“Our revenge will be the laughter of our children.” For the thirtieth anniversary (30ú comóradh) of his death on May 5th, 1981, a board in Twinbrook remembering IRA volunteer, hunger striker, and MP, Bobby Sands.
Two sides of the same board, in the front yard of Connolly House (Sınn Féın headquarters on the Andersonstown Road). Top, “sometimes it takes a 4-letter word to be heard … vótáıl Sınn Féın” with four moments of protest – votes for women, Civil Rights, Sands’s election, Sands. Bottom, 95th anniversary Easter Rising commemoration with (1981 hunger striker) Pat Sheehan as the main speaker.
“‘Dublin, Belfast, Cork, and Donegal [we’re] on the one road‘ to Irish Unity. Vótáıl Sınn Féın on May 5th.” Electoral board at the Glen Road/Falls Road junction.
IRA prisoner Kieran Nugent is reputed to have said – upon being imprisoned after the removal of Special Category status in 1976 – “I’m not a criminal – the Brits will have to nail prison clothes to my back.”
The mural is a February repainting of Cıarán Nugent and for the launch it was surrounded with posters from the period.
“Here marks the spot where baby Angela Gallagher, aged 17 months, was shot while strolling to the sweet shop with her sister Paula on the 3rd September 1971.” Gallagher was shot by an IRA sniper attacking a British Army patrol (Sutton).
A call for “truth” and “justice” concerning the Ballymurphy Massacre. “11 people in west Belfast from the Greater Ballymurphy neighbourhood were murdered by the British Army as internment without trial was violently carried out on August 9th, 1971. Proper police investigations were never undertaken and no one has served a day in prison for causing these deaths. The familys [sic] of those murdered deserve and demand the truth be told by the state about its policies and actions of those who carried them out.” The 11 are (clockwise) Eddie Docherty, Joseph Corr, John McKerr, John Laverty, Joan Connolly, Fr Hugh Mullan, Danny Teggart, Joseph Murphy, Paddy McCarthy, Frank Quinn, Noel Philips.