You’ll Never Walk Alone is most famously sung by the fans of Liverpool Football Club, but this Creggan mural draws on the song’s association with Celtic. Leeds United is the other club in the mural, at the right-hand end.
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Copyright © 2016 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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Queen’s University lecturer in economic history Miriam Daly took over as chairwoman of the IRSP (Irish Republican Socialist Party) after founder Seamus Costello was killed in a feud with the IRA. Daly was shot dead in 1980 by the UDA/UFF in her Andersonstown home in 1980. (Interview with husband Jim Daly.)
A long-standing and much-graffitied 1996 mural, History Is Written By The Winner (painted by son Donal Daly among others) was replaced in 2014 by a Joey Ramone mural for a U2 video competition (Murals Of Innocence). The new board shown in today’s images was launched yesterday (Sunday 2016-12-04) to a crowd of about 200. As the final image shows, the PSNI were also “in attendance”.
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Instead of three monkeys, this IRPWA board in London-/Derry/Doire shows three skeletons in denial of the ‘strip searching’, ‘controlled movement’ and ‘internment’ happening at HM Prison Maghaberry (with an enlarged “H” to make an association with Long Kesh/Maze).
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Here are four republican boards from Derry/Doıre and Dungiven/Dún Geımhın, from Cogús (republican prisoners’ welfare), 1916 Societies, IRSP, and the campaign for Justice For The Craigavon Two (Brendan McConville and John-Paul Wootton). The title comes from the last image: “There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”
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St. Comgall’s Primary school on Divis Street opened in 1932 and closed in 1988. Here are two of the boards which currently decorate its boarded-up front windows. Above, St. Malachy’s Scout Pipe Band parades its way through the school yard. (If you know anything about the pipe band or the competition it is going to, please leave a comment.) Below, a céılí mór from 1969 is taking place. The school’s location at the bottom of Percy Street put it at the centre of events in 1969 as west Belfast tore itself apart.
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A proposed pipeline between North Dakota and southern Illinois would go under the Missouri river on the Standing Rock Reservation of the Sioux tribe, who have filed suit against the (US) Corps Of Engineers. Protests against the pipeline hit the mainstream news on September 3rd when security personnel used dogs to drive off protesters. The éirígí sheet shown above is hanging on the fencing below Divis tower.
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John O’Mahony was an Irish-born but American-based republican who founded the Fenian Brotherhood, whose goal was to send arms and financial support to the Irish Republican Brotherhood in Ireland (Brittanica).
His words from the IRB newspaper The Irish People are used in this RNU [“www.republicanunity.org“] board in Derry: “Every individual born on Irish soil constitutes, according to Fenian doctrine, a unit of that nation, without reference to race or religious belief; and as such he is entitled to a heritage on Irish soil, subject to such economic, political and equitable regulations as shall seem fit to the future legislators of liberated Ireland. From this heritage none shall be excluded.”
The date given is 1868, but the paper closed in 1865 when its offices were raided and its executives, including manager O’Donovan Rossa, were arrested.
Rossville St, Bogside, Derry
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The first few pages of Commandant Michael Sheer’s testimony to the Bureau of Military History describe the activities of the elite squad called the “Ten Foot Pikers”, including how postal officer Dan McGandy stole election ballots sent by mail during the general election of 1918. As described in the plaque above, McGandy went missing in January 1919 and was found in the Foyle six weeks later. This article suggests that he fell in after a struggle with British soldiers who had intercepted him while stealing grenades; this Derry Now article suggests he was thrown in by the soldiers, who then arranged his things to make it appear a suicide.
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Here are two images of the remnants of a poster left over from January’s Bloody Sunday March, one from Creggan with a “Boycott Israeli goods” stencil, the second from the Bogside.
The artist is given as “CH”.
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The night before he was executed for his part in the Easter Rising, republican leader James Connolly (5.6.1888-12.5.1916) penned a brief statement calling the British presence in Ireland “a usurpation and a crime against human progress” and declaring “The British government has no right in Ireland, never had any right in Ireland, never can have any right in Ireland”. Here are two images of Free Derry corner with Connolly’s quote, including The Petrol Bomber by the Bogside Artists and and “SFRY” (Sinn Féin Republican Youth) banner on the railings.
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Extramural Activity 