“St James community demands the release of the Rossport 5 – boycott Shell’. The Rossport Five were Willie Corduff, brothers Philip and Vincent McGrath, Mıcheál Ó Seıghın, and James Philbin. They were imprisoned in June 2005 for demonstrating contempt of court by interfering with work by Shell on their land in Rossport, Co Mayo. The served 94 days before being released. The ‘green ribbon’, in the top corners, was used in previous years to denote republican prisoners.
Graffiti in Stanfield Place, the Markets, Belfast, for the 2003 march to highlight collusion between security forces and loyalist paramilitaries. See previously: Collusion Is State Murder.
“Whatever You Say, Say Nothing” is the name of a 1975 Seamus Heaney poem from the collection North, and of a 1981 Colum Sands song. “P O’Neill” was the name used by the IRA on its public statements.
“Being convinced in our consciences that Home Rule would be disastrous to the material well-being of Ulster as well as of the whole of Ireland, subversive of our civil and religious freedom, destructive of our citizenship, and perilous to the unity of the Empire, we, whose names are underwritten, men of Ulster, loyal subjects of His Gracious Majesty King George V., humbly relying on the God whom our fathers in days of stress and trial confidently trusted, do hereby pledge ourselves in solemn Covenant, throughout this our time of threatened calamity, to stand by one another in defending, for ourselves and our children, our cherished position of equal citizenship in the United Kingdom, and in using all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland. And in the event of such a Parliament being forced upon us, we further solemnly and mutually pledge ourselves to refuse to recognise its authority. In sure confidence that God will defend the right, we hereto subscribe our names. And further we individually declare that we have not already signed this covenant.” “The above was signed by me at ______ “Ulster Day”, Saturday, 28th September, 1912. God save the King.” The covenant was signed by almost half a million people in anticipation of the (third) Home Rule Bill. This is the first in a series of murals from the East Belfast Historical And Cultural Society in Thorndyke Street, Belfast.
The Continuity IRA (CIRA) broke from the Provisionals back in 1986 over the issue of abstentionism in Dáıl Éıreann, but did not begin military attacks until the ceasefire in 1994. This somewhat cryptic graffiti in Beechmount Avenue, Belfast, insists that recent events such as a split in the organisation and decommissioning by the Provisionals will change the CIRA’s status. “CIRA – 2. Delayed No Chance”
Peter Moloney Collection 