Starry Plough

Violence Is The Voice Of An Oppressed People

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Martin Luther King in 1966 (in an interview on CBS) said “A riot is the language of the unheard” and in 1967 (in “Beyond Vietnam“) wrote “I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government.” Misquoted and taken out of context, his words are used approvingly in this INLA/IRA mural.

Gransha Avenue, Belfast

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Copyright © 1981 LC
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O’Casey/Break Thatcher’s Back

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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

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Copyright © 1981 LC
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In Loving Memory

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Rising behind a set of crosses, it’s not clear whether the sunburst in the mural above is only religious in nature or also symbolises the Fianna. It rises between the Starry Plough and the Tricolour. To the left is a list of the deceased hunger-strikers — Roll of honour: Volunteers B. Sands MP, F. Hughes, R. McCreesh, P. O’Hara, J. McDonnell, M. Hurson, K. Lynch, K. Doherty TD, T. McElwee, M. Devine.” — and to the right, a poem: The Volunteer: I stood beside an Irish grave/A green and silent plot/A little cross marked RIP/Was all that marked the spot.

?Berwick Rd, Ardoyne? Belfast

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Copyright © 1981 LC
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