printed board/placard

A Place For Everyone

Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

“I loved it here, and still miss it. The characters that came into the shop … and I miss the craic!” The advertising hoardings at the corner of Ligoniel and Crumlin roads have been replaced with this community alcove with pavers and a space for “sharing positive stories together” at “the turn of the road” from Ballysillan towards Ligoniel village. The plaque to the UDA’s Bill Reynolds, which stood on the building where he was killed until the building was demolished (see the old plaque) and then replaced with a new plaque next to the hoarding, has been included.

“In loving memory [UDA] Lt. Col. Bill Reynolds murdered [by the IRA] 7-7-87. Always remembered by his family, friends and comrades. Quis separabit.”

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2021 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X08578 X08575 [X08576] X08577 Ligoniel Road

Genocide In Ireland

Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

Photography was still in its infancy in 1850 and would not appear in newspapers until the 1880s (LoC). Instead, newspapers used illustrations to bring their stories to life. This board in Ard An Lao (Ardoyne/Bone) – “An Gorta Mór [The Great Hunger] 1845-1851 – The Great Irish Famine” – combines three of them to serve as a background for other images and information.

On the left is Family Being Evicted From Their Home In Rural Ireland.

At the centre is Searching For Potatoes In A Stubble Field from the Illustrated London News. ILN images are a staple of Belfast muraling on the Great Hunger: they were previously used in 1995 (An tOcras Mór in the New Lodge), 1999 (Ireland’s Holocaust on the Whiterock Rd), 2002 (An Gorta Mór in Ardoyne). (Here is a list, with links, of all of the illustrations of Ireland in ILN from the period 1845-1852.)

On the right is food arriving from the USA in the famine of 1879-1880.

See also The Mass Graves Of Ireland.

See also the Visual History page on the Great Hunger in muraling.

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2021 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X08360

What We Have We Hold

Extramural Activity1 Comment

This Village board celebrates the Covenant, Ulster Volunteers, and the 36th (Ulster) Division, with photographs both vintage and contemporary.

For the photograph of Carson signing the Covenant, and an earlier mural, see Betting Office. For the photograph of the car-mounted gun, and an earlier mural recreating the photo, see UVF 75th Anniversary. For images akin to the contemporary photos, see these BelTel galleries one | two of the 100th anniversary celebrations of the Ulster Volunteers.

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2021 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X08430 X08429 Lwr Rockview St

Faces Of Death

Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

The ‘Hidden Treasure’ wild-style writing that in 2004 replaced the UDA C company mural from the Johnny Adair era on Beverley Street has itself now been partially replaced with the paintings (by emic (web)) of soldiers from the Shankill killed during WWI; the paintings were previously exhibited in the Shankill graveyard.

For more on the Shankill-Falls “peace” line and the early graffiti-art that was used to re-image it, see Visual History 10 – Re-Imaging.

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2021 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X15338 X15339 X08363

More Blacks, More Gays, More Irish

Extramural Activity1 Comment

The old shop-window sign of the Irish experience in England “No blacks, no Irish, [no dogs]” is repurposed and reclaimed positively by the RNU in the Colin area, with the rainbow flag, Irish tricolour, and Nelson Mandela (alongside James Connolly) below the skyline of Belfast. For the original, see previously Oppose Racism | No Dogs, No POWs

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2021 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X08464 X08465 pantridge rd Phil Lynott

Lifford Remembers The Hunger Strikers

Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

“Fuaır sıad bás ar son saoırse na hÉıreann” [they died for Ireland’s freedom] Although it’s the 40th anniversary of the 1981 hunger strike, this Lifford (Co. Donegal) board includes Michael Gaughan and Frank Stagg who died in English prisons in the 1970s.

If you can explain the flag in the centre, please get in touch. The wide shot, below, includes a call to rally for 100% Redress, No Less.

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2021 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X08446 X08447

Village Green Preservation Society

Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

Part of the most recent development of the upper streets in the Village was not to rebuild the two rows on houses on Ebor and Nubia/Moltke streets and in their place construct a park – the Village Green – and playground. This new board on the outside railings make the park a “community park of remembrance” for WWI, showing an Ulster Banner with a Union Flag in the canton. There was formerly on this site an image of Thiepval Tower and a UVF stone.

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2021 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X08437 X08436

Unrepentant Republicans

Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

These two new boards along the Falls Road were mounted by Belfast RNU (tw), commemorating the actions of Billy McKee, Alec Murphy, and Brendan Hughes in 1969 at the onset of the Troubles, and of Máıre Drumm and “the brave women of Belfast who stood up against the might of the British” in bringing the Falls Curfew to an end. (This board was previously a mural on Divis Street.)

McKee and Hughes are profiled in a D Company mural in the number one spot of the International Wall. Murphy died in 2019 “unrepentant” of his republicanism (which was prompted by the Falls Curfew) and in particular his conviction along with Harry Maguire for the Corporal Killings (Irish News | BelTel). For a personal obituary, see The Pensive Quill.

For the plaque and board to the left of the wide shot below, see The Falls Road Massacre.

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2021 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X08366 [X11832] [X15342]
X08364 [X08365] [X15340] [X15341]
X08367 [X11831] [X15343]
launched June 17, 2021

Who Should Put Away Their Guns

Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

Norah McCabe was shot in the back of the head by a plastic bullet fired from an RUC land rover at around 7:45 a.m. on July 9th, 1981, the day after hunger striker Joe McDonnell died. (Danny Barrett would be killed by a British Army sniper in the evening.) The new boards were mounted to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of McCabe’s death. In 1981, a mural was painted at the same spot (in the old Linden Street) to protest the use of plastic bullets: see Plastic Death.

“Norah McCabe, 1947-1981, murdered by an RUC plastic bullet on 9th July 1981, aged 33 years.” With a poem “Peace” by daughter Áıne McCabe, who was three months old when her mother was killed (Irish News).

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2021 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X08368 X08369

Comply With Your Country’s Demand

Extramural Activity2 Comments

In September, 1914, six weeks after the Great War had begun, Edward Carson wrote to the Ulster Volunteers entreating “those who have not already responded” to “my call for Defenders of the Empire” to “enlist at once for the Ulster Division in Lord Kitchener’s Army”, fighting alongside “our fellow Britishers”: “Quit yourselves like men and comply with your country’s demand”. The impulse for the display of force shown here – two panels of hooded gunmen from the 1st East Antrim battalion of the UVF – is the other, original, motivation for the paramilitary force, which Carson describes as “to defend our citizenship in the United Kingdom” (Strachan & Nally).

For the RIR mural, see For Valour. The new panels shown here re-re-image the VC part of that previous mural in the Larches, Carrickfergus.

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2021 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X08409 X08408 X08406 X08407