Belfast west

The Training Ground

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Jeff Perks’s 1979 linotype “The Training Ground” was reproduced on Beechmount Avenue circa 1981. It depicts the history of the British Army in Ireland. Rolston (“Politics, Painting and Popular Culture: the Political Wall Murals of Northern Ireland”, Media, Culture and Society 9.1, 1987) claims (p. 19) that the image would have been familiar to nationalists from the cover of “Ireland: Voices For Withdrawal” (shown below). The baton-wielding policeman on the right was also reproduced in a famous 1996 Derry mural (“68-96 Nothing Has Changed” M01279).

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Copyright © 1981 LC
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Notes

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Cormac (Brian Moore) was a cartoonist for Republican News, whose “Notes” (Notes For A History Of Ireland) cartoon began appearing in August 1976. The first comic suggested there would be “a handful of comic strips” but Notes went on appearing almost weekly in Republican News and An Phoblacht/Republican News for a total of 28 years, until 2004. During the first decade, Cormac was also a cartoonist for Socialist Challenge (producing a strip called “Bad Taste” from 1978-1983) and then Socialist Action (“A Piece Of The Action” from 1983-1987).

In the strip above, a republican dares to be happy despite the Troubles and “a bleak and hopeless future of poverty and unemployment”, taking delight in “three British soldiers sent to eternity/The M-60 kettling so merrily”.

The strip itself appeared in the AP/RN of 1982-04-01, and perhaps also in an earlier edition.

“Painted by Sınn Féın Youth” next to Let Us Rise in Beechmount Avenue, west Belfast.

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Copyright © 1981 LC
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Let Us Rise

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“The great only appear great because we are on our knees – let us rise”. The quote – also used by Jim Larkin – appeared in Connolly’s article on Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee visit to Ireland. His portrait is flanked by the tricolour and the starry plough.

“Sponsored by trade union group”, painted by Digger.

Beechmount Avenue, west Belfast.

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Copyright © 1981 LC
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Rolston 1991 p. 95 gives 1982.

Blessed Are Those Who Hunger For Justice

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Three images of a mural on the Whiterock Road, Belfast, showing a blanketman/hunger-striker and a uniformed volunteer on a tricolour cloth at the feet of an angel holding a banner reading “blessed are those who hunger for justice“. Above are the words “Their hunger, their pain, our struggle“. The shields of the four provinces of Ireland and two shamrocks complete the mural. The third image shows the mural in progress, and it looks as though it has already been vandalised.

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Copyright © 1981 LC
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Blessed Are Those Who Hunger For Justice

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A hunger-striker lies in bed praying with rosary beads and bathed in beams of light coming from the hands of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

(Painted by Con, who describes the mural as an attempt to break through with nationalists (as distinct from republicans), though one source says “by a Ballymurphy man, named something like Tim Skillen/Skelly”.)

Rockmount Street, west Belfast

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Copyright © 1981 LC
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Ireland’s Cross To Bear

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Here are four panels on Beechmount Avenue (Belfast) in 1981 depicting (from left to right) Ireland in the grip of a fist with a Union Flag cufflink, a prison guard whose mouth holds prison bars, a naked figure in a tricoloured scarf crucified on a Union Flag, and Ireland carrying a cross “Made in Britain”.

At least three of the original images are by Jack Clafferty, a founder member of the Troops Out Movement, and can be found on-line.

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Copyright © 1981 LC
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Incident At Narrow Water — In Progress

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Here are three images of a Rockville Street (CNR west Belfast) mural being painted in 1981, depicting (one part of) the IRA’s 1979 ambush of the British Army at Narrow Water Castle, near Warrenpoint (WP), on the same day that Louis Mountbatten was killed (see previously: 13 Gone But Not Forgotten).

Images of the completed mural are in a separate entry.

For interpretation of the piece, see Visual History 4 – Paramilitary Murals (1981-1982).

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Copyright © 1981 LC
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