Years From Now They Will Ask You

“Years from now they will ask you where you were when your comrades were dying on hungerstrike. Shall you say you were with us or shall you say that you were conforming to the very system that drove us to our deaths[?]” INLA (sign the light-pole as well as the flags and red star in the mural) volunteer Patsy O’Hara, from Derry, joined the hunger strike on the same day as Raymond McCreesh (March 22nd) and died, 61 days later, later in the same day (May 21st, 11:29 p.m.) as him (2:11 a.m.).

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Copyright © 2007 Peter Moloney
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D Company Ballysillan

The memorial in the middle has now (compared to the original mural) been labelled (on a plinth) “In memory of 36th (Ulster) Division” but the names on the stone remain those of UVF volunteers John Bingham and Thomas Stewart.

The plaques are to (left) Davey Phillips, Patrick McEvoy, (top middle) John Bingham, (right) Thomas Stewart, Chin Taylor. The plaque in the middle is to “the officers and volunteers of of D Company 1st Battalion Ulster Volunteer Force”.

Ballysillan Road, north Belfast

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Copyright © 2007 Peter Moloney
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Young Guns

Sixteen year-old Glen “Spacer” Branagh was killed by a premature blast bomb during a riot on Remembrance Sunday (Nov. 11), 2001. His portrait is on a board at the centre of UDA flags and guns (and the tiger of Tiger’s Bay). “Ulster Young Militants – Terrae filius.” The background was previously yellow.

“If the Provos and the pan nationalist front and the British and Irish governments keep trying to succeed in a united Ireland then they may prepare themselves for another 30 bloody years for the battle will have just begun.”

Edlingham Street, north Belfast

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Copyright © 2007 Peter Moloney
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Friends And Fellow-Dockers

“Remembered with pride and affection our friends and fellow-dockers who were killed at work or suffered pain and premature death from unsafe and unhealthy working conditions in the port of Belfast. ‘On a ship’s dark deck a man is dead/wives, sisters, brothers, parents, shake heads and cry/as they knew not who to blame./An injustice has arrived/pain and anguish begins.’ Memories are everlasting. Ar dheıs Dé go raıbh siad. Erected by the Dockers Club and SHIP [Shared Heritage Interpretive Project] on International Workers Day, April 2007.” The plaque is on an exterior wall of the Dockers Club, adjacent to the mural. Above are portraits of Jim Larkin, James Connolly, Winifred Carney, with the emblem of the IGWU/OBU [One Big Union]. Larkin founded the ITGWU in 1909. It was led by Connolly from 1914 to 1916. Carney, from Bangor, founded the Irish Textile Workers’ Union in Belfast in 1912

See also: Dockers And Carters Strike 1907.

Pilot Street, Belfast

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Copyright © 2007 Peter Moloney
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