For the twentieth anniversary of the 1981 hunger strike the mural and memorial to Bobby Sands was replaced with this image of blanket men Hugh Rooney and Freddie Toal in their Long Kesh cell.
Gardenmore Road, Twinbrook, Dunmurry/Belfast
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2002 Peter Moloney
M01631
“Republican Sınn Féın demands political status for all republican POWs NOW”. Vintage imagery, of a blanket man and of a 1981 trio of IRA volunteers with weapons, used in an RSF board in Divis Street, Belfast.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2002 Peter Moloney
M01620
Blanketman Hugh Rooney and the names of the ten deceased 1981 hunger strikers on the rear of Free Derry Corner, Lecky Road, Derry.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2001 Peter Moloney
M01569
Blanket-man in Long Kesh prison. Help is requested with the lower graffiti – “anti-treaty o[…] now”?
Coach Road, Derry
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 1998 Peter Moloney
M01428
Here is a very faded 1993 version of 1985’s On The Blanket, in Fahan Street, Derry. A blanket man stands in front of an “H”; on the right are a pair of hands in barbed wire.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 1993 Peter Moloney
M01055
The volunteers on the left (from 1916) and right (from 1969) each hold a rifle, and the blanket man in the middle also appears to be holding a staff of some sort. Get in touch if you know exactly what it is, and if you can identify the Twinbrook street (Gardenmore Road?) where the mural was.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 1987 Peter Moloney
M00510
locationunknown
A prisoner on the blanket stands in front of a brown “H”. On the right hand side, a fist clutches a strand of barbed wire. There are also hunger strikers’ names on the gable wall to the left. Fahan Street, Derry. For the mural on the background-left wall, see IRA (P).
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 1985 Peter Moloney
M00280
Here is a 1982 image of the Break Thatcher’s Back mural in Rockmore Road, Belfast, showing a blanket man with outstretched arms demanding “status now”, framed by a large “H” and surrounded by barbed wire, Tricolours, and the Starry Plough. In 1981, there was a Sean O’Casey quote on the left, rather than a lily and the year of the Easter Rising — 1916. “Free Belfast” in the top left.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 1982 LC
M00212 M00213
The Falls Road, Belfast, just below Dunlewey Street, is scarred from a burnt-out vehicle and on the walls of Adoration Convent: Support The Prisoners And Their 5 Demands.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 1981 LC
M00214
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
M00211
Peter Moloney Collection 