poster/paste-up/sticker

Jimmy Steele Will Lead Us

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Over the course of a long career as a Fian, IRA volunteer, and Northern Command adjudtant, Jimmy Steele saw action in the S-Plan (see Joe Malone’s gravestone in Far Dearer The Grave Or The Prison) and the border campaign, went on hunger strike and “strip strike” (blanket), escaped from Crumlin Road gaol, and was the first editor of Republican News. (Treason Felony | WP) This poster (from the Irish Republican Martyrs’ Commemorative Committee – Fb)calls people to a commemoration of Steele on the anniversary of his death, August 9th, 1970.

“Óglach Jimmy Steele Commemoration. Assemble at Milltown Cemetery gates 3:00pm Wednesday 9th August. Irish Republican Martyrs Commemorative Committee wreath laying ceremony 53rd anniversary. All welcome/fáılte roımh chách.” “Jimmy Steele will lead us … Éıre abú. An Phoblacht abú.”

Northumberland Street, Belfast.

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Billy Was Wright

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“Billy was Wright – no Irish Sea border.” Billy Wright broke with the UVF in 1996 over loyalist concessions made during the peace-process that ultimately led to the Agreement in 1998. He soon formed the LVF but was killed in prison in 1997 by members of the INLA, which, like the LVF, had not joined the ceasefire.

These posters are in Cambrai Street and Conway Street; attempts to remove them have proven unsuccessful. The Sunday World reports that a similar banner has appeared in Ballymena (Sunday World) and that the same poster was also spotted in the lower Shankill (Sunday World).

Wright is shown standing in front of a small mural in Old Rectory Park, Portadown – see D01068.

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The Forbidden Emoji

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In Raimondi’s Adam And Eve, an engraving from c. 1512, Adam offers Eve two small apples while a human-headed serpent looks on (Met). (The town in the background is from Raimondi, but the car in the middle is Boyd’s.)

In Leo Boyd’s reworking, all the heads have been turned into surveillance cameras – including the snake in the tree, the private parts have been covered by “Fig. 1” and “Fig. 2”, and the forbidden fruit is now a heart emoji, which in this instance has literally been cut out of the print. Our surveillance culture (inlcuding “social” media) perhaps makes emotional connection more difficult and more dangerous than ever – we are ashamed to appear naked.

The paste-up is on the hoarding in Donegall Quay, below a ring of surveillance cameras. Belfast is the 100th-most surveilled city in the world, per capita (CEOWorld).

For information about the production of the piece, and images that include the heart that has been torn out, see Leo Boyd Prints.

Previous posts featuring Boyd’s work.

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We Must Choose Our Fate

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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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Plastic Bullets Kill

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Norah McCabe died on July 9th, 1981, a day after being struck in the back of the head by a plastic bullet. The RUC claimed that they fired at a petrol bomber but footage from a Canadian TV crew on the Falls Road showed this to be false (Belfast Media).

Her husband Jim was involved in the “United Campaign Against Plastic Bullets” (web) founded in 1985 by Groves & Reilly. He died in January (2023) and mural in his memory was launched yesterday on Divis Street – see Jim McCabe.

There is a plaque and a memorial to McCabe at the spot where she was struck in the old Linden Street. These posters are at the family home on the Springfield Road.

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The Vault Is Empty

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The Vault artists have cleared out of the old Met building in Tower Street and have been preparing their two new digs, in the Shankill Mission (Vault ig | FGB ig) and Marlbourough House in Victoria Street. The vestiges of their time in east Belfast linger on.

For the final image in better days, see Do You Own A Giant Building?

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We’re From The Coole

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More Sons Of Kai/KAI flute band (ig) markings in Rathcoole, Newtownabbey. See previously The Famous and Welcome To Our Homeland.

Rathcoole Drive/Rathcoole Gardens

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Peeling In The Sun

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A couple of Leo Boyd (ig) paste-ups of his PSNIce-Cream land-rover (previously a mural in Kent St) are peeling off the pole in North Street, perhaps in part because of the recent warm temperatures.

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Smash Fascism

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Here is a gallery of republican stickers on light poles – and one piece of graffiti – most from Lasaır Dhearg (web).

“Smash fascists, smash fascism.” For the Cliftonville murals in the background, see Red Army.
“Stop imperialist war planes.”
“The PSNI is not a normal police force.”
“Fascism unwelcome” – graffiti on Broadway
Maıréad Farrell “oppressed as a woman” – also used in Our Nation As A Whole; see also Just As Good As Others.
“Stormont can’t deliver.” with “Refugees Welcome“
“Solidarity will save them” – hunger strikers Sibel Balaç and Gökhan Yıldırım.
“Smash fascists, smash fascism.” Same sticker but in west Belfast.
“For a 32 county socialist republic” – with that other “red army” Marx, Engels, Lenin, Connolly,

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My Second Paste Up

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Here is a paste-up version of Leo Boyd’s (ig) HTN2021 piece My First Paste Up.

Union Street, Belfast city centre.

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