What’s most unusual here is the tree cross-section (or “tree disk”) (on the left) that has been decorated with a hooded gunman and the insignia of the (east Belfast) UVF and YCV – the final image shows a close-up.
“The uniform may have changed but the cause remains the same. Ulster Volunteer Force. Fallen, not forgotten.” There is a very close variant of this wording on a mural in Bowtown (Newtownards).
Creggan sports centre opened in October 2009 (Leisure Opportunities) and part of the architecture was to cover the brick exterior with five plain-white panels along Central Drive. These have been taken over by Saoradh/IRPWA, this year to protest the extradition, internment, and treatment of republican prisoners, commemorate the 1981 hunger strikers, support Palestine, and threaten drug dealers.
No Amnesty For British State Forces: “Democide is the murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide and mass murder. Democide is not necessarily the elimination of entire cultural groups but rather groups within the country that the government feels needs to be eradicated for political reasons and due to claimed future threats. – No amnesty for British state forces”
Bobby Sands/IRPWA: “I’ll wear no convict’s uniform/Nor meekly serve my time/That Britain might brand Ireland’s fight/800 years of crime” [Francie Brolly song] (IRPWA (web))
Free All Political Prisoners! (IRPWA)
1981: 1981: “I am a political prisoner. I am a political prisoner because I am a casualty of a perennial war that is being fought between the oppressed Irish people and an alien, oppressive, unwanted regime that refuses to withdraw from our land.” [Bobby Sands’s diary, day 1] (IRPWA)
Unity Referendum Now!: “British occupation has been a disaster for the people of Ireland. A united Ireland is the way forward for all the people of Ireland.” (IRSP.ie)
40th anniversary of the 1981 hunger strike: described previously in For A Socialist Republic (IRSM/IRSP)
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.”
On July 21st, 1972 – Bloody Friday – 19 IRA bombs exploded in the course of an hour, killing 9, six of them at the Oxford Street bus station, including 15-year-old William Crothers from Parker Street in east Belfast who worked for Ulsterbus as a parcel-boy. The others were three more employess – William Irvine, Thomas Killops, and John Gibson – and two British Army soldiers – Stephen Cooper (32 Squadron) and Philip Price (Welsh Guards). (BBC | WP | Paper Trail | BBC documentary)
“In memory of the fallen Friday 21st July 1972 Oxford [Street] Bus Station Belfast. Lest we forget”
A plaque was mounted this (2022) summer to Maggie McAnaney, who died when a gun went off at an IRA checkpoint near Burnfoot, Co. Donegal, a month before the Civil War began (Derry Journal). This is an unusual use of the phrase “active service”, as McAnaney was travelling to a picnic at the time, rather than on exercises or preparing munitions; the phrase would later come to be associated primarily with a premature bomb explosion.
“In proud and loving memory of Margaret “Maggie” McAnaney, Cumann na mBan, died on active service at Burnfoot on 31st May 1922, aged 18 years. The McAnaney family home was situated on Bishop Street. Fuaır sıad bás ar son saoırse na hÉıreann.”
A hooded UVF volunteer has been added to the shops at the bottom of the Glen estate in Newtownards (compare with 2018). It’s unclear (to us) who such a threatening image is directed at: the residents of the estate (in both a controlling and defending function), and/or the UDA at the top of the estate, and/or the East Belfast UVF, and/or outside observers.
“Either ballot or gun, our day will come – PIRA.” This graffiti dates back to at least 1998 (see C01268) and probably to the breakdown of the ceasefire in 1996; the same slogan was present in Wall St (Carrick Hill) in 1996. It is still visible on the Falls Road in 2022.
The “east Belfast” board shown above is on the east side of Bowtown while the two pieces of fresh “north Down” graffiti are on the west side, perhaps indicating that the tension between the two UVF factions – persists. The east Belfast faction was suspected in the bus burning in response to the Protocol in 2021 (BBC | Tele).
The phrase on the board is also used in an east Belfast mural: “We seek nothing but the elementary right implanted in every man … the right, if you are attacked, to defend yourself …”
“I gcuımhne na nÓglach a fuaır bás ar son saoırse [in memory of the volunteers who died for freedom].” The “22” are the familiar 12 deceased Troubles-era hunger-strikers, plus 10 from 1917 to 1946: Thomas Ashe, Terence McSwiney, Michael Fitzgerald, Joseph Murphy, Joe Witty, Dennis Barry, Andy O’Sullivan, Tony Darcy, Jack McNeela, Sean McCaughey.
“‘A Letter To The 22: You have not gone away. You are in the hearts/and on the lips of your people./The old speak of you with knowing tongue. The middle/aged, as those who walked beside you./The young men and women with a passion not unlike your own./Your names can be heard on the wind taken from the mouths/of men who tend their flocks on Slieve Gullion, Cnoc Phádraıg, Glenshane./They echo in small graveyards in/Cork, Kerry, Galway, Mayo, Tyrone, Antrim, Derry and Armagh./They are heard among your people at the mass gate on/Sunday, in the crowd at the hurling game, around the hearth when/the bottle is cracked and song in sung. Your image can be seen/on the faces of happy smiling children for whose freedom you gave your all./You are in our prayers, you have not gone away, you never will’ – Colum Mac Gıolla Bhéın“
Extramural Activity 