“Undeterred and undefeated”. In May 1974, the Ulster Worker’s Council (led by H&W shop stewards and supported by the UDA) organised a strike protesting the December 1973 Sunningdale Agreement. After two weeks, the Executive collapsed and direct ruler from Westminster resumed.
These plaques and headstones are from St Colman’s cemetery in Lurgan (on N. Circular Road). The most notable and the first and last: Thomas Harte and Paddy McGrath (a 1916 Rising participant) who were executed by De Valera in 1940 for the deaths of two (Irish) Special Branch officers who were among a party that stormed their house, though it was never established whose bullets had killed the pair (more at Treason Felony).
The car in which McKerr, Toman, and Burns were travelling was shot 109 times by a specially trained RUC squad (Headquarters Mobile Support Unit – HMSU), under the control of (UK) special branch in an apparent shoot-to-kill operation.
“In memory of Ben Redfern, Lindsay Mooney, Cecil McKnight, Gary Lynch, Ray Smallwoods, William Campbell. Lest we forget.” For Redfern and Lynch, see It’s Still Only Thursday; Smallwoods has a WP page; Campbell died in 2002 in a premature pipe-bomb explosion (Guardian).
Flyers flutter among the watch towers of Long Kesh/Maze/H-Blocks reading “Victory to the blanketmen”, “Support the hunger strike”, Political status now”.
The area known as the Pound Loney (Pound Lane; the area north and west of Inst, modern-day Divis and lower Millfield areas) is featured in a long mural in Durham Street, Belfast. It features many of the place-names, landmarks, and personalities of yesteryear, including the Arcadian cinema on Albert Street – left of centre. Also featured are the Divis tower block, the Blessed Virgin mural, Barney’s mill, McGahan’s pub, Saint Peter’s, and the mural on the Morning Star hostel. The streets include Barrack St, Galway St, Cullingtree Rd, Scotch St, Christian Place, Derby St, Castle St, Pound St, Nail St, Currie St, Albert St, Brook St, Jude St, Hamill St, Divis St, Milford St and Massereene (Row or Path or Walk) in Divis flats. If you can identify any of the characters in the mural, please leave a comment.
“Cur stad le cıníochas” [“put an end to racism”] – This WARN (West Against Racism Network) mural puts anti-Irish sentiment (in London 1966 – “No blacks, no dogs, no Irish“) in parallel with racism against modern-day immigrants to Belfast.
Wolfe Tone is buried in Bodenstown graveyard, Co Kildare, and every year republicans make a pilgrimage there to commemorate his role in the United Irishmen’s 1798 Rebellion and the beginning of Irish nationalism. In 1972, the address was given by Máıre Drumm, vice-president of Sınn Féın, a position she held until she was assassinated in the Mater Hospital by the Red Hand Commando in October 1976.
“Ní síocháın gan saoırse … thinker and doer, dreamer of the immortal dram and doer of the immortal deed. We owe to this dead man more than we can ever repay him. To his teaching we owe it that there is such a thing as Irish nationalism. And to the memory of the deed he nerved his generation to do. To the memory of 1798 we owe it that there is any manhood left in Ireland …”