This is a vintage cut-out in the Sunnylands estate (visible in 2008 Google Street View). The central board – a RHC emblem – had a plastic or paper layer between the star/wings and the circular back-board with red-white-and-blue colours and the words “Red Hand Commando” in a circle. The hooded gunmen on either side each appear to be a single, painted, carving.
Salia Avenue, Sunnylands, Carrickfergus
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Copyright © 2015 Peter Moloney
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This is a very aggressive set of boards, in Hampton Crescent behind the Antiville (Larne) community centre: two of them show silhouetted UDA (3rd battalion, D company) gunmen in active poses, and another deploys the fearsome figure of Eddie The Head. Rather than the Union flag that he carries in other murals and on the original Iron Maiden album cover (see Eddie’s Visual History page), in this version “The Trooper” carries a UDA flag (with the UFF symbol also shown). “AYM” is presumably “Antiville Young Militants”.
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Copyright © 2015 Peter Moloney
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The stencil might be crude but the intent is clear: to suggest that the anti-Agreement IRA (probably the Continuity IRA, specifically) intend to continue the physical fight against British occupation.
Durrow Park, Derry
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Copyright © 2015 Peter Moloney
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Here are a number of republican pieces from Roslea/Rosslea, Co Fermanagh:
“In proud memory of Vol. Bobby Sands MP Óglaıgh Na hÉıreann. Elected by the people of this constituency 9th April 1981. Died after 66 days on hungerstrike 5th May 1981. ‘I’ll wear no convict’s uniform/Nor meekly serve my time/That Britain might brand Ireland’s fight/Eight hundred years of crime’. Fuaır sé bás ar son saoırse muıntır na hÉıreann.”
Sands’s poem The Rhythm Of Time is at the centre of portraits of the twelve dead hunger strikers in the Troubles era; the board was mounted in 2011 for the thirtieth anniversary of the 1981 strike. The text at the bottom includes this line: “The use of the hunger-strike by Irish republicans began when James Connolly, while imprisoned during the 1913 ‘lock-out’, went on hunger strike.”
“This monument was erected on the bicentenary of the 1798 rebellion in memory of John Treanor 24-4-1797, Bernard McMahon 12-10-1797, Patrick Smyth 12-19-1797, John Connolly 12-10-1797, Connie Green 26-11-1955, Tony Ahern 10-5-1973, Seamus McElwain 26-4-1986. Suaımhneas síorraí dóıbh. [eternal rest [be] upon them] ‘To break the connection with England the never failing source of all our political evils, and to assert the independence of my country’ – Wolfe Tone, August 1796 [‘An Argument on Behalf of the Catholics of Ireland by a Northern Whig’, September, 1791]”
Church Street and Finn Park, Roslea/Rosslea
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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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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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Anti-Agreement stencilling in Meenan Square, Bogside, Derry: “Ireland unfree shall never be at peace – P. Pearse. PSNI-RUC not welcome. Tıocfaıdh Ár Lá” and “CIRA – RUC/PSNI scum beware”
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Copyright © 2015 Peter Moloney
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“Cumann Na mBan” in Irish is “the women’s organization/council/society” in English. The organization in question is the republican paramilitary group which was founded on April 2, 1914 and celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2014.
The mural is at the bottom of Teach Na bhFıann/Fianna House (formerly Dill House) in the New Lodge.
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Copyright © 2015 Peter Moloney
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Éırígí (web) support for the PFLP (Popular Front For The Liberation Of Palestine – WP). For more on the “skyjacker” Leila Khaled, see the mural featuring her in Hugo Street.
Ludlow Square, New Lodge, north Belfast
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Copyright © 2015 Peter Moloney
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Kieran Doherty died on August 2nd, 1981, after 73 days on hunger-strike. The (repainted – compare to 2001 | 2004 | 2011) mural in his memory depicts scenes from his funeral on 1981-08-04.
The photograph on which the central panel is based is by Derek Spiers; see also this set at hungerstrikes.org. The volley took place outside the Doherty family home in nearby Commedagh Drive (Belfast Media).
The portrait of Doherty in the top left replaces a similar one in the same location; the plaque at the portrait’s top-right corner remains from before. The angled panel shows Doherty’s parents, Alfie and Margaret.
The (actual) memorial stone, which is here reproduced on the perpendicuar joining wall, was also seen in 2007.
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Copyright © 2014/2015 Peter Moloney
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