The People Arose In 69

This is the oldest continuously maintained mural in Belfast. It was touched up in 1987 and 1990, and was repainted in 2013. It features a central phoenix and the shields of the four provinces, and two rhyming couplets: The people arose in 69/they will do it again at any time. Maggie Thatcher think again/don’t let our brave men die in vain

Clowney Street, Beechmount, west Belfast

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Copyright © 1981 LC
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O’Casey/Break Thatcher’s Back

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The quote on the left is from Sean O’Casey, not “Bobby Sands MP”: “You cannot put a rope around the neck of an idea; you cannot put an idea up against the barrack-square wall and riddle it with bullets; you cannot confine it in the strongest prison cell that your slaves could ever build.”

(The quote is reportedly from O’Casey’s prose lament for Thomas Ashe, either the initial pamphlet in November 1917 (?entitled “The Story Of Thomas Ashe”?) or the expanded version of 1918 (entitled “The Sacrifice Of Thomas Ashe” (auction site)), though no copy of this can be found on-line, only the two poems ‘Thomas Ashe’ and ‘Lament For Thomas Ashe’ (eastwallforall).

On the right, an H-Block blanketman is on his knees, protesting for (political) “status now”, surrounded by barbed wire and two flags on halberds: the Irish Tricolour and the Starry Plough.

Rockmore Road, west Belfast

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 1981 LC
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