“Generations shall remember them and call them blessed.” With images of female activists including Máıre Drumm, Maıréad Farrell, and Countess Markievicz.
Volunteers in Cumann Na mBan (or youth wing Cumann Na gCaılíní) from Ballymurphy and Springhill are remembered in a mural in Ballymurphy Road, Belfast. Anti-clockwise, they are Maura Meehan, Anne Marie Pettigrew, Dorothy Maguire, Eileen Mackin, Catherine (Cathy) McGartland, Anne Parker. All but Mackin are included in the Greater Ballymurphy plaque.
The mask of “revisionism” covers the face of “truth” reading the book of “Irish history”. Originally painted in 1996 by Ciaran McKeirnan, Brian O’Loan, and Donal Daly, son of IRSP leader Miriam Daly, who was killed by the UDA in 1980, and to whom the title quote is attributed.
There is an in-progress shot in the Paddy Duffy Collection and another by Sean Patrick Allen on his Facebook page.
“This mural is dedicated to the Women of Cumann Na mBan, Óglaıgh Na hÉıreann & Sınn Féın.” Image “from R[uth] Taillon’s book The Women Of 1916.” Taillon is a Canadian who moved to Belfast in 1980 and has been doing work with the women’s movement in the north and on women’s history – see NVTv.w
“They stand for the honour of Ireland/As their sisters in days that are gone/And they’ll march with brothers to freedom/the soldiers of Cumann Na mBan”. The portraits on either side are of Winifred Carney and Nora Connolly.
Board on the rear of Free Derry Corner from the Bogside And Brandywell Women’s Groups: “Zero tolerance to violence against women – there are no grey areas.” With some verses from Another Woman by Carol Geneya Kaplan.
A collage of image from the previous 30 years, including banging bin-lids on the ground, Maıréad Farrell in Armagh prison, men on the blanket, the cages of Long Kesh, marches in support of the hunger strikers, and reproductions of various posters, against Margaret Thatcher, plastic bullets, internment, and censorship. There’s a quote from Bob Dylan in the middle, “How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn’t see – the answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind, the answer is blowing in the wind.”
“No peace without justice”. Róısín McAliskey (daughter of Bernadette Devlin McAliskey) was arrested in 1996 in connection with a mortar attack on a British Army base in Germany and held in Holloway prison (London) until March 1998.
The second mural by the Bogside Artists (after The Petrol Bomber) also depicts the battle of the bogside and features Bernadette Devlin (later McAliskey). Devlin was elected to the British parliament in 1969 at age 21 and was imprisoned in December for her role in the August uprising. The mural shows Devlin with a megaphone in front of protesters and Free Derry Corner. It replaces another ‘Battle of the Bogside’ mural. The Bogside Artists explain the mural and its history in this short video.