16 leaders and 70 others who were “killed whilst fighting” in the Rising during Easter Week 1916.
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Copyright © 2021 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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Easter Week 1916
printed board/placard
Maybe This One’s For Me
Here are images from Sailortown of the Rotterdam and Pat’s, back to back in Pilot Street and Princes Dock Street, both boarded up well before pandemic closures.
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Copyright © 2021 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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It’s OK To Talk
October 10th is WHO World Mental Health Day. To mark the occasion and respond to the continued high rates of suicide in west Belfast (Assembly Research), emic (web | tw | ig) and local youth painted an “OK” gesture on the side of the Alternatives (web) offices in Agnes Street, which also includes the numbers for Lifeline and Samaritans. In-progress images of the mural being painted by can be seen at AlternativesRJ. In the US, the “OK” hand gesture has recently become associated with the ‘white power’ movement (WP).
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Copyright © 2020 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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Pay Now
Gratitude for NHS and other front line staff has been in no short supply throughout the pandemic but the cost of the pandemic last month led UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak to moot a pay freeze for public sector workers (BBC). After widespread outcry, including the People Before Profit (web | tw) campaign shown here, he two weeks ago declared that salaries of a million nurses and frontline staff would not be frozen but declined to specify an increase (Nursing Times | iNews).
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GAWA Away
The Past Comes Back
The “Ulster’s Finest” mural in Monkstown was remarkable for its depiction of two female volunteers, carrying Uzis, the only depiction of female loyalist volunteers (see Rolston ‘Women on the walls’ in Crime Media Culture 14.3, 2018, p. 373). It was plastered over, perhaps because the gable is next to Hollybank primary. Some of the pebbledash wore away in January/February to reveal the mural – still in good condition – beneath (Vintage_UVF). For the original mural, see T00230.
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Bang Up To Date
The previous UVF mural in Carrington Street (Volunteering | On Your Side) was paint-bombed in October (Keep It Local) but has been quickly replaced by this computer-generated board showing the Harland & Wolff cranes, a Long Kesh watch-tower, and a hooded gunman from the UVF’s East Belfast Battalion.
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Rathfern Remembers
For the centenary of the end of WWI (in November 2018) a small board was added to the UFF’s South East Antrim Brigade mural in Rathfern.
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We Are The People
“The Glorious Revolution for civil and religious liberty.” King James II of England – a Catholic convert – had a son in 1688 that replaced his (Protestant) daughter Mary as first in line for the English throne. In order to prevent a Catholic succession, William of Orange, Protestant ruler of Holland and Mary’s cousin and husband set sail in October with 40,000 men in 463 ships (WP). He is shown in this new board in Main Street, Markethill leading his troops across the Boyne in Ireland. His success in deposing James would become known as the “Glorious Revolution.”
There are three Biblical references inside the band:
Psalm 60 v.4 “Thou hast given a banner to them that fear thee, that it may be displayed because of the truth”;
Isaiah 13 v.2 “Lift ye up a banner upon the high mountain, exalt the voice unto them, shake the hand, that they may go into the gates of the nobles”;
Psalm 95 v.7 “For he is our God; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.”
and a possible signature “RGm”
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The Falls Road Massacre
Muralist Gerard ‘Mo Chara’ Kelly (whose catalogue of work can be seen in a separate site) and others from Gael Force Art (Fb) have mounted a three-piece memorial for the centenary of the Falls Road Massacre in which four people were killed – one of them being Mo Chara’s great uncle Jimmy Shields – in a 5-minute shooting spree by a “special patrol” on the night of the funerals of three men killed by the ‘RIC Murder Gang’ (see the 2007 post). For more background see the memorial’s Facebook page.
More than 500 people were killed in Belfast from 1920 to 1922; for details and their locations see The Social Geography Of Violence During The Belfast Troubles.
“These four innocent local men were murdered by an RIC/British Army death squad near this spot in [September 28th] 1920: James Shields, William Teer, Robert Gordon, Thomas Barkley.” With perhaps the first appearance of a hashtag on a plaque: #fallsroadmassacre1920
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Extramural Activity 