Ashling Murphy, the County Offaly schoolteacher who was killed while jogging, was a member of Ceoltas Ceoltóirí Éireann, playing fiddle and concertina (Ceoltas). Her death provoked an outpouring of grief and anger across the island, and beyond, including in the Markets, where she was remembered as a fellow Gael. The verse is a popular one from cards and social media – A silent grief that’s in our hearts, no human eye can trace. For many a broken heart is hidden beneath a smiling face – modified slightly to read “hidden and alone“.
LORAG [Lower Ormeau Residents Action Group Fb | web] is a community development organisation based in the Shaftesbury rec centre. They organise various sport and fitness activities (including the Ormeau parkrun) and a programme for youth. In the boards shown here, local youngsters draw what’s on their mind, including Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back (“I’m your da”) and Attack Of The Clones “Truly wonderful the mind of a child is”!
The boards are in Balfour Avenue, former site of the #Gaza mural.
Martin O’Neill took Celtic – and about 80,000 fans (ESPN) – to the UEFA Cup in 2003, losing in extra time to FC Porto of Portugal. This mural off Friendly Street in the Markets – which shows the Champions Cup rather than the UEFA Cup – is still rolling in 2022. Peter Moloney took a picture of it in 2006.
‘Peace Players’ is an organisation that runs cross-community sporting events, including the basketball “interface league” that Noah Donohoe took part in – he is pictured here wearing his Peace Players shirt. It renamed one of its annual awards as the ‘Noah Donohoe Spirit Award’ (tw). He also played U-14 basketball at Belfast Phoenix (Fb) and the club created a scholarship in his name (Belfast Media). The mural is at the Shaftesbury rec centre in lower Ormeau.
The trial has begun, before Londonderry Crown Court, of three men accused of the murder of Eddie Meenan, who was stabbed 40-50 times in November, 2018 (Derry Journal | BBC). The graffiti above is on the electrical box at the bottom of Fahan Street, next to a Lasaır Dhearg (web) ‘Don’t join the PSNI’ poster (shown below), with the Che Guevara Lynch mural visible on the left.
“South Belfast – time for truth – exposing collusion – Ormeau Road – ‘Bullets do not only travel distance but also through time'” [Based on a quote by James Kennedy’s father: “The bullets that killed James didn’t just travel in distance, they travelled in time. Some of those bullets never stop travelling.” (Irish Times)]
Police Ombudsman Marie Andersons’s report into various murders and attempted murders in south Belfast was released yesterday (February 7th, 2022) and presented a list of “collusive behaviours” between the RUC and loyalist paramilitaries. Among the incidents investigated was the killing of five people “murdered for their faith” at the Sean Graham bookies’ office on the Ormeau Road in February 5th, 1992; the report found that one of the two UDA gunmen was a Special Branch informant and that a Browning pistol used in the attack had been supplied by the RUC (as had previously been revealed in the 2010 HET Inquiry report) and that records relating to the weapon had been withheld from investigators (Irish Times | Belfast Live). For the 30th anniversary, relatives of the five men killed and of five more who were injured displayed their portraits next to the small memorial garden, which itself was updated to mark the third decade since their deaths: “1992-2022” (Belfast Live).
The plaque on the far left is to Charles Jospeh McGrillen, shot by the UDA/UFF in 1988 at his work in Dunne’s on the Annadale embankment (Sutton). Next to the bookies’ parlour is a plaque to Fian Jim Templeton.
“Don’t let me body lie here – get me back to the green hill by Murlough, by the McCarry’s house, looking down on the Moyle. That’s where I’d like to be now, that’s where I’d like to lie. … Death is not dark but only deeper blue.” [Letter to Elizabeth “Eilis” Bannister, July 25th, 1916] Roger Casement was executed in Pentonville prison, in England, in 1916, for his role in gunrunning for the Rising, and his corpse was buried in the prison cemetery. Despite repeated requests for repatriation, it wasn’t until 1965 that the corpse was returned to Ireland – but to his home town of Dublin rather than to his beloved Murlough, where his cousins Eilis and Gertrude lived (in what was by then Northern Ireland): the corpse was released on condition that it not enter Northern Ireland, for fear of stoking political tensions between the sects (WP).
The Bloody Sunday march each year follows the same route as was taken on January 30th, 1972, from Creggan shops to the Bogside. For the 50th anniversary of the event, two marches took place, the earlier one ending at the NICRA memorial (unveiled in 1974) where Taoiseach Micheál Martin laid a wreath. For images see Derry Journal | Museum Of Free Derry’s Fb; for the speeches, see the MoFD youtube channel.
A later march ended with speeches at Free Derry Corner (Derry Journal | Derry Now). Today’s images show this march at the Bloody Sunday Commemoration mural by the Bogside Artists (originally painted in 1997 without a cross in the centre). The coal lorry in the image above is of a similar vintage to the one that led the march in 1972 (see final image); the Bedford TK was built from 1960 to 1992 but Springtown Fuels (ig) appears to have one in good condition.
“One world, one struggle” and one common cause: British imperialism. The Palestinian flag flies beside Free Derry Corner (and the Petrol Bomber mural), which has been papered over with “There is n0 British justice” – this sets the theme for the march this afternoon (recreating the 1972 civil rights march in Derry from Creggan to the Bogside, starting at 2:30) which not only commemorates the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday (Bloody Sunday 50) but protests the British occupation of countries all around the world – the poster from Bloody Sunday March makes reference to the Amritsar (Jallianwala Bagh) Massacre, the Barbados Slave Code, (Second) Boer War concentration camps, and many others.
Extramural Activity 