Today’s images come from London but there is an Irish and a Belfast connection. Charlotte Despard was a novelist, suffragist, socialist, pacifist, vegetarian, and Sinn Féin advocate in the years around the Lock Out, the Rising, and the War Of Independence. She moved from London – where she worked to alleviate poverty among the children of the Battersea area – to Dublin after WWI and was classed as a “dangerous subversive” by the Irish Free State. The image above (which is a panel from a mural celebrating political radicals of Battersea, below) reproduces a photograph of Despard addressing the crowd at an anti-fascist/Communist rally in Trafalgar Square on June 11th, 1933 – four days before her 89th birthday. At the end of a very long of activism, she moved to Whitehead, County Antrim, where she died in 1939, and was buried in Glasnevin (WP).
A Battersea street is named after her – Charlotte Despard Avenue; the plaque is at 177 Lavender Hill – the offices of the Labour Party in Battersea.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © Peter Moloney
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Extramural Activity 
We will be unveiling a Battersea Society/ Ballymore plaque to Charlotte on 5th June in Embassy Gardens behind the US Embassy. She is much appreciated in the regenerated Nine Elms part of Battersea. It will be unveiled by the Irish Ambassador and speakers will include Margaret Mulvihill her biographer who dubbed her Mother of Battersea, Sean Mulryan CEO Ballymore and Marsha De Cordova MP.
I first tried to get a commemorative plaque to her in 1985 when Irish Women in Wandsworth had adopted her as our mascot.