“To protect partition! And to serve capitalism!” The Royal Ulster Constabulary, Police Service of ‘Northern Ireland’, and An Garda Síochána are branded as agents of the status quo, enforcing the partition of Ireland and the capitalist system. “Know your enemy – reject political policing”.
Joe Hill was executed by firing squad on November 19th, 1915, at the age of 36, convicted of shooting a father and son in Utah. Before his death, he sent a telegram to Big Bill Haywood, founder-member of the IWW, saying “Don’t waste any time mourning. Organize!” (WP) The centenary of his death was marked by graffiti on Free Derry Corner.
On the back of the wall is an RNU (Fb) board showing a prisoner behind bars, a victim of internment: “End internment and Britain’s torture of Irish POWs”.
On the buttresses are IRPWA flyers: “End controlled movement now!”, “End forced isolation”, “End the brutality of republican prisoners”, “Stop the brutal & degrading strip searches”, “End the brutality in Maghaberry”, “www.irpwa.com‘.
The wave of people seeking asylum from political strife in Europe continues.”Fáılte romhaıbh a chaırde” is Irish for “Welcome, friends” while “Qaxootiga soo Dhaweyn” is Somali for “Refugees welcome”. Somalis make up about 9% of the current wave of migrants from Africa and Syrians 33% (Irish Times). 2,000 refugees are to be settled in Northern Ireland (belfastlive). The yellow-on-black outline of parents and daughter running originates in the United States, used on ‘caution’ signs along highways near the US-Mexico border.
John O’Mahony was an Irish-born but American-based republican who founded the Fenian Brotherhood, whose goal was to send arms and financial support to the Irish Republican Brotherhood in Ireland (Brittanica).
His words from the IRB newspaper The Irish People are used in this RNU [“www.republicanunity.org“] board in Derry: “Every individual born on Irish soil constitutes, according to Fenian doctrine, a unit of that nation, without reference to race or religious belief; and as such he is entitled to a heritage on Irish soil, subject to such economic, political and equitable regulations as shall seem fit to the future legislators of liberated Ireland. From this heritage none shall be excluded.”
The date given is 1868, but the paper closed in 1865 when its offices were raided and its executives, including manager O’Donovan Rossa, were arrested.
Rossville St, Bogside, Derry. The simpler board is in Lone Moor Road, in the Brandywell.
“Covenants without swords are only words” is a slight emendation of a line from Chapter 17 of Thomas Hobbes’s The Leviathan: “And covenants, without the sword, are but words and of no strength to secure a man at all.”
It is applied here to the 1912 Ulster Covenant being backed up by the 1914 gun-running. Edward Carson is shown acknowledging the cheers of the Ulster Volunteers, who have been drilling at Glencairn (as seen in this Shankill mural).
Above the Unionist souvenir shop on the Newtownards Road, east Belfast. Seen previously in 2012: Where Ulstermen Shop.
Three flyers on Free Derry Corner (Visual History) in the Bogside: “End the brutality in Maghaberry”, “End the brutality of republican prisoners”, and “End forced isolation”.
“Irish Republican Prisoners Welfare Association [web]. No change from H-Block to MagHaberry. Supporting republican POWs.”
Here is a gallery of images from Levin Road in Kilwilkie, Lurgan, including “One Ireland, one vote – 1916 Societies [web]”, “People Should Not Inform”, “RUC – PSNI not welcome”, “Join RSF [web] – Éıre Nua”, “IRA”, “IRPWA” [web], “End internment now”, “End the isolation of republican POWs”, “RUC – PSNI different name, same aim”, and “Ka-boom” from an RPG slamming into the side of the post office.