Here are two images from Twinbrook Road, Belfast, one of a hunger strike 20th anniversary board with portraits of the ten deceased men and a lark carrying keys in a circle of barbed wire and the other showing “IRA” in green, white, and orange letters.
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Copyright © 2002 Peter Moloney
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In 2001, under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, the RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary) became the “Police Service of Northern Ireland (incorporating the Royal Ulster Constabulary)”. Republicans feared that the change was one of name only, and continued to consider it a sectarian force, with a legacy of “plastic bullets, shoot-to-kill, abuse of human rights, sectarian intimidation, collusion, obstruction of inquiries, torturers”.
Falls Road, west Belfast
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Copyright © 2002 Peter Moloney
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Three plaques above the Sınn Féın office on the Falls Road, Belfast, the first is to 1981 IRA hunger striker Pat “Beag” McKeown, who worked for Sınn Féın and was elected to Belfast City Council until dying in 1993. The other two are to Michael O’Dwyer, Paddy Loughran, and Pat McBride. O’Dwyer had stopped in to the office to register a complaint; Loughran and McBride were Sınn Féın members. All three were shot in February 1992 by RUC constable Alan Moore, who had been suspended the previous day for driving drunk after firing shots over the grave of a deceased colleague; after killing the SF men he drove to Lough Neagh and took his own life with a shotgun. (NYTimes | Independent | For a somewhat different take, see An Phoblacht)
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Copyright © 2002 Peter Moloney
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2002 image of “RUC must go” – a plea for a police force independent of the Orange Order or paramilitaries.
Divis Street, west Belfast
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Copyright © 2002 Peter Moloney
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“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.
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Copyright © 2002 Peter Moloney
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Derry INLA volunteer Mickey Devine was the tenth and last of the 1981 hunger strikers to die, on August 20th. The board shown in this image is in Rathkeele Way, on the gable wall of the family home of his sister Margaret.
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Copyright © 2002 Peter Moloney
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A small tribute to the Bloody Sunday dead on the 30th anniversary of the event: portraits of fifteen victims with two verses of a song “Murder In Mind”: “They came to our town, the Paras, with murder in mind//As people marched down from Creggan/Towards the Guildhall for civil rights/It was a cold but sunny day/No one could image what was in front of them that sunny day.//The Paras stood in William Street/Laughing and chatting and raring to go/To murder for king and crown/And for Ted Heath 10 Downing Street”.
For the memorial pillar itself, see these images from 1974, its inaugural year.
Rossville Street, Derry
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Copyright © 2002 Peter Moloney
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“PSNI out”, “CRF” (Catholic Reaction Force) “RIRA” and “BRY” (Bogside Republican Youth) graffiti in (the old) Dove Gardens, Derry. A Celtic player (Henrik Larsson?) completes the scene.
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Copyright © 2002 Peter Moloney
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This Bloody Sunday info board in Rossville Street, Derry, is directed at an international audience, being “dedicated to all those throughout the world who have struggled, suffered imprisonment and lost their lives in the pursuit of liberty, justice and civil rights” and focusing as much on the Widgery report (“branded a whitewash by human rights groups throughout the world”) and continued demands for justice as on the events of the day.
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Copyright © 2002 Peter Moloney
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David Trimble (or John Hume?), George Mitchell? (wearing the British crown; J1506 suggests the SDLP’s Mark Durkan), and Ian Paisley are the puppets of the RUC (rebranded as the PSNI).
Fahan Street, Derry
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Copyright © 2002 Peter Moloney
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Peter Moloney Collection 