“Mol an óige agus tiocfaidh sí [encourage youth and it will flourish].” The emblems in the corners are of two local GAA clubs “Naomh Eoin” and “Caiiinéal [Cairdinéal] Uí Dhomhnaill” – the “Joe Cahill Annual Tournament” was held at Easter at their two pitches.
Joe Cahill joined the Fianna in 1937 and was involved in the republican movement from then until his death in 2004, including being in Tom Williams’s company in 1942, and was later a founder member and Chief of Staff of the Provisional IRA.
“Joseph Plunkett & Grace Gifford – their final embrace & farewell.” May 4th is the anniversary of the execution of Joseph Plunkett, one of the planners of the Easter Rising in 1916. Seven hours before he faced the firing squad, he married Grace Gifford. The photograph is from a re-enactment for a 1966 RTÉ programme Insurrection (RTÉ). The ballad Grace, written by Seán and Frank O’Meara in 1985, is now internationally known (here is Jim McCann’s 1985 performance).
This is one of various recent additions to the many memorials in Ard An Lao, Béal Feirste/Ardilea, Belfast. This replaces the board seen in Continuing Their Legacy.
A candle-lit vigil (youtube | iTV) took place last Friday (February 3rd) to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the “New Lodge Six Massacre”. Shortly before midnight on the night of February 3rd-4th, 1973, Jim Sloan and James McCann were killed by the UDA outside a bar – or so the authorities alleged; the plaque shown below near the spot where they were shot reads “killed by British Forces”; full details of what is currently known about the killings can be found at Paper Trail.
Four more – Tony ‘TC’ Campbell, Ambrose Hardy, Brendan Maguire, John Loughran – were among those who came to the area of the initial shootings and were killed by British Army snipers from their positions on top of the flats, using night-vision sights.
The memorial mural in Donore Court was repainted for the event. From left to right, it shows Hardy, Maguire, Campbell, Loughran, Sloan, and McCann walking down New Lodge Road with (what was) Duncairn Presbyterian and (what was) the RUC station on the Antrim Road behind them. The previous (2011) version of the mural showed a body being carried whereas this new one shows them smiling as they walk, though still in the sights of a sniper’s rifle. Other changes were made: the six portraits in the medallions are now photographs rather than paintings; the background is green rather than pink.
In addition to fifteen printed boards, the collection of images of “Carrick Hill in the old days” now includes a mural, of two women talking in the street. The board in the second image shows Pepper Hill Steps before the turn of the twentieth century. The steps used to lead from Mustard Street (which was what Library Street used to be) towards Upper Library Street (now Carrick Hill, the street). Other boards (not shown) show street games, street parties, and Alton United football club, a team founded in 1921 that played in the Falls League and won the 1923 Free State Cup Final (Bohs Sporting Life).
At the corner of Stanhope Street and Regent Street in Carrick Hill.
We have featured this ‘bookmark’-dimensioned mural on the so-called “International Wall” before (in 2018) but today include an image (the third one, below) of the replica cell inside the museum itself; a sharper image (and the source for the painting) can be seen on the home page of the Museum’s web site.
The re-painted mural to plastic bullet victim Julie Livingstone was rededicated this past Saturday (October 15th). For the previous mural, see 2010. “The Stolen Child – Come away, O human child/To the waters and the wild/With a faery hand in hand/For the world’s more full of weeping/Than you can understand… – WB Yeats.”
Here is a complete set of images from the Bogside end of the Brandywell. From left to right: street art by NOYS (ig) for Gasyard Féile 2022, Long Tower Community Centre (see Brandywell Past And Present), a new “Brandywell” stencil by Peaball (ig), the Ryan McBride Foundation (tw), a new version of the Derry Brigade IRA mural (see previously Briogáid Dhoire), Peaball and local youth at work, various pieces of wild-style writing and graffiti in support of Jason Ceulemans.
Saturday will be the 51st anniversary of Michael Devine’s death, the last of the ten strikers to die in the 1981 strike. This mural was painted last year during lockdown for the 50th anniversary.
“Vol Mickey Devine, Derry Brigade, INLA. In memory of Michael Devine “Red Micky” H-Block martyr, died 20th August 1981 after 60 days without food. Remembered with pride by his family, friends and comrades. ‘They have served their British masters, the poor pathetic fools, they think that inhumanity and cruelty can break us, haven’t they learnt anything? It strengthens us, it drives us on for then more than ever we know that our cause is just’ – Micky Devine”
For many years there were portraits of the hunger strikers (either the 10 deceased from 1981 or the 12 from the 70s and 80s) along the long wall in Bishop St Without – see 2009, 2004, and 1998 (before that time the wall was divided into a number of panels for a variety of republican imagery – see 1984 and 1982) but in the portraits – which were on boards – soon started coming off and over the next decade the wall began to fade and become covered in graffiti (as can be seen in Street View). For the 40th anniversary, the deceased hunger strikers were restored to the wall, as shown in today’s post: “40th anniversary of the 1980-1981 hunger strikes. Rededication of mural, by the Bogside and Brandywell Monument Committee.”
“The Continuity Fianna”. The Irish National Boy Scouts or “junior IRA” were founded in 1909 by Bulmer Hobson and Countess Markievicz, who is at the centre of this photograph. The Fianna followed the Provisionals in 1969 and Republican Sinn Féin (and the Continuity IRA) in 1986 (Fianna History blog | Irish Examiner), while Provisional Fianna became Ógra Shinn Féin and then Sinn Féin Republican Youth (An Sionnach Fionn).
For the previous stencilling in this spot, see In The Cause Of Irish Freedom. For the plaque and old (single bugler) tarp (to Josh Campbell, Davy McAuley, Bernard Fox, and Joseph McComiskey), see Purity In Our Hearts.
Extramural Activity 