happy, though he was caught up intensely in the swirling tides of change engulfing the world of the ghetto and beyond.”
In February 1968 Orange and Featherstone married. Three weeks later he was dead.
The rushed FBI report, Hoover and Mandel were roundly condemned in the black community for their rush to judgment.
Even conservative black organizations and individuals denounced the finding.
Dorothy Height, president of the National Council of Negro Women, released a statement that read, “Late Monday evening, March 10, two young black men were killed by an explosive device in Bel Air, Maryland, continuing the trend of genocide—official and unofficial—against those who raise their voices in dissent.”
Floyd McKissick, the chair of the Congress of Racial Equality, wrote, “I have not yet found one black person who believes that these two black men were killed by their own bomb.”
“This was an easy decision for Hoover and Mandel to reach. It was a simple solution to a complicated racist act….Whites know that other whites put the bomb in the station wagon being driven by Featherstone.”
Featherstone’s funeral was conducted at Stewart Funeral Home on Benning Road NE he was laid out in African robes in an open coffin, the walls adorned with photographs from the civil rights movement—demonstrations, helmeted police and individual activists and people.
Hundreds of black people attended the service where whites were barred. Among the luminaries who came were John Lewis, Julian Bond, James Foreman, Marion Barry, Cleveland Sellers, Ivanhoe Donaldson, Dorothy Lander, Courtland Cox, Charles Cobb, Rev. James Bevel, Rev. Walter Fauntleroy, Douglas Moore and Harlan Randolph.
Others came who were personally touched by Featherstone. Lille Jones, a 71-year-old Neshoba County, Miss. Resident said the streets had been paved because, “Ralph Featherstone told me to go to Washington and tell them that’s what we wanted.”
Despite Orange-Featherstone’s wishes that donations be sent to the Center for Black Education in Washington, D.C,, large wreaths, including one in the black liberation colors of red, green and black, stood on either side of the coffin.
Featherstone’s remains were later cremated and interred in Lagos, Nigeria according to his wishes where 10,000 people attended the ceremony.
Payne’s service was held in Covington, Ky. where he was given a similar send off. Payne had worked with Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Ture) in Lowndes County, Alabama.
The work in Lowndes County involved a voter registration drive where the majority black county had only one registered black voter out of 12,000 black people.
The Lowndes County Freedom Democratic Party was set up in 1965 using a black panther as its symbol and went on to register thousands in the county despite white supremacist violence, ultimately electing the sheriff, a commissioner and a town mayor by 1971.
Payne was a resident of Atlanta at the time of his death.
After laying her husband to rest, Orange-Featherstone gave an interview where she expressed her doubts about the FBI report on the two killed by the bomb.
She said no coroner’s inquest was held, there was no police report at the time of death and the death certificate listed the cause as unknown.
While the FBI said the blast occurred when a bomb went off on the floor of the front passenger seat, Featherstone’s body was intact except for a cut on one leg, a small cut on the lip, his right arm was damaged and there was a massive bruise on the back of his head.
By contrast Payne’s body was completely destroyed and she contended it would be impossible for Featherstone to have died at the same time as the blast.
Orange-Featherstone graduated from Cass Technical High School in Detroit, earned her bachelor’s degree from Eastern Michigan University, her master’s from Yeshiva University and her doctorate in elementary education from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
She was a professor of special education at Virginia State University in Petersburg, Va., a historically black college, from 1980 until her retirement in the mid 2000s due to a degenerative weakening of the lower extremities.
She relocated to Los Angeles, Ca. where she hoped to get treatment. She remained active in a number of causes through the years, but focused on education.
She died there in California in October 2009 and her remains were interred alongside her husband’s in Nigeria.
For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHsmLDguzs
The image is a United Press International photograph housed in the D.C. Library Washington Star Collection.
I must admit that I had not noticed this pub before and it would appear that it opened to the public about two years ago.
Francis Street is located in an area known as the Liberties.
The Liberties hosts regular performances in theatres, bars, music venues and night clubs. The Tivoli Theatre, located on Francis Street, can accommodate 450 theatre patrons, or a standing audience of around 1,000. Music venues include Vicar Street, on Thomas Street, hosting comedy, drama and concerts, with capacity for 1,500, and The Thomas House, specialised in punk, rock and reggae music.
It should be noted that the Tivoli Theatre is due to be redeveloped and be replaced by a five-storey, 289-bed aparthotel. The planning go-ahead had an unusual condition as the owner of the Tivoli is required to
preserve the graffiti art contained within the site by photographic record which should be undertaken by a professional photographer.
Took some liberties with this photo and I hope you don't mind. The sun sank below the clouds lighting up the world and giving a final greeting before the inevitable farewell. Down here where the shores dance eternally and the shale layers twist in shapes marvelously grotesque. I truely believe that this is one of those rare places that holds a very mystic quality. It hangs in the air, makes you feel small, makes you think and ponder the infinite.
© Mike Vieira
It's the 6th September 2025 and Parliament Square becomes the stage for a mass act of peaceful civil disobedience against the proscription of Palestine Action.
Beneath a statue honouring the fight for civil liberties, the British state performs its pre-scripted political theatre. Here, one of 890 arrests made that day, is transformed from a police action into a public spectacle.
The state’s official narrative, which later claimed officers were punched and kicked, is met by a wall of citizen journalism. Every phone captures evidence for a counter-narrative—one backed by Amnesty International, who witnessed police aggression and shoving.
ttps://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/EUR4502732025ENGLISH.pdf
The juxtaposition, captured from a lucky vantage point, is stark: the brute force of the state below, the power of public witness before it, and overseeing it all, the suffragist’s silent, damning message: 'Courage calls to courage everywhere'.
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Protest and the Price of Dissent: Palestine Action and the Criminalisation of Conscience
Parliament Square on Saturday, 6 September 2025 was a scene of quiet, almost solemn defiance. The air, usually thick with the noise of London traffic and crowds of tourists, was instead filled with a palpable tension, a shared gravity that emanated from the quiet determination of hundreds of protesters, many of them over 60 years old, some sitting on steps or stools and others lying on the grass.
They held not professionally printed banners, but handwritten cardboard signs, their messages stark against the historic grandeur of their surroundings. This was not a march of chants and slogans, but a silent vigil of civil disobedience, a deliberate and calculated act of defiance against the state.
On that day, my task was to photograph the protest against the proscription of the direct-action group Palestine Action. While not always agreeing entirely with the group’s methods, I could not help but be struck by the profound dedication etched on the faces of the individual protesters.
As they sat in silence, contemplating both the horrific gravity of the situation in Gaza and the enormity of the personal risk they were taking — courting arrest under terror laws for holding a simple placard — their expressions took on a quality not dissimilar to what war photographers once called the “thousand-yard stare.” It was a look of weary but deep and determined resolve, a silent testament to their readiness to face life-changing prosecution in the name of a principle.
This scene poses a profound and unsettling question for modern Britain. How did the United Kingdom, a nation that prides itself on its democratic traditions and the right to protest, arrive at a point where hundreds of its citizens — clergy, doctors, veterans, and the elderly — could be arrested under counter-terrorism legislation for an act of silent, peaceful protest?
The events of that September afternoon were the culmination of a complex and contentious series of developments, but their significance extends far beyond a single organisation or demonstration. The proscription of Palestine Action has become a critical juncture in the nation’s relationship with dissent, a test of the elasticity of free expression, and a stark examination of its obligations under international law in the face of Israel deliberately engineering a catastrophic humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
To understand what is at stake, one must unravel the threads that led to that moment: the identity of the movement, the state’s legal machinery of proscription, the confrontation in Parliament Square, and the political context that compelled so many to risk their liberty.
Direct Action and the State’s Response
Palestine Action, established in 2020, has never hidden its approach. Unlike traditional lobbying groups, it rejected appeals to political elites in favour of disrupting the physical infrastructure of complicity: factories producing parts for Israeli weapons systems, offices of arms manufacturers, and — eventually — military installations themselves.
Its tactics, while non-violent, were disruptive and confrontational. Red paint sprayed across buildings to symbolise blood, occupations that halted production, chains and locks on factory gates. For supporters, these were acts of conscience against a system enabling atrocities in Gaza.
For the state, they were criminal disruptions of commerce.
That clash escalated steadily. In Oldham, a persistent campaign against Elbit Systems, a key manufacturer in the Israeli arms supply chain, culminated in the company abandoning its Ferranti site.
Later actions targeted suppliers for F-35 fighter jets and other arms manufacturers. These were no random acts of mindless vandalism but part of a deliberate strategy: to impose costs high enough that complicity in Israel’s war effort would become unsustainable.
The decisive rupture came in June 2025, when activists infiltrated RAF Brize Norton, Britain’s largest airbase, and sprayed red paint into the engines of refuelling aircraft linked to operations over Gaza. For the activists, it was a desperate attempt to interrupt a supply chain of surveillance and logistical support to a state commiting genocide. For the government, it crossed a line: military assets had been attacked. Within days, the Home Secretary announced Palestine Action would be proscribed as a terrorist organisation.
Proscription and the Expansion of “Terrorism”
Here lies the heart of the controversy. The Terrorism Act 2000 defines terrorism with unusual breadth, encompassing not only threats to life but also “serious damage to property” carried out for political or ideological aims. In this capacious definition, breaking a factory window or disabling a machine can be legally assimilated to mass murder.
By invoking this law, the government placed Palestine Action on the same legal footing as al-Qaeda or ISIS. Supporting it — even symbolically — became a serious offence.
Since July 2025, merely expressing support for the organization can carry a maximum prison sentence of 14 years. This is based on Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000. The specific offense is "recklessly expressing support for a proscribed organisation".
However, according to Section 13 of the Act, a lower-level offence for actions like displaying hand held placards in support of a proscribed group carries a maximum sentence of six months imprisonment or a fine of five thousand pounds or both.
Civil liberties groups and human rights bodies have denounced the proscription move as disproportionate. Their concern was not primarily whether Palestine Action’s tactics might violate existing criminal law. One might reasonably argue that they did unless they might sometimes be justified in the name of preventing a greater crime.
But reframing those actions as “terrorism” represented a dangerous category error. As many pointed out, terrorism has historically referred to violence against civilians. Expanding it to cover property damage risks draining the term of meaning. Worse, it arms the state with a stigma so powerful that it can delegitimise entire political positions without debate.
The implications go further. Proscription does not simply criminalise acts. It criminalises expressions of allegiance, conscience and even speech. To say “I support Palestine Action” is no longer an opinion but technically a serious crime. The state has moved from punishing deeds to punishing expressions of solidarity — a move with chilling consequences for democratic life.
Parliament Square: Civil Disobedience on Trial
It was this transformation that brought nearly 1,500 people into Parliament Square on 6 September. They knew what awaited them. Organisers announced in advance that protesters would hold signs reading: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.” In doing so, they openly declared their intent to break the law.
The crowd was strikingly diverse. Retired doctors, clergy, war veterans, even an 83-year-old Anglican priest. Disabled activists came in wheelchairs; descendants of Holocaust survivors stood beside young students. This was not a hardened cadre of militants but a cross-section of society, many of whom had never before faced arrest.
At precisely 1 pm, the protesters all sat or lay down silently, cardboard signs raised. There was no chanting, no aggression — only a quiet insistence that they would not accept the criminalisation of conscience.
The police response was equally predictable. Hundreds of officers moved systematically through the crowd, arresting anyone displaying a sign. By the end of the day, nearly 900 people were detained under counter-terrorism law. It was one of the largest mass arrests in modern British history.
Official statements later alleged police were met with violence — officers punched, spat on, objects thrown. Yet independent observers, including Amnesty International, contradicted this. They reported a peaceful assembly disrupted by aggressive policing: batons drawn, protesters shoved, some bloodied.
www.amnesty.org/zh-hans/documents/eur45/0273/2025/en/
Video footage supported at least some of Amnesty's report.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZQGFrqCf5U&t=1283s
The two narratives were irreconcilable, but only one carried the weight and authority of the state.
The entire event unfolded as political theatre. The government proscribed a group, thereby creating a new crime. Protesters, convinced the law was unjust, announced their intent to commit that crime peacefully. The police, forewarned, staged a vast operation. Each side acted out its script. The spectacle allowed the state to present itself as defending order against extremism — while in reality silencing dissent.
The Humanitarian Context: Why Protesters Risked All
To see the Parliament Square protest as a parochial dispute over free speech is to miss its driving force. The demonstrators were not there merely to defend abstract principles. They were responding to what they, and a growing body of international experts, describe as a genocide in Gaza.
By September 2025, Gaza had descended into almost total collapse. Over 63,000 Palestinians had been killed, the majority of them women and children. More than 150,000 had been injured, many maimed for life.
Entire neighbourhoods had been flattened. Famine was confirmed in August, with Israel continuing to impose and even tighten deliberate restrictions on food, water, and fuel, a strategy condemned by human rights groups as a major war crime. Hospitals lay in ruins. Ninety percent of the population had been displaced.
It is in this context that the term genocide has been applied. Legal scholars point not only to mass killings but also to the deliberate infliction of life-destroying conditions, accompanied by rhetoric from Israeli officials dehumanising Palestinians as “human animals.” In September 2025, the International Association of Genocide Scholars declared that Israel’s actions met the legal definition of genocide.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cde3eyzdr63o
Major NGOs, UN experts, and even Israeli human rights groups such as B’Tselem echoed that conclusion.
For the protesters, then, the question was not abstract but immediate: faced with what they saw as a genocide, could they in good conscience remain silent while their own government criminalised resistance to it? Their answer was to risk arrest, their placards making the moral connection explicit: opposing genocide meant supporting those who sought to stop it.
The Price of Dissent
The mass arrests in Parliament Square were not an isolated incident of law enforcement. They were the product of a broader trajectory: escalating tactics by a direct-action movement, a humanitarian catastrophe abroad, and a government determined to suppress dissent at home through the bluntest of instruments.
The official line insists that Palestine Action’s campaign constituted terrorism and thus warranted proscription. On this view, the arrests were simple enforcement of the law. Yet this account obscures the deeper reality: a precedent in which the state redefined non-lethal protest as terrorism, shifting from punishing actions to criminalising expressions of solidarity.
The cost is profound. Once speech and conscience themselves become suspect, dissent is no longer tolerated but pathologised. The chilling effect is already evident: individuals weigh not just whether to join a protest, but whether uttering support might expose them to years in prison. Terror laws, originally justified as a shield against mass violence, are recast as tools of political management.
The protesters understood this. That “thousand-yard stare” captured in their faces was not only the weight of potential arrest, but the knowledge of Gaza’s devastation, the famine and rubble, the deaths mounting daily. It was also the recognition that their own government had chosen to silence them rather than address its complicity.
In a functioning democracy, the question is not why citizens risk arrest for holding a handwritten cardboard sign. It is why a state finds it necessary to treat that act as a terror offence. The answer reveals a narrowing of democratic space, where conscience itself is deemed subversive. And that narrowing, history teaches, carries consequences not just for those arrested, but for the society that allows it.
I took some liberties with the look of the swamp, adding purple and olive accents to the mainly brown color scheme of the film. Mushrooms, roots, strangely colored minifig parts, and the new olive fiddle-head sprouts bespeckle the swamp floor.
The Liberties is an area in central Dublin, Ireland. The name derives from manorial jurisdictions dating from the arrival of the Anglo-Normans in the 12th century. They were town lands united to the city, but still preserving their own jurisdiction (hence "liberties"). The most important of these liberties were the Liberty of St. Sepulchre, under the Archbishop of Dublin, and the Liberty of Thomas Court and Donore belonging to the Abbey of St. Thomas (later called the Earl of Meath's Liberty).The modern Liberties area lies within the former boundaries of these two jurisdictions, between the river Liffey to the north, St. Patrick's Cathedral to the east, Warrenmount to the south and St. James's Hospital to the west.
The Liberties is home to many Dublin institutions, including Digital Hub Fm, a community radio station run by The Digital Hub Development Agency (and home to radio show The Buzz), the National College of Art and Design, Digital Skills Academy, Iveagh Market (currently awaiting redevelopment), Vicar Street music venue, St. Catherine's Church, St. James's Gate Brewery, Dublin Food Co-op, St. James's Hospital, St Patrick's Cathedral and Francis Street with a range of antique dealers. John's Lane Augustinian Church was designed by Augustus Pugin and opened in 1874; the twelve statues in the tower niches are the work of sculptor James Pearse, the father of Irish patriots Patrick and William Pearse.
oakshott liberties and a whole array of favourite fabrics were put together for my sister's special birthday in her choice of colours...thinks I need to make one if these for us now!
This is the location of St Luke’s Church which was closed to the public in 1975. The church was built between 1715 and 1716 but suffered a fire in 1986.
Behind the church was a small cemetery. Among those interred there was Mr. Justice Hellen, second Judge of the Court of Common Pleas in Ireland, who died in 1793. Also buried here were the family of famous publisher Alexander Thom. The relief road leading to Cork St., built 1980-2000, cut through the old cemetery.
In 1994, Dublin City Council purchased the site and the graveyard was divided in two by a new road. What is now St Luke’s Avenue cut through the “Northern Graveyard” of the church. In November 2017, JJ Rhatigan completed a €3.25m 13-month restoration and repurposing of the 17th century Huguenot Church into a three-storey modern state of the art office, with two floors suspended from the roof truss structure within the walls of the 300-year old Church. cif.ie/2018/05/31/jj-rhatigan-restoration-breathes-new-li...
The parish lay at the southern end of the Liberty of Thomas Court and Donore, which in turn was located to the west of the medieval city of Dublin. The northern boundary was the Coombe.
Most of the parish population in the late 17th and 18th centuries were weavers in the Dublin Liberties. Wool manufacturing more or less died out after the Wool Act of 1699, which prevented the export of Irish wool, but silk, cotton and poplin industries continued to employ large numbers and generate wealth until the end of the 18th century. In 1766, in order to check the growth of Catholics, the British government ordered a religious census to be carried out by the Protestant clergy, which showed the parish had 4,953 Catholics and 2,908 Protestants. The Catholics did not have a parish church of their own in this parish, but belonged to the Catholic St. Nicholas parish, but they did, from 1729, have six schools here, all run by women.
After the collapse of the weaving trade and the economic slump after the Act of Union, most of the parishioners were left destitute. So proverbial was this parish for its poverty, that in the 19th century the advertisement of the annual charity sermon for St. Luke's was headed by the words, "The Poorest Parish in Dublin."
A school was established for poor boys of the parish in 1810. When the school was moved to New Street in 1862, the building was converted to form the Widows Alms House, which is still standing.
www.dublincity.ie/main-menu-services-planning-heritage-an...
Today I was a bit confused by this building. Everything on the outside indicates that it is a distillery but I have never seen any sign of industrial activity until today when I saw some construction underway. However, when I managed to get a view of the inside of the building it was only an empty shell.
The second issue was that I was convinced that the company was named the the Dublin Whiskey Company when I photographed the building a year ago. When I got home I checked my photographs and sure enough I was correct.
I then discovered the following: “Quintessential Brands has announced the acquisition of the Dublin Whiskey Company as part of a €10 million investment that will see it build a new Dublin whiskey distillery and visitor experience for its established portfolio of Irish whiskey brands including The Dubliner and The Dublin Liberties.”
I am beginning to believe that what are claimed to be distilleries are in fact ‘visitor experience’ sites and that the product is produced elsewhere at some unknown location.
This is the location of St Luke’s Church which was closed to the public in 1975. The church was built between 1715 and 1716 but suffered a fire in 1986.
Behind the church was a small cemetery. Among those interred there was Mr. Justice Hellen, second Judge of the Court of Common Pleas in Ireland, who died in 1793. Also buried here were the family of famous publisher Alexander Thom. The relief road leading to Cork St., built 1980-2000, cut through the old cemetery.
In 1994, Dublin City Council purchased the site and the graveyard was divided in two by a new road. What is now St Luke’s Avenue cut through the “Northern Graveyard” of the church. In November 2017, JJ Rhatigan completed a €3.25m 13-month restoration and repurposing of the 17th century Huguenot Church into a three-storey modern state of the art office, with two floors suspended from the roof truss structure within the walls of the 300-year old Church. cif.ie/2018/05/31/jj-rhatigan-restoration-breathes-new-li...
The parish lay at the southern end of the Liberty of Thomas Court and Donore, which in turn was located to the west of the medieval city of Dublin. The northern boundary was the Coombe.
Most of the parish population in the late 17th and 18th centuries were weavers in the Dublin Liberties. Wool manufacturing more or less died out after the Wool Act of 1699, which prevented the export of Irish wool, but silk, cotton and poplin industries continued to employ large numbers and generate wealth until the end of the 18th century. In 1766, in order to check the growth of Catholics, the British government ordered a religious census to be carried out by the Protestant clergy, which showed the parish had 4,953 Catholics and 2,908 Protestants. The Catholics did not have a parish church of their own in this parish, but belonged to the Catholic St. Nicholas parish, but they did, from 1729, have six schools here, all run by women.
After the collapse of the weaving trade and the economic slump after the Act of Union, most of the parishioners were left destitute. So proverbial was this parish for its poverty, that in the 19th century the advertisement of the annual charity sermon for St. Luke's was headed by the words, "The Poorest Parish in Dublin."
A school was established for poor boys of the parish in 1810. When the school was moved to New Street in 1862, the building was converted to form the Widows Alms House, which is still standing.
www.dublincity.ie/main-menu-services-planning-heritage-an...
The terminus track layout includes a short passing siding at the approach to the loop; cars normally take the right-hand track, passing through the switch with considerable caution.
Our visits as part of our Open House Dublin October 2017 Ireland weekend incl. in Dublin and Dun Laoghaire, County Dublin. We highly recommended this event for beautiful insights from architecture incl. heritage and modernity, plus more memorable discoveries in-between.
The Liberties is an area in central Dublin, Ireland. The name derives from manorial jurisdictions dating from the arrival of the Anglo-Normans in the 12th century. They were town lands united to the city, but still preserving their own jurisdiction (hence "liberties"). The most important of these liberties were the Liberty of St. Sepulchre, under the Archbishop of Dublin, and the Liberty of Thomas Court and Donore belonging to the Abbey of St. Thomas (later called the Earl of Meath's Liberty).The modern Liberties area lies within the former boundaries of these two jurisdictions, between the river Liffey to the north, St. Patrick's Cathedral to the east, Warrenmount to the south and St. James's Hospital to the west.
The Liberties is home to many Dublin institutions, including Digital Hub Fm, a community radio station run by The Digital Hub Development Agency (and home to radio show The Buzz), the National College of Art and Design, Digital Skills Academy, Iveagh Market (currently awaiting redevelopment), Vicar Street music venue, St. Catherine's Church, St. James's Gate Brewery, Dublin Food Co-op, St. James's Hospital, St Patrick's Cathedral and Francis Street with a range of antique dealers. John's Lane Augustinian Church was designed by Augustus Pugin and opened in 1874; the twelve statues in the tower niches are the work of sculptor James Pearse, the father of Irish patriots Patrick and William Pearse.
A murky day on Patrick Street in the Liberties of Dublin. That's the tower of Christ Church Cathedral in the distance. With regard to that fantastic wall of posters, see the next photo uploaded...
Date: Circa 1898
NLI Ref.: LROY 5933
Ruba Club Theater,Social Club and event space.Founded in 1914.Northern Liberties,Philadelphia Pa.I-Phone 7.
'Broadway Stands Up for Freedom': A concert to benefit the youth programs of the New York Civil Liberties Union held at NYU's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts - Arrivals.
New York City, USA - 25.07.11
The Free Church of Scotland is a Presbyterian Church adhering in its worship and doctrine to the position adopted by the Church of Scotland at the Reformation. Its divergence from the body known as the Church of Scotland dates from the Disruption of 1843 when, under the leadership of Dr. Thomas Chalmers, the Evangelical Party in the Church of Scotland as by Law Established, withdrew from the Establishment to form the Church of Scotland, Free.
The immediate cause of the Disruption was the insistence by the civil courts that the Established Church had to ordain men to the parish ministry irrespective of their acceptability to the parishioners. The Evangelical Party regarded this as an intolerable interference in the spiritual liberties of the church and so they withdrew from the Established Church to form the Free Church. The Disruption was not intended to be a disruption, or division, of the Church. Rather it was to be a severing of the link that bound the Church to the State. However, since the Church was not of one mind regarding the proposed action, the Church itself was split. The Established Church remained; and the Free Church, claiming to be the same church as that which it had left, a church adhering to the same Confession of Faith, loyal to the same principles and differing only inasmuch as in the discharge of its spiritual functions it was to be subservient to no other authority than the will of God as understood by the collective mind of the Church, came into being.
The Established Church and the Free Church were not the only Presbyterian Churches in nineteenth century Scotland. In the eighteenth century there had been more than one secession from the Church of Scotland giving rise to the formation of several groupings with distinctive confessional standpoints. In the late nineteenth century a movement to unite the splintered Presbyterian Churches in Scotland was begun. Not surprisingly, given the different, not to say opposing, nature of the confessional formularies of the various churches, union was found to be possible only on the basis of compromise – an agreement to adopt a confession of faith sufficiently vague and elastic as to allow those holding different views to subscribe it with good conscience. When the Free Church was confronted with this dilemma, a minority took the view that the doctrines which were being treated as open questions were so vital to the faith that the duty of Christian unity had to yield to the higher duty of fidelity to the truth.
The consequence was that when the great majority of the Free Church entered the Union of 1900 to form the United Free Church of Scotland (and, in 1929, to reunite with the Church of Scotland) a small minority elected to continue the Free Church of Scotland. The adherents of this ‘constitutionalist’ party, as it was termed, were to be found mainly, although not exclusively, in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.
Today the Free Church of Scotland although much reduced in size maintains in continuity with the Church of 1843 the system of doctrine and the form of worship adopted by the Church of Scotland at the Reformation. The singing of the Scottish Metrical Psalms unaccompanied by instrumental music is, perhaps, the most distinctive feature of its liturgy, but the chief emphasis of its worship is still to be found in the centrality of the pulpit and the proclamation of a free and sovereign salvation.
The Free Church has continued down until the present day. At the Commission of Assembly in January 2000 a division occurred because a majority was determined to act in a way that was against the constitution or ‘rule book’ of the church, which all office-bearers must uphold. A number of ministers and elders signed a ‘Declaration of Reconstitution’ in which they pledged themselves to continue the Free Church in a constitutional manner.
They are the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing). We use this title to distinguish, solely for purposes of administration, the reconstituted Free Church of Scotland from any residual body claiming that title. We remain the Free Church of Scotland.
The Highlands is a historical region of Scotland. Culturally, the Highlands and the Lowlands diverged from the Late Middle Ages into the modern period, when Lowland Scots language replaced Scottish Gaelic throughout most of the Lowlands. The term is also used for the area north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, although the exact boundaries are not clearly defined, particularly to the east. The Great Glen divides the Grampian Mountains to the southeast from the Northwest Highlands. The Scottish Gaelic name of A' Ghàidhealtachd literally means "the place of the Gaels" and traditionally, from a Gaelic-speaking point of view, includes both the Western Isles and the Highlands.
The area is very sparsely populated, with many mountain ranges dominating the region, and includes the highest mountain in the British Isles, Ben Nevis. During the 18th and early 19th centuries the population of the Highlands rose to around 300,000, but from c. 1841 and for the next 160 years, the natural increase in population was exceeded by emigration (mostly to Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, and migration to the industrial cities of Scotland and England.) and passim The area is now one of the most sparsely populated in Europe. At 9.1/km2 (24/sq mi) in 2012, the population density in the Highlands and Islands is less than one seventh of Scotland's as a whole.
The Highland Council is the administrative body for much of the Highlands, with its administrative centre at Inverness. However, the Highlands also includes parts of the council areas of Aberdeenshire, Angus, Argyll and Bute, Moray, North Ayrshire, Perth and Kinross, Stirling and West Dunbartonshire.
The Scottish Highlands is the only area in the British Isles to have the taiga biome as it features concentrated populations of Scots pine forest: see Caledonian Forest. It is the most mountainous part of the United Kingdom.
Between the 15th century and the mid-20th century, the area differed from most of the Lowlands in terms of language. In Scottish Gaelic, the region is known as the Gàidhealtachd, because it was traditionally the Gaelic-speaking part of Scotland, although the language is now largely confined to The Hebrides. The terms are sometimes used interchangeably but have different meanings in their respective languages. Scottish English (in its Highland form) is the predominant language of the area today, though Highland English has been influenced by Gaelic speech to a significant extent. Historically, the "Highland line" distinguished the two Scottish cultures. While the Highland line broadly followed the geography of the Grampians in the south, it continued in the north, cutting off the north-eastern areas, that is Eastern Caithness, Orkney and Shetland, from the more Gaelic Highlands and Hebrides.
Historically, the major social unit of the Highlands was the clan. Scottish kings, particularly James VI, saw clans as a challenge to their authority; the Highlands was seen by many as a lawless region. The Scots of the Lowlands viewed the Highlanders as backward and more "Irish". The Highlands were seen as the overspill of Gaelic Ireland. They made this distinction by separating Germanic "Scots" English and the Gaelic by renaming it "Erse" a play on Eire. Following the Union of the Crowns, James VI had the military strength to back up any attempts to impose some control. The result was, in 1609, the Statutes of Iona which started the process of integrating clan leaders into Scottish society. The gradual changes continued into the 19th century, as clan chiefs thought of themselves less as patriarchal leaders of their people and more as commercial landlords. The first effect on the clansmen who were their tenants was the change to rents being payable in money rather than in kind. Later, rents were increased as Highland landowners sought to increase their income. This was followed, mostly in the period 1760–1850, by agricultural improvement that often (particularly in the Western Highlands) involved clearance of the population to make way for large scale sheep farms. Displaced tenants were set up in crofting communities in the process. The crofts were intended not to provide all the needs of their occupiers; they were expected to work in other industries such as kelping and fishing. Crofters came to rely substantially on seasonal migrant work, particularly in the Lowlands. This gave impetus to the learning of English, which was seen by many rural Gaelic speakers to be the essential "language of work".
Older historiography attributes the collapse of the clan system to the aftermath of the Jacobite risings. This is now thought less influential by historians. Following the Jacobite rising of 1745 the British government enacted a series of laws to try to suppress the clan system, including bans on the bearing of arms and the wearing of tartan, and limitations on the activities of the Scottish Episcopal Church. Most of this legislation was repealed by the end of the 18th century as the Jacobite threat subsided. There was soon a rehabilitation of Highland culture. Tartan was adopted for Highland regiments in the British Army, which poor Highlanders joined in large numbers in the era of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1790–1815). Tartan had largely been abandoned by the ordinary people of the region, but in the 1820s, tartan and the kilt were adopted by members of the social elite, not just in Scotland, but across Europe. The international craze for tartan, and for idealising a romanticised Highlands, was set off by the Ossian cycle, and further popularised by the works of Walter Scott. His "staging" of the visit of King George IV to Scotland in 1822 and the king's wearing of tartan resulted in a massive upsurge in demand for kilts and tartans that could not be met by the Scottish woollen industry. Individual clan tartans were largely designated in this period and they became a major symbol of Scottish identity. This "Highlandism", by which all of Scotland was identified with the culture of the Highlands, was cemented by Queen Victoria's interest in the country, her adoption of Balmoral as a major royal retreat, and her interest in "tartenry".
Recurrent famine affected the Highlands for much of its history, with significant instances as late as 1817 in the Eastern Highlands and the early 1850s in the West. Over the 18th century, the region had developed a trade of black cattle into Lowland markets, and this was balanced by imports of meal into the area. There was a critical reliance on this trade to provide sufficient food, and it is seen as an essential prerequisite for the population growth that started in the 18th century. Most of the Highlands, particularly in the North and West was short of the arable land that was essential for the mixed, run rig based, communal farming that existed before agricultural improvement was introduced into the region.[a] Between the 1760s and the 1830s there was a substantial trade in unlicensed whisky that had been distilled in the Highlands. Lowland distillers (who were not able to avoid the heavy taxation of this product) complained that Highland whisky made up more than half the market. The development of the cattle trade is taken as evidence that the pre-improvement Highlands was not an immutable system, but did exploit the economic opportunities that came its way. The illicit whisky trade demonstrates the entrepreneurial ability of the peasant classes.
Agricultural improvement reached the Highlands mostly over the period 1760 to 1850. Agricultural advisors, factors, land surveyors and others educated in the thinking of Adam Smith were keen to put into practice the new ideas taught in Scottish universities. Highland landowners, many of whom were burdened with chronic debts, were generally receptive to the advice they offered and keen to increase the income from their land. In the East and South the resulting change was similar to that in the Lowlands, with the creation of larger farms with single tenants, enclosure of the old run rig fields, introduction of new crops (such as turnips), land drainage and, as a consequence of all this, eviction, as part of the Highland clearances, of many tenants and cottars. Some of those cleared found employment on the new, larger farms, others moved to the accessible towns of the Lowlands.
In the West and North, evicted tenants were usually given tenancies in newly created crofting communities, while their former holdings were converted into large sheep farms. Sheep farmers could pay substantially higher rents than the run rig farmers and were much less prone to falling into arrears. Each croft was limited in size so that the tenants would have to find work elsewhere. The major alternatives were fishing and the kelp industry. Landlords took control of the kelp shores, deducting the wages earned by their tenants from the rent due and retaining the large profits that could be earned at the high prices paid for the processed product during the Napoleonic wars.
When the Napoleonic wars finished in 1815, the Highland industries were affected by the return to a peacetime economy. The price of black cattle fell, nearly halving between 1810 and the 1830s. Kelp prices had peaked in 1810, but reduced from £9 a ton in 1823 to £3 13s 4d a ton in 1828. Wool prices were also badly affected. This worsened the financial problems of debt-encumbered landlords. Then, in 1846, potato blight arrived in the Highlands, wiping out the essential subsistence crop for the overcrowded crofting communities. As the famine struck, the government made clear to landlords that it was their responsibility to provide famine relief for their tenants. The result of the economic downturn had been that a large proportion of Highland estates were sold in the first half of the 19th century. T M Devine points out that in the region most affected by the potato famine, by 1846, 70 per cent of the landowners were new purchasers who had not owned Highland property before 1800. More landlords were obliged to sell due to the cost of famine relief. Those who were protected from the worst of the crisis were those with extensive rental income from sheep farms. Government loans were made available for drainage works, road building and other improvements and many crofters became temporary migrants – taking work in the Lowlands. When the potato famine ceased in 1856, this established a pattern of more extensive working away from the Highlands.
The unequal concentration of land ownership remained an emotional and controversial subject, of enormous importance to the Highland economy, and eventually became a cornerstone of liberal radicalism. The poor crofters were politically powerless, and many of them turned to religion. They embraced the popularly oriented, fervently evangelical Presbyterian revival after 1800. Most joined the breakaway "Free Church" after 1843. This evangelical movement was led by lay preachers who themselves came from the lower strata, and whose preaching was implicitly critical of the established order. The religious change energised the crofters and separated them from the landlords; it helped prepare them for their successful and violent challenge to the landlords in the 1880s through the Highland Land League. Violence erupted, starting on the Isle of Skye, when Highland landlords cleared their lands for sheep and deer parks. It was quietened when the government stepped in, passing the Crofters' Holdings (Scotland) Act, 1886 to reduce rents, guarantee fixity of tenure, and break up large estates to provide crofts for the homeless. This contrasted with the Irish Land War underway at the same time, where the Irish were intensely politicised through roots in Irish nationalism, while political dimensions were limited. In 1885 three Independent Crofter candidates were elected to Parliament, which listened to their pleas. The results included explicit security for the Scottish smallholders in the "crofting counties"; the legal right to bequeath tenancies to descendants; and the creation of a Crofting Commission. The Crofters as a political movement faded away by 1892, and the Liberal Party gained their votes.
Today, the Highlands are the largest of Scotland's whisky producing regions; the relevant area runs from Orkney to the Isle of Arran in the south and includes the northern isles and much of Inner and Outer Hebrides, Argyll, Stirlingshire, Arran, as well as sections of Perthshire and Aberdeenshire. (Other sources treat The Islands, except Islay, as a separate whisky producing region.) This massive area has over 30 distilleries, or 47 when the Islands sub-region is included in the count. According to one source, the top five are The Macallan, Glenfiddich, Aberlour, Glenfarclas and Balvenie. While Speyside is geographically within the Highlands, that region is specified as distinct in terms of whisky productions. Speyside single malt whiskies are produced by about 50 distilleries.
According to Visit Scotland, Highlands whisky is "fruity, sweet, spicy, malty". Another review states that Northern Highlands single malt is "sweet and full-bodied", the Eastern Highlands and Southern Highlands whiskies tend to be "lighter in texture" while the distilleries in the Western Highlands produce single malts with a "much peatier influence".
The Scottish Reformation achieved partial success in the Highlands. Roman Catholicism remained strong in some areas, owing to remote locations and the efforts of Franciscan missionaries from Ireland, who regularly came to celebrate Mass. There remain significant Catholic strongholds within the Highlands and Islands such as Moidart and Morar on the mainland and South Uist and Barra in the southern Outer Hebrides. The remoteness of the region and the lack of a Gaelic-speaking clergy undermined the missionary efforts of the established church. The later 18th century saw somewhat greater success, owing to the efforts of the SSPCK missionaries and to the disruption of traditional society after the Battle of Culloden in 1746. In the 19th century, the evangelical Free Churches, which were more accepting of Gaelic language and culture, grew rapidly, appealing much more strongly than did the established church.
For the most part, however, the Highlands are considered predominantly Protestant, belonging to the Church of Scotland. In contrast to the Catholic southern islands, the northern Outer Hebrides islands (Lewis, Harris and North Uist) have an exceptionally high proportion of their population belonging to the Protestant Free Church of Scotland or the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. The Outer Hebrides have been described as the last bastion of Calvinism in Britain and the Sabbath remains widely observed. Inverness and the surrounding area has a majority Protestant population, with most locals belonging to either The Kirk or the Free Church of Scotland. The church maintains a noticeable presence within the area, with church attendance notably higher than in other parts of Scotland. Religion continues to play an important role in Highland culture, with Sabbath observance still widely practised, particularly in the Hebrides.
In traditional Scottish geography, the Highlands refers to that part of Scotland north-west of the Highland Boundary Fault, which crosses mainland Scotland in a near-straight line from Helensburgh to Stonehaven. However the flat coastal lands that occupy parts of the counties of Nairnshire, Morayshire, Banffshire and Aberdeenshire are often excluded as they do not share the distinctive geographical and cultural features of the rest of the Highlands. The north-east of Caithness, as well as Orkney and Shetland, are also often excluded from the Highlands, although the Hebrides are usually included. The Highland area, as so defined, differed from the Lowlands in language and tradition, having preserved Gaelic speech and customs centuries after the anglicisation of the latter; this led to a growing perception of a divide, with the cultural distinction between Highlander and Lowlander first noted towards the end of the 14th century. In Aberdeenshire, the boundary between the Highlands and the Lowlands is not well defined. There is a stone beside the A93 road near the village of Dinnet on Royal Deeside which states 'You are now in the Highlands', although there are areas of Highland character to the east of this point.
A much wider definition of the Highlands is that used by the Scotch whisky industry. Highland single malts are produced at distilleries north of an imaginary line between Dundee and Greenock, thus including all of Aberdeenshire and Angus.
Inverness is regarded as the Capital of the Highlands, although less so in the Highland parts of Aberdeenshire, Angus, Perthshire and Stirlingshire which look more to Aberdeen, Dundee, Perth, and Stirling as their commercial centres.
The Highland Council area, created as one of the local government regions of Scotland, has been a unitary council area since 1996. The council area excludes a large area of the southern and eastern Highlands, and the Western Isles, but includes Caithness. Highlands is sometimes used, however, as a name for the council area, as in the former Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service. Northern is also used to refer to the area, as in the former Northern Constabulary. These former bodies both covered the Highland council area and the island council areas of Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles.
Much of the Highlands area overlaps the Highlands and Islands area. An electoral region called Highlands and Islands is used in elections to the Scottish Parliament: this area includes Orkney and Shetland, as well as the Highland Council local government area, the Western Isles and most of the Argyll and Bute and Moray local government areas. Highlands and Islands has, however, different meanings in different contexts. It means Highland (the local government area), Orkney, Shetland, and the Western Isles in Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service. Northern, as in Northern Constabulary, refers to the same area as that covered by the fire and rescue service.
There have been trackways from the Lowlands to the Highlands since prehistoric times. Many traverse the Mounth, a spur of mountainous land that extends from the higher inland range to the North Sea slightly north of Stonehaven. The most well-known and historically important trackways are the Causey Mounth, Elsick Mounth, Cryne Corse Mounth and Cairnamounth.
Although most of the Highlands is geographically on the British mainland, it is somewhat less accessible than the rest of Britain; thus most UK couriers categorise it separately, alongside Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, and other offshore islands. They thus charge additional fees for delivery to the Highlands, or exclude the area entirely. While the physical remoteness from the largest population centres inevitably leads to higher transit cost, there is confusion and consternation over the scale of the fees charged and the effectiveness of their communication, and the use of the word Mainland in their justification. Since the charges are often based on postcode areas, many far less remote areas, including some which are traditionally considered part of the lowlands, are also subject to these charges. Royal Mail is the only delivery network bound by a Universal Service Obligation to charge a uniform tariff across the UK. This, however, applies only to mail items and not larger packages which are dealt with by its Parcelforce division.
The Highlands lie to the north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, which runs from Arran to Stonehaven. This part of Scotland is largely composed of ancient rocks from the Cambrian and Precambrian periods which were uplifted during the later Caledonian Orogeny. Smaller formations of Lewisian gneiss in the northwest are up to 3 billion years old. The overlying rocks of the Torridon Sandstone form mountains in the Torridon Hills such as Liathach and Beinn Eighe in Wester Ross.
These foundations are interspersed with many igneous intrusions of a more recent age, the remnants of which have formed mountain massifs such as the Cairngorms and the Cuillin of Skye. A significant exception to the above are the fossil-bearing beds of Old Red Sandstone found principally along the Moray Firth coast and partially down the Highland Boundary Fault. The Jurassic beds found in isolated locations on Skye and Applecross reflect the complex underlying geology. They are the original source of much North Sea oil. The Great Glen is formed along a transform fault which divides the Grampian Mountains to the southeast from the Northwest Highlands.
The entire region was covered by ice sheets during the Pleistocene ice ages, save perhaps for a few nunataks. The complex geomorphology includes incised valleys and lochs carved by the action of mountain streams and ice, and a topography of irregularly distributed mountains whose summits have similar heights above sea-level, but whose bases depend upon the amount of denudation to which the plateau has been subjected in various places.
Climate
The region is much warmer than other areas at similar latitudes (such as Kamchatka in Russia, or Labrador in Canada) because of the Gulf Stream making it cool, damp and temperate. The Köppen climate classification is "Cfb" at low altitudes, then becoming "Cfc", "Dfc" and "ET" at higher altitudes.
Places of interest
An Teallach
Aonach Mòr (Nevis Range ski centre)
Arrochar Alps
Balmoral Castle
Balquhidder
Battlefield of Culloden
Beinn Alligin
Beinn Eighe
Ben Cruachan hydro-electric power station
Ben Lomond
Ben Macdui (second highest mountain in Scotland and UK)
Ben Nevis (highest mountain in Scotland and UK)
Cairngorms National Park
Cairngorm Ski centre near Aviemore
Cairngorm Mountains
Caledonian Canal
Cape Wrath
Carrick Castle
Castle Stalker
Castle Tioram
Chanonry Point
Conic Hill
Culloden Moor
Dunadd
Duart Castle
Durness
Eilean Donan
Fingal's Cave (Staffa)
Fort George
Glen Coe
Glen Etive
Glen Kinglas
Glen Lyon
Glen Orchy
Glenshee Ski Centre
Glen Shiel
Glen Spean
Glenfinnan (and its railway station and viaduct)
Grampian Mountains
Hebrides
Highland Folk Museum – The first open-air museum in the UK.
Highland Wildlife Park
Inveraray Castle
Inveraray Jail
Inverness Castle
Inverewe Garden
Iona Abbey
Isle of Staffa
Kilchurn Castle
Kilmartin Glen
Liathach
Lecht Ski Centre
Loch Alsh
Loch Ard
Loch Awe
Loch Assynt
Loch Earn
Loch Etive
Loch Fyne
Loch Goil
Loch Katrine
Loch Leven
Loch Linnhe
Loch Lochy
Loch Lomond
Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park
Loch Lubnaig
Loch Maree
Loch Morar
Loch Morlich
Loch Ness
Loch Nevis
Loch Rannoch
Loch Tay
Lochranza
Luss
Meall a' Bhuiridh (Glencoe Ski Centre)
Scottish Sea Life Sanctuary at Loch Creran
Rannoch Moor
Red Cuillin
Rest and Be Thankful stretch of A83
River Carron, Wester Ross
River Spey
River Tay
Ross and Cromarty
Smoo Cave
Stob Coire a' Chàirn
Stac Polly
Strathspey Railway
Sutherland
Tor Castle
Torridon Hills
Urquhart Castle
West Highland Line (scenic railway)
West Highland Way (Long-distance footpath)
Wester Ross