A brand new piece (unveiled March 2, 2013) to Brian Robinson and/sponsored by the Shankill Star Flute Band, in Disraeli Street – where Robinson grew up – replete with images from the first World War such as soldiers (both British and German), trenches and poppies. Robinson was killed on 2 Sept., 1989 by an army undercover unit moments after he had shot and killed a Catholic named Patrick McKenna (WP). This is the second mural on the street to Robinson. The piece is not paint, but printed boards, and the image has been generated by computer.
A version of Picasso’s Guernica next to the Museum Of Free Derry, in Glenfada Park in the Bogside. The original is black and white and grey, as in the mural on the International Wall, but here has been coloured in a palette that matches the colour of the wall. Modern-looking aeroplanes, one dropping bombs, have also been added at the top of the image – the bombing took place in 1937, during the Spanish civil war – and the scene seems to be outdoors, rather than indoors.
“Defenders of the Woodvale from 1969 B Coy”. The Woodvale Defence Association (WDA) was the largest of the local associations which merged together in 1971 to form the Ulster Defence Association (UDA).
Another RNU piece, this time a board a short way in front of The Peace Mural by The Bogside Arists on Rossville Street in Londonderry. The line describing the outline of the dove then turns into an oak leaf, which is a symbol of the city. The piece was recreated in Washington, D.C., in 2007 (image 30 in this set).
A small RNU (Republican Network for Unity, a dissident (political) group) mural and ONH (Óglaıgh Na hÉıreann, a faction of the Real IRA) stencil below the advertising hoarding at the corner of Northumberland Street and the International Wall on Divis Street.
As a member of the IRA, Price was jailed for the Old Bailey bombing in 1973, and her post-Agreement license was revoked in May, 2011, when she was charged, as a member of the Real IRA, in connection with the Massereene Barracks shooting of 2009 – she was sent to Maghaberry. IRPWA graffiti in Gartan Square, and at the Eastway roundabout, Derry.
March 2013 is the 25th anniversary of the Michael Stone’s attack on mourners attending the burials of the Gibraltar 3 in Milltown cemetery. Stone killed three people. The mural combines images of mourners taking shelter from Stone’s attack with the civil war memorial in Ballyseedy, Co. Kerry (WP) which was famously connected to the Gibraltar 3 in a mural prepared for the return of the coffins to Belfast – see A Legitimate Right To Take Up Arms. (Here is a copy of Tragedies In Kerry.) Images of the mural in progress were presented in a previous entry. (See that post for the photographs on which the mural is based.) The Gibraltar 3 are portrayed on the left; Stone’s victims are on the right. In the top right is an IRA volunteer who had been shot two days earlier, on the night that the coffins of the Gibraltar 3 arrived in Belfast.
25 years ago – 1988 – puts us firmly in the era of video, and so you can see footage on youtube relating to each of these events:
Death On The Rock, a famous Thames Television production about the SAS killings of IRA members Maıréad Farrell, Danny McCann and Seán Savage on March 6th in Gibraltar.
Michael Stone’s attack on mourners at their funerals in Milltown cemetery, March 16th, which killed Thomas McErlean, John Murray, and Caoımhín Mac Brádaıgh (Kevin Brady).
The memorial depicted in the background of the mural is a civil war memorial in Ballyseedy, Co. Kerry (WP) which was famously connected to the Gibraltar 3 in a mural prepared for the return of the coffins to Belfast – see A Legitimate Right To Take Up Arms. Here is a copy of Tragedies In Kerry.
Two new murals are going up side-by-side on the International Wall (Divis St.), a bookmark-style one for Marian Price and a large piece commemorating three IRA members killed in Gibraltar on March 6, 1988 (WP), IRA member Kevin McCracken who was killed on March 14th in Belfast, and the three who were killed by Michael Stone at the funerals of the ‘Gibraltar Three’ in Milltown cemetery, Belfast/Béal Feırste, on March 16th (WP).
We’ll have the finished pieces in a few days. Below, a wide shot of the Milltown scene, in progress, and below that, Marty Lyons working from a photograph of the incident, perhaps this second in this set, on which the left side of the mural is based, while the center and right-hand side are based on this one (by Bobby Ingram).
Extramural Activity 