Fight The Rich, Feed The Poor

“Fight the rich, feed the poor – Éıstıgí” (also “Free Gaza”) along Lecky Road in Derry’s Bogside.

Éıstıgí, or “listen, yous-uns” in Derry/Doıre, is the youth organisation associated with Soaradh (web); it promotes a socialist (and republican) ideology.

From February 2023:

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Saoırse Don Phalaıstín

“Saoırse don Phalaıstín [freedom for Palestine]/فلسطين حرة [free Palestine]” and “Ireland stands with Palestine/ايرلندا تقف مع فلسطين” – CYM [Connolly Youth Movement (web)] sticker with a mash-up of the Palestinian and Irish flags and a key that represents the keys that about 700,000 Palestinian householders took with them when they fled their homes in the Nakba of 1948.

See previously: 105 Years Of Balfour | His Land, His Legs, His Life.

Bridge Street, Belfast

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The Scots In Ulster

The name “Ulster-Scots” refers to the emigrants to North America from Ulster that had previously come from Scotland and the English borders, and most of the Ulster-Scots murals in the 2000s focused on emigration to America and on US Presidents with Scotch-Irish heritage (see the Visual History page of Ulster-Scots murals).

In 2017, a series of boards along York Street focused on industrialists in Northern Ireland with Scottish backgrounds: 13 panels in five posts: one | two | three | four | five. And this new collection of “Ulster-Scots” luminaries (which is 100 paces away) likewise presents figures who are associated with Northern Ireland rather than America. Modern folk such as those portrayed in these new boards presumably have Scottish heritage rather than Scotch-Irish. (The title of this entry – The Scots In Ulster – comes from a Discover Ulster Scots poster about the Scots who came to Ulster in the 1600s, regardless of whether or not they or their descendants later moved to America.)

From left to right, the people shown are as follows. (Links are to previous entries in the Extramural collection.)

Mountcollyer: motorcyclist Rex McCandless, author CS Lewis, physicist John Stewart Bell, song-writer Jimmy Kennedy, medical inventor Frank Pantridge

York Rd: snooker player Alex Higgins, singer Ruby Murray, soldier Blair Mayne, agricultural inventor Harry Ferguson, missionary Amy Carmichael

For the political tarp on the gable in the background, see Choose One Or The Other.

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Conscience

“Cogús supports the republican prisoners”. Cogús (Fb) is (was?) the prisoners’ welfare arm of the RNU. The board above — using a vintage illustration going back to 1981’s I’ll Wear No Convict’s Uniform — replaced More Blacks, More Gays, More Irish on Pantridge Road, Dunmurry, joining the “Join RNU” and mental health boards shown below.

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Time For A Socialist Republic

The waste ground at Corrib Avenue (in the curve between Rossnareen and Lenadoon) is being developed with new houses by Choice (Belfast Media) and Lasaır Dhearg have taken advantage of the hoarding mounted around the construction site to display the messages above — “Remember the hunger strikers” — and below, with an image of James Connolly — “Time for a socialist republic”.

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Repent

The graffiti on the bottom part of the New Life City Church (web) mural on the west Belfast “peace” line has been painted out and this mild wild-style “repent” added.

New Life murals in the area go back to at least 1997 and one on this stretch of the wall goes back to 2004 – see The Dividing Line Of Hostility.

Update, July 2014: “Show kindness” illustrated with a handshake has been added

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Spread Your Wings

Active Communities Network (web) is a non-profit in Belfast, Manchester, and London, focused on youth and community development: “Tackle inequality; create opportunities; inspire change”. Passers-by are invited to stand in the middle of the mural and “spread their wings”.

Replaces: Embrace Change Together.

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There Is No Lie Big Enough

“There is no lie big enough to cover the shame of jailing two innocent men ”, in this case Brendan McConville and John Paul Wooton. Their portraits have been appearing on RNU (Fb) walls (and on Sliabh Dubh) since 2013. They are in prison, for 25-year and 18-year minimums, respectively, for the 2009 killing of PSNI Constable Stephen Carroll (BBC).

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We Must Choose Our Fate

Three stickers of resistance in Belfast’s city centre: above, communistparty.ie confirms Marx’s prediction of capitalism’s inevitable failure; below, under-paid, over-worked, and mis-treated hospitality workers are encouraged to “give the goss on your boss”; next below, an old sticker calling for Northern Ireland to follow the Republic in adopting abortion leglislation (parliament.uk) – “not the church, not the state, we must choose our fate – #thenorthisnow [Image.ie]” (as well as a commercial sticker by the singer A.N.J.A.); finally below, from Sailortown, stickers from the IWW or wobblies (“one big union.ie“) and the United Tech & Allied Workers (“the past we inherit, the future we build”).

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Jimmy Ferris

“1891-1949” are the dates of the operation of Belfast Celtic, not the dates of forward Jimmy Ferris, who lived from 1894 to 1932. Ferris played for the club for nine years, and for various British clubs during the pogroms. He quit playing in 1930 because of a heart condition and died two years later, at the age of 37. The Ferris family grave, shown in today’s images, is in Milltown Cemetery. (Belfast Celtic | WP)

“Jimmy Ferris, known as Belfast Celtic’s ‘brilliant schemer’, he was on the team, which won four Irish League titles in the 1920s, for the loss of only one match. Also played for Chelsea and Preston North End.” With funding from the “European Regional Development Fund”.

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