Living History

Chambers St, dominated by The National Museum of Scotland, the Sherriff Courts, and the statute of William Chambers, is also used sometimes as the starting point of marches and parades.

Crowding this street on Saturday:
the James Connolly Society, with their green banners and flags, on their annual commemorative march in honour of the Edinburgh-born Irish Marxist Socialist patriot who was executed by the British army in the wake of the Easter Uprising of 1916;
a small band of Unionists, draped in Union Jacks and accompanied by a large dog, kept behind a set of crowd barriers;
a large contingent of police, on foot and on horseback;

What, I wonder, would William Chambers (publisher, town improver, Lord Provost) think of the continued existence of this particular conflict, milling round his feet in his improved city.