More electioneering, this time by éirígí on a wall in Hugo Street: “Votáıl éırígí #1 – Pádraıc Mac Coıtır – Máıre Drumm”. As shown below, this piece is next to the Ciarán Mulhullond piece featured previously: Think Independently.
The latest message on Slıabh Dubh (Black Mountain) went up on Thursday and is gone today (Saturday). It is the work of the 1916 Societies and their ‘One Ireland, One Vote’ campaign. (See the GaelForceArt Fb page for shots of the work in progress.) The Belfast Telegraph reports that politicians, including Jim McVeigh of Sınn Féın, have called for signs on the mountainside to cease. However, the field in which the signs appear – known as the Hatchet Field – is privately owned.
“RNU in west Belfast are today leading the way in combating anti-social behavior [sic], reclaiming republican values, fighting the benefits cuts, tackling the increased drug problem, exposing the slum landlords, rebuilding community pride.” RNU [Republican Network for Unity (Xitter)] stencil on Northumberland Street. Tommy Doherty (leaflet) is running in the local council elections taking place on May 22nd.
The phoenix portion of the mural was featured previously: Out Of The Flames.
April 24th, 1916 is the date of the commencement of the Easter Rising. The left-hand side of the building on the eastern corner of the Falls Road and Ascaıll Ard Na bhFeá (Beechmount Avenue) is a memorial to Republicans from County Antrim from 1798 to 1966 – when the ‘County Antrim Memorial’ was raised in Milltown on the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising – and beyond; it is pictured in the lower right, a large cross-shaped monument. Tom Williams (WP), an IRA volunteer who was executed during the Northern Campaign (during the second world war) and is buried in the plot, is mentioned specifically on the headstone in the lower left.
The right-hand side – the Cumman Na mBan centenary – was featured previously.
These two pieces of graffiti have appeared on the Stewartstown Road: “RIP Tommy Crossan – slan a chara” and “Tommy Crossan a true Republican”. Crossan, a former leader of the CIRA, was shot and killed on Friday (April 18th, 2014 – Good Friday) (Guardian).
Here are three photographs from last Saturday’s (April 12th, 2014) ‘An Lá Dearg’ (The Red Day; red with rage/dearg le fearg) march in Belfast to protest cuts in promotion of the Irish language. The Belfast march comes a month after a similar ‘Lá Mór Na Gaeılge’ (Irish Times report) in Dublin on February 15th.
The first image shows the head of the parade, the second shows Patsy Dan Rogers, the ‘King of Tory’, and the third is of flyers for the event.
This mural in the Glen Colin estate, just off the Glen Road, shows The Roddy’s club (in white) with the hunger striker memorial in the shape of a harp in front (shown in the image below) and the St. Oliver Plunkett church, which is in fact on the other (southern) side of the Glen Road, with the twin peaks of Divis and Black Mountain in the background. The Bobby Sands quote “Our revenge will be the laughter of our children” is at the bottom.
The Falls Road library is a ‘Carnegie Library’ (WP) – built with almost 4,000 pounds donated by Scotland-born American Andrew Carnegie. It opened on January 2nd, 1908, the second of three such libraries in Belfast, alongside Oldpark and Donegall Road. Its doors feature these two pieces by Holywood artist Rosamund Praeger: Art, seen here holding an artist’s palette – and Literature, seen below reading a folio. Art and Literature also take the form of angels, along with a third muse, Science, in the stonework above the doors.
This printed tarp on the side of the Falls Road commemorates the ten 1981 hunger strikers (along with Frank Stagg, Michael Gaughan, Nora Connolly, and Maıréad Farrell, paired with international figures Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Leonard Peltier, and Nelson Mandela) and features a verse from a Bobby Sands poem The Crime Of Castlereagh: “All things must come to pass as one/So hope should never die/There is no height or bloody might/That a freeman can’t defy./There is no source or foreign force/Can break one man who knows,/That his free will no thing can kill/And from that freedom grows.”
This tarp, which is 20′ x 20′, was printed from Mo Chara’s original 8′ x 8′ painting; it was also printed on a 30′ x 30′ tarp in New York. For all three, see the Chronological Catalogue of Mo Chara’s works.
A board in the Glen Rd/Falls Road triangle: “Belfast I.R.S.P. Commemoration parade, Easter Sunday, Dunville Pk 11am”. The board is a permanent fixture but this year the commemoration in question is of the 40th anniversary of the IRSP itself, as well as the 1916 Rising.