“Cur stad le cıníochas” [“put an end to racism”] – This WARN (West Against Racism Network) mural puts anti-Irish sentiment (in London 1966 – “No blacks, no dogs, no Irish“) in parallel with racism against modern-day immigrants to Belfast.
International Wall, Divis Street, west Belfast
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Copyright © 2005 Peter Moloney
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Wolfe Tone is buried in Bodenstown graveyard, Co Kildare, and every year republicans make a pilgrimage there to commemorate his role in the United Irishmen’s 1798 Rebellion and the beginning of Irish nationalism. In 1972, the address was given by Máıre Drumm, vice-president of Sınn Féın, a position she held until she was assassinated in the Mater Hospital by the Red Hand Commando in October 1976.
“Ní síocháın gan saoırse … thinker and doer, dreamer of the immortal dram and doer of the immortal deed. We owe to this dead man more than we can ever repay him. To his teaching we owe it that there is such a thing as Irish nationalism. And to the memory of the deed he nerved his generation to do. To the memory of 1798 we owe it that there is any manhood left in Ireland …”
Divis Street, Belfast
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Copyright © 2005 Peter Moloney
M02578
Frederick Douglass, 1818-1895. “Inspired by two Irishmen to escape from slavery Frederick Douglass came to Ireland during the famine. Henceforth he championed the abolition of slavery, women’s rights and Irish freedom.” “Perhaps no class has carried prejudice against colour to a point more dangerous than have the Irish and yet no people have been more relentlessly oppressed on account of race and religion. (Also by Douglass, and which would have made an apt quote for the mural: “I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.”)
Divis Street, Belfast.
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Copyright © 2005 Peter Moloney
M02577
Kieran Nugent was 18 when he went “on the blanket” in the H-Blocks (see The First Blanketman). He reportedly told his mother, “The only way I’ll wear a prison uniform is if they nail it to my back.”
Divis Street, west Belfast
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Copyright © 2005 Peter Moloney
M02576
“Ceol gan teoraınn” – “unlimited music” or “music without boundaries”. Belfast’s Sean Maguire (also McGuire) (1927-2005) was an All-Ireland fiddle champion and world-wide ambassador for traditional music (WP).
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Copyright © 2005 Peter Moloney
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A ‘suicide strategy’ for “N of Ireland” languishes in the dustbin of 10 Downing Street, unlike strategies for Scotland, England, and Wales. The mural is produced by “Beechmount Community Youth Project”. To the right are messages to the recently deceased: “In one 2 week period 13 young men in north Belfast took their own lives”, “In one three month period 15 suicides in west Belfast occurred”.
Beechmount Avenue, west Belfast
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Copyright © 2005 Peter Moloney
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IRA volunteer Kieran (here Cıarán) Nugent spent nine months in Long Kesh as a Special Category prisoner in 1975. When he was arrested again in 1976 and sent to the H Blocks, the status no longer existed and he could no longer wear his own clothes. He refused to wear a prison uniform and spent his first night naked. On the next day he was given a blanket and so became the first blanket man.
Rockville Street, west Belfast
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Copyright © 2005 Peter Moloney
M02550 [M02551]
This is a Whiterock Road, Belfast, mural to three IRA volunteers and six other local activists. Clockwise from bottom left: Annie Adams, Rosaleen Russell, Liam Mulholland, Billy Carson (also shown kneeling; killed by the UDA in 1979), Liam McParland (also standing, right; leader of the (pre-split) IRA in Ballymurphy, died in a car crash on 6 November 1969), Sean Doyle (also standing, left; perhaps from 1944 despite the assault rifle), Frankie Toner, Kathleen Moore, Gerry Campbell. There are Christmas lights in the centre of the wall.
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Copyright © 2005 Peter Moloney
M02547
“Dedicated to Vols Bobby McCrudden, Mundo O’Rawe, Pearse Jordan. In passing this mural pause a little while, pray for us and erin, then smile.” Ballymurphy mural to three local PIRA volunteers. O’Rawe’s pose (in the centre) perhaps owes something to the poster for the 1996 film Michael Collins. The plaque reads “I ndíl [sic] chuímhne [sic] Oglach [sic] Edward ‘Mundo’ O’Rawe, Oglach [sic] Robert McCrudden, Oglach [sic] Pearse Jordan Who gave their lives for Ireland’s freedom.”
Divismore Crescent, west Belfast
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Copyright © 2005 Peter Moloney
M02546
The “stand-off, trade-off” mural reappears in Artana Street, Belfast, previously covered by Stand Firm. The mural dates to 1998, when an Orange Order march was allowed to parade along Ormeau Road. Parades Commission chairman Alistair Graham (pictured in the mural beneath the evil-eyed OO member) “insisted that the Ormeau Road decision “was not a simple trade-off for our earlier decision on Drumcree”” (Irish Times). Painted by Troy Garity, recreating an Ian Knox cartoon (Belfast Media).
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Copyright © 2005 Peter Moloney
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