Thıg Leo An Réabhlóıdeach A Mharú

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Three INLA volunteers are commemorated on this Rossville Street, Derry, plaque. 18 year-old Colm McNutt was shot by an undercover SAS officer during a botched hijacking, tipped off by best friend and informer Raymond Gilmour (Irish News). A drunken Phelan was shot by an off-duty NYPD officer in New York, nine years after leaving the country (LA Times | NY Times). McShane was run over and crushed by a British APC during riots against the treatment of Catholics during the Drumcree standoff (RN). “Thıg leo an réabhlóıdeach a mharú, ach ní thıg leo an réabhlóıd a mharú choíche.” [They can kill the revolutionary but they can never kill the revolution.]

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Copyright © 2003 Peter Moloney
M02034 [M03405]

Killed In Annie’s Bar

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December 2017 saw the 45th anniversary of the attack by loyalist gunmen on Annie’s Bar in the Top Of The Hill area of the Waterside (Derry Journal). Four Catholics and a Protestant were killed. “In memory of Charles Moore, Frank McCarron, Michael McGinley, Bernard Kelly, Charles McCafferty who were killed in Annie’s Bar on the 20th December 1972.”

Strabane Old Road, Gobnascale, Derry

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Copyright © 2003 Peter Moloney
M02029

Breaking The Boom

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After three and a half months, from April 18th to July 30th, 1689, the Siege of Derry ended when two ships, the Mountjoy (shown here) and the Phoenix, broke through a timber boom that had been placed across the Foyle. Approximately half of the population of the city had died.

Roulston Avenue, Waterside, Londonderry

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Copyright © 2003 Peter Moloney
M02027

Cecil McKnight

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Cecil McKnight was a UDA/UFF volunteer, Orange Order member, and chairman of the UDP (Ulster Democratic Party) when he was shot dead at his home in Melrose Terrace by the IRA on June 29th, 1991. (Sentinel). McKnight is shown standing in front of a mural in the adjacent Ebrington Terrace circa 1990. 

Emerson Street, Waterside, Londonderry

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Copyright © 2003 Peter Moloney
M02024

George Washington

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“If defeated everywhere else I will make my final stand for liberty with the Scotch-Irish (Ulster-Scots) of my native Virginia.” George Washington commanded the Continental Army during the revolution and served as the first president of the United States beginning in 1789. His ancestry was English and the quote is undocumented, the closest being this statement from McKinley. The note in the corner reads “History records that almost half of Washington’s army were Ulster-Scots”; the basis for this claim might be General (Charles?) Lee’s report that “half the rebel Continental Army were from Ireland.” (See Chapter 2 of Bagenal, The American Irish and their Influence on Irish Politics.)

Previously: Theodore Roosevelt | James Buchanan.

Ebrington Street Lower, Londonderry

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Copyright © 2003 Peter Moloney
M02023

James Buchanan

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James Buchanan was “15th US president 1857-1861.” Buchanan’s father, also called James, was born in Ramelton, Co Donegal, and was living in Co Tyrone when he emigrated to the United States from Derry in 1783, (one of the “250,000 Ulster-Scots [who] emigrated to America in the 1700s”). James junior was born in 1791, the second of eleven children.

The confusion over the wording of the quote – “My Ulster blood is my most priceless [or simply: a priceless] heritage … [and I can never be too grateful to my grandparents from whom I derived it.]” – is matched by confusion over who said it (Buchanan junior or senior?); the source of the quote is unknown. Likewise we do not know where in Scotland the grandparents might have come from and perhaps the move to Ireland happened much earlier.

See also the Visual History page on Ulster-Scots murals.

Ebrington Street, Londonderry

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Copyright © 2003 Peter Moloney
M02022