How about a mural for theoriginal ‘Derry Girls’? - call

Paul Hughes, of Enagh Youth Forum, said UV Arts’ homage to Lisa McGee’s hit sitcom suggested a way of honouring the women of Derry who clothed the world in expertly cut cotton and linen for over a century.

“The ‘Derry Girls’ mural recently completed in the city centre is absolutely brilliant. However, there’s another generation of ‘Derry Girls’ that we are overlooking here - the original ‘Derry Girls’, the shirt factory workers,” he said.

Carlisle Circus would be an ideal location as the site of the old Tillie and Henderson factory, famously cited by Karl Marx in ‘Das Kapital,’ said Mr. Hughes.

Marx, in a section on the absorption of cottage industries by the factory system, wrote: “Besides the factory operatives...whom it concentrates in large masses at one spot, and directly commands, capital also sets in motion, by means, of invisible threads, another army; that of the workers in the domestic industries, who dwell in the large towns and are also scattered over the face of the country. An example: The shirt factory of Messrs. Tillie at Londonderry, which employs 1,000 operatives in the factory itself, and 9,000 people spread up and down the country and working in their own houses.”

“Perhaps a better way to remember the shirt factory workers would be to create a mural on one of the gables at the end of John Street/Carlisle Road,” said Mr. Hughes.