Bobby Sands

Our Revenge Will Be The Laughter Of Our Children

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The Sınn Féın offices and shop on the Falls Road at Sevastopol Street were torn down and rebuilt in 2000. A mural had been on the gable wall since 1982, initially advertising An Phoblacht/Republican News, and later included Bobby Sands. (1989 white | 1990 blue)

The mural on the new gable, shown above, removes the full An Phoblacht/Republican News masthead and instead includes the visual part of it (most prominent in the earliest mural on the wall An Phoblacht – Official Organ): the crest of 1798’s United Irishmen – “Equality” and “It is new strung and shall be heard” around a Maid Of Erin harp and the cap of liberty.

Otherwise the wall is devoted to “Irish republican, revolutionary, poet, Gaeligeoir, visionary” Bobby Sands/Roıbeaırt Ó Seachnasaıgh, adding another famous saying of his, namely “our revenge will be the laughter of our children” alongside “everyone, republican or otherwise, has their own particular part to play”. [Diary, March 14th, 1981]

The mural also adds a border of breaking chains (and a lark) and (not visible in the apex) a phoenix and the word “saoırse”. The multi-coloured border is perhaps the most unusual element, working with the sky-blue background and Sands’s smiling face to give the mural a positive feel.

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Copyright © 2001 Peter Moloney
M01489

Our Revenge Will Be The Laughter Of Our Children

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For the 20th anniversary of the 1981 hunger strike, this freestanding “H” was constructed along the Falls Road, Belfast. Across the centre bar are the words (usually attributed to Bobby Sands) “our revenge will be the laughter of our children” and images of IRA (Tricolour) and youth (Sunburst) volunteers firing over a lark encircled in barbed wire.

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Copyright © 2001 Peter Moloney
M01461

The Gibraltar Three

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The Gibraltar Three (Maıréad Farrell, Sean Savage, Dan McCann) – “executed by British crown forces in Gibraltar 6th March 1988” – are memorialised with a plaque and the last three verses of Bobby Sands’s Rhythm Of Time: “It is found in every light of hope/It knows no bounds nor space/It has risen in red and black and white/It is there in every race.//It lies in the hearts of heroes dead/It screams in tyrants’ eyes/It has reached the peak of mountains high/It comes searing ‘cross the skies.//It lights the dark of this prison cell/It thunders forth its might/It is the undauntable thought, my friend/That thought that says ‘I’m right!'”

Hawthorn Street, west Belfast

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Copyright © 2001 Peter Moloney
M01455

Ten Hunger Strikers

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The lower part of the long wall in Bishop Street, Derry, in 1988. From left to right: a funeral volley fired over a scroll (blank in the first shot, filled-in in the fifth; Cú Chulaınn dying; portraits of the ten deceased 1981 hunger strikers; Bobby Sands’s “spirit of freedom” quote (shown in the final image) which concludes “I remain what I am – a political prisoner of war”; a celtic cross; “Free All POWs” (similar image to Racecourse Road); and a lark in barbed wire over a Tricolour.

For the inclusion of Cú Chulaınn in this mural, see the Visual History page.

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Copyright © 1998 Peter Moloney
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