This Beechmount Avenue board reproduces five pages from the 2007 O’Loan report detailing the various ways in which the security services colluded with (mostly loyalist) paramilitaries; below the pages are a list of victims’ websites and the titles of two “books of interest”.
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Copyright © 2015 Peter Moloney
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A ‘Continuity IRA’ (CIRA) stencil in Waterford Street, west Belfast.
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Copyright © 2015 Peter Moloney
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“Stad na cıorruıthe. Stand up, fight back.” The (UK) Conservative Party has proposed a series of cuts, including a freeze of child benefit, income support, tax credits, dole, and housing benefit. These are opposed by various parties and advocacy groups in both Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Protest rallies were held in both Belfast and Dublin in October last year (2014-10-11).
The mural above is on the Divis Street international wall (Visual History).
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Copyright © 2015 Peter Moloney
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Keiran Nugent (and Brendan Hughes) has been returned to the left-most spot on the International Wall.
This new board is closely based on the mural which was painted over in October in advance of the November 9th non-binding referendum in Catalonia (see Votes About Votes; the yellow background and some of the lettering from the Catalonia mural can still be seen in the image above).
Nugent and Maıréad Farrell were then included in the hunger-strikers mural further down the wall: see I’ll Wear No Convict’s Uniform.
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Copyright © 2015 Peter Moloney
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“The Cross Of Crosses – marking 45 years of conflict in Northern Ireland 1969-2014. Let this be the year the conflict ends. Sponsored by: George McIlroy, IGNITE 2014”
The sculpture, which contains 45 small crosses, was designed by Ross Wilson.
Between the security gates on Northumberland Street, west Belfast.
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Copyright © 2015 Peter Moloney
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This pair of murals was launched in September last year (2014).
On the left A. E. Housman’s 1919 poem “Here dead we lie” is featured, together with the poppies that grew on the Western Front in WWI, in a UVF commemorative mural. The 36th (Ulster) Division is not mentioned specifically. “Here dead we lie, because we did not choose,/to live and shame the land, from which we sprung.//Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose,/but young men think it is, and we were young.”
The plaque on the right-hand side (which pre-dates the murals) lists the names of five UVF members killed in the 70s who are depicted in the second mural.
They are (l-r) Thomas Chapman, James McGregor, Robert McIntyre, William Hannah, and Robert Wadsworth, who were killed between 1973 and 1978. The mural is unusual in that it shows bare-faced full figures; loyalist murals sometimes include head-shots (at the top of the mural, in the apex of a gable wall) but only masked men appear as full figures. There is a similarity in composition and style (and perhaps even palette) to existing republican murals such as this one of five B. Coy IRA volunteers in Ballymurphy.
Carnan (or “C. Coy”) Street, west Belfast.
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Copyright © 2015 Peter Moloney
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This is the post-launch version of the Whiterock flute band’s history wall (as compared to the partially completed wall from last year, before the launch). At the top, we now have a gold disc and orange lily, and, around the doorway on the far right, a list of members, photographs from years gone by, and an account of the launch, which took place on June 14th, 2014.
The final image is from July, by which time “Whiterock F.B.” in bold, white, lettering along the top right had been added.
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Copyright © 2015 Peter Moloney
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The memorial marker for what was Frizzell’s fish shop has been expanded with a (metal) cross of poppies. For the tablet alone (in 2011) see Frizzell’s; for the tablet and engraved medallion (in 2013) see Shankill Bombings.
“This Poppy Cross is in memory of the nine victims murdered at this spot by a no warning sectarian IRA bomb attack on Frizzell’s Fish Shop on 23rd October 1993. The 9 victims included men, women and children.”
“This tablet marks the site of Frizzel[l]’s Fish shop where at 1.05 p.m. on Saturday 23rd October 1993 a terrorist bomb exploded. 9 innocent souls lost their lives and many more were injured.”
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Copyright © 2015 Peter Moloney
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The Somme memorial Garden Of Reflection (between the Shankill graveyard and the Mountainview Tavern) has two new pieces. The first places two headstones (both reading “A soldier of the great war”) in a flower-bed in front of the mural, which shows a soldier, presumably from the Ulster division, on the fields of Flanders: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. 1914-2014”
In the second, three wraiths of dead WWI soldiers – one with its head wrapped in a bandage – rise from the grave to issue a final edict: “Take up our quarrel with the foe; to you from failing hands we throw the torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die, we shall not sleep though poppies grow in Flanders’ fields.”
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Copyright © 2015 Peter Moloney
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“This Poppy Cross is in memory of the five men murdered at this spot by a no warning sectarian IRA bomb attack on the Mountainview Tavern on 5th April 1975.” According to WP, the pub was full of punters who had been watching the 1975 Grand National (youtube) which Red Rum was attempting to win for a third consecutive time.
For a close-up of the engraved medallion, see Shankill Bombings.
Shankill Road, west Belfast
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Copyright © 2015 Peter Moloney
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Peter Moloney Collection 