Dear ________,

We are writing to you concerning your upcoming engagement at the Realisation Festival in St. Giles House in June. As you will be aware, the festival is hosted by the current Earl of Shaftesbury, Nicholas Ashley-Cooper. You may not be aware that Ashley-Cooper claims ownership over the beds, banks, and soil of Loch nEachach (Lough Neagh) in the north of Ireland. Loch nEachach is the largest lake on the island of Ireland and is currently in the midst of ecological catastrophe due in part to industrial activities that Ashley-Cooper generates substantial wealth from. He was able to restore St. Giles House to its current state, which is a selling point of the Realisation Festival, thanks to this source of wealth^[1]. Loch nEachach came into Ashley-Cooper’s ownership via his great-great-grandfather’s marriage into the Chichester family in 1857. Sir Arthur Chichester staked his claim over Loch nEachach through colonial violence during England’s colonisation of Ulster (the majority of which now makes up ‘Northern Ireland’) in the early 17th century. To quote Chichester in 1601: “We have burned and destroyed along the Lough even within four miles of Dungannon, where we killed man, woman, child, horse, beast and whatever we found.”^[2] It does not require any stretch of the imagination to understand that Chichester’s colonial violence is the basis of Ashley-Cooper’s monetary wealth and the estate in which he resides in 2024.

There are five companies carrying out sand dredging in the lake for the past few decades. Ashley-Cooper is paid a royalty for each tonne that is extracted, with more than a million tonnes extracted each year. A 2013 study at Queen’s University Belfast showed “the number of winter migratory birds at the lough had dropped by nearly 80% in a decade”, a 66% decline in insect populations, and according to the Lough Neagh Fishermen’s Co-operative Society the areas of the lake where dredging is taking place have become dead zones for fish.^[3] Recently the lake has seen vast blooms of toxic blue-green algae develop in the warm months which threatens the health of both wildlife and humans.^[4] All of this is happening in a lake that provides more than 40% of the drinking water for ‘Northern Ireland’.^[5]

Furthermore, local people have been raising the alarm about the situation around Loch nEachach for decades which escalated in the summer of 2023. The communities living on its banks and the surrounding areas have led the campaign to protect it and to demand that this precious and sacred lough be freed from the colonial plunder of the Earl of Shaftesbury and that its stewardship be returned to the people at no expense, which is long overdue.

We would ask you to reconsider your participation and attendance at the Realisation Festival. Events such as this lend Ashley-Cooper public legitimacy and respectability when there is nothing legitimate nor respectable about directly benefiting off the back of intergenerational colonial inheritances at the expense of both people and planet.

Respectfully yours,

Slí Eile

Save Lough Neagh Coalition

Communities Against the Injustice of Mining

Save Our Sperrins

Yes to Life, No To Mining

Save Inis Eoghain from Goldmining

Rights of Nature Donegal

[Penultimate paragraph in separate email addressed specifically to the céilidh band::

Since you are a céilidh band advertising yourselves as providing “Scottish céilidhs, Irish weddings and events”, we would further ask that you consider the dissonance that you would entertain guests at Ashley-Cooper’s festival when he is monetarily benefitting from the colonisation of people from whose culture you promote and presumably make your livelihoods. For you to participate in this way at the festival would be an egregious form of cultural appropriation and disrespect.]