The old military huts at Willow Bank (or: Willowbank; the modern-day La Salle/Iveagh area on the Falls) – which were still in use in 1896 – provided a training ground for Cumann Na mBan and the Irish Volunteers in the run-up to the Easter Rising.
The small figures between the huts and the trainees in the foreground are Charlie Monahan (born in Ballymacarrett, raised in the Markets, who died in a car accident on the way to meet Casement’s arms on board the Aud (findagrave | An Phoblacht)), Manus O’Boyle (BMH witness statement), Jack White (who fought for Britain in the second Boer War and was later captain in the Irish Citizen Army (WP)), and Volunteer Sean O’Neill.
Seán Mac Dıarmada was born in Leitrim but worked on the trams in Belfast in 1905. He also, as member and organiser for many nationalist groups, including Sınn Féın (formed in 1905) and the Irish Republican Brotherhood. He is shown here speaking on Clonard Street in the lower Falls, in 1906, flanked by fellow Brothers Denis McCullough (l) and Bulmer Hobson (r), both from Belfast. (For a brief account of MacDıarmada’s life, see this previous mural on Extramural Activity The Mainspring, which shows MacDıarmada delivering his speech from the back of a coal cart, and also this Saoirse32 post. See also MacDıarmada for a board near where he lived in Ardoyne.
The other part of the picture illustrates the use of magic lanterns to display images on gable walls to spread nationalist history and ideology. On one wall is Eoın MacNeill’s article ‘The North Began’ (which also features earlier on the new wall; see Shared Space and We Won’t Have Carson. On the other wall is an image of An Gorta Mór/The Great Hunger. (Magic lanterns were used by Alice Milligan (NWCI | Field Day | also a kids version from Creative Centenaries) when she gave talks; for her newspaper work, see Shan Van Vocht.)
The image below shows that there were originally (or at least, in April) plans for a two larger faces to be featured.
Ethna Carbery (the left-most of the four female figures, who wrote the song Roddy McCorley) and Alice Milligan (with her hand to her face) together founded both The Northern Patriot and The Shan Van Vocht (“the poor, old, woman,” i.e. Ireland), the latter being a monthly socialist newspaper that ran from 1896 until 1899 and included some early writings by James Connolly (pictured on the right of the mural), such as the piece “Socialism And Nationalism” which appeared in The Shan Van Vocht in January, 1897 and from which the quotation on the wall is taken: “If you remove the English army to-morrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organisation of the Socialist Republic, your efforts would be in vain.” (For the passage in broader context, see (previously) If You Remove The English Army Tomorrow.)
The other two women shown are Elizabeth (seated second) and Nell Corr (standing), Cumann Na mBan members from the Ormeau Road in Belfast, who were in Dublin on the morning of the Rising but headed north. (For more information and a mural depicting the political complexity of their family, see previously The Corrs.)
Nora Connolly in her Cumann Na mBan uniform is the centre point of the ‘Howth Gun-Running’ panel in the new mural on the International Wall. Her sister, Ina, is shown to the right, unloading a rifle from a car outside their home in Glenalina Terrace. About 1,500 rifles were smuggled into Ireland on two boats, 900 of them on the yacht, Asgard, shown left-of-centre with Molly Childers and Mary Spring Rice aboard (the latter kept a diary of the trip; extracts are included in this RTÉ History Show video). Asgard docked at Howth on July 26th, 1914. (Here is a tcd.ie collection of images of Asgard’s journey; image #53 is the one reproduced in the mural). The other rifles eventually came ashore two weeks later at Kilcoole. (See this RTÉ article for an account of their tortured journey.)
The vintage Mauser rifles were received by members of Óglaıgh Na hÉıreann and Na Fıanna Éıreann (top left of the image above; here is the original photograph). The off-loading took place during the day but when the police and army met the marching volunteers at Clontarf they were able to capture only 19 rifles. As the army regiment involved returned to barracks it was pelted with stones or fruit by a crowd and killed three (with a fourth dying a week later), as recorded on the front page of the Irish Independent in the bottom left.
Below are two in-progress shots, and below those, two shots including the artist, Marty Lyons.
In addition to the defacing of Carson (see We Won’t Have Carson), a 32 County Sovereignty Movement mural remains about a quarter of the way along the newly repainted International Wall on Divis Street. (And as will be covered in a separate post, an IRPWA POW mural was in progress at the far right end of the wall.)
We understand that the painters offered to repaint the 32CSM mural after the historical mural had been in place for six months, but that this offer was turned down. For the purposes of the launch, then, a cloth sign, was hung over the 32CSM mural (as seen in the image above). It reproduces a poster (see the original) advertising “a public meeting for the formation of Irish Volunteers”; Eoin MacNeill, author in November 1913 of ‘The North Began’, presided at the meeting – here is the text of The North Began – and the newspaper carried by the hawker on the left reads “MacNeill successful in call for Irish Volunteers” (whereas it originally read “Rotunda rally – Irish volunteers now exceed 180,000” as can be seen in the Carson post). However, this cloth was removed immediately after the launch, meaning that the wall appears as in the image below.
19 year-old Sandy Row resident Gary Whittley was killed in a hit-and-run incident in November, 2005 (BBC-NI) with charges being brought in 2008 (Tele). Most of the mural, which showed him in boxing gear, (see below for a 2012 image) is now gone, but the quote from 2nd Timothy remains: “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.”
The history-of-republicanism mural now taking up the majority of the International Wall is not without controversy among republicans. One point of contention is the inclusion of Edward Carson’s portrait and the related scene of the Larne gun-running. Carson was leader of the Irish Unionist Alliance, campaigner against Home Rule, and founder of the Ulster Volunteers. 25,000 guns and more than 3 million rounds of ammunition were smuggled ashore at Larne, Donaghadee, and Bangor (see the second image for a sketch and the bottom two images for the completed scene). The formation of the UVF drew a counter-reaction in the formation of the Irish Volunteers, and membership was spurred on by the Larne gun-running. (See the third image.)
Carson’s image was originally paint-bombed in March (BMG | BelTel) and then again in April when “loose talk” posters were also added (Irish News). (For Loose Talk posters over the Otegi mural, see Loose-Talk Costs Lives.) For the launch on August 3rd, the posters were removed but the paint-bombing was not fixed. The image above is from June, 2016.
Grid for the gun-running scene; image from March 2016. It is based on a drawing from the Illustrated London News, which can be seen in this RTÉ article on the gunrunning. About 600 cars were used in the operation, perhaps the first large-scale use of motorised vehicles.
A newsboy carries a paper announcing the burgeoning Irish Volunteers. The headline portrayed was later changed, as can be seen in one of the images below.
The first part of wall at the end of March, before the addition of the ‘loose talk’ posters over Carson’s face.
The panel as it appears in August; the removal of the posters tore away some of the paint around Carson’s face.
A late August repaint makes Carson’s forehead protrude and the fingers of his hand are curled up. A Fáılte Feırste Thıar/Welcome To West Belfast panel has been added. (Presumably this welcome does not extend to the weapons being smuggled in as part of the gun-running.)
The new mural on the International Wall is book-ended on the left-hand side by a host of Irish nationalists from the centuries before the 1916 Rising, who continue to watch over the unfolding drama of the nationalist cause. In chronological order, the figures depicted are …
Theobold Wolfe Tone (1768-1798), the main figure shown above, leader of the United Irishmen and the 1798 rebellion
Betsy Gray, female in green, who died in the 1798 rebellion
Henry Joy McCraken (1767-1798) second from the left at bottom, leader of the 1798 rebellion in County Antrim, rising on June 6
Mary Anne McCracken (1770-1876) on Tone’s cheekbone, political activist and anti-slavery and poverty reformer
Robert Emmett (1778-1803) obscured by pole, leader of a revolt in 1803
Anna Wheeler (1780-1848), female in purple, feminist author
James Fintan Lalor (1807-1849), bottom left, writer and political activist
Thomas Davis (1814-1845) small portrait below Gray, organiser of Young Ireland
John Mitchel (1815-1875) top row left of the pole, Young Ireland and the Irish Confederation
Michael Davitt (1846-1906) third from left at bottom, founder of the Land League and who took part in the Fenian Rising of 1867
John Devoy (1842-1928) fourth from left at bottom, one of the Cuba Five, exiled to the U.S. in 1871, and active in all of the Fenian Rising, the 1916 Rising, and the War of Independence
(There is a twelfth figure, in a bowler hat, top left. If you know who this is, please get in touch.)
Extramural Activity 