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.”
“Fáılte go dtí Marrowbone youth club [club óıge Mhachaıre Bothaın (Fb)] – better our community by working together.” The verbiage is a mix of Irish and English and the imagery is a mix of youth activities and … a minion.
The previous mural – which included Cliftonville (soccer) and Antrim (GAA) emblems – was seen previously in 2013 and in 2021.
The number is arrived at by aggregating the days served by republican prisoners in Maghaberry, Hydebank, and Portlaoise (IRPWA – page contains images of all the locations in which this board was mounted).
Braemar Street, west Belfast.
“End internment by remand! 11000 days and counting. Bail denied. Seán Farrell, Davy Jordan, Kevin Murphy, Nick Donnelly, Charlie Love, Shea Reynolds, Ciaran Maguire, Gary Hayden, Sean Walsh, Damien McLaughlin, Sharon Jordan, Mandy Duffy.”
A shawlie is a working-class woman wearing a shawl to serve as a coat and hat. In Belfast they are particularly associated with the workers in the linen mills, such as the Brookfield Mill on the Crumlin Road. This statue, designed by Ross Wilson, was inspired by William Conor’s painting of mill workers (and pehaps specifically “Going to the mills, Crumlin Road, 1914” which is included in the info board, below) and installed at the top of Cambrai Street in 2010 (BelTel | BBC).
“The Mill Worker. Belfast was one of the fastest growing urban centres in Europe in the nineteenth-century, with the linen industry a major driver. The city’s status as the world’s biggest linen producer came about partly as a result of the cotton shortages in the 1860s caused by the American Civil War. In 1896, 96,000 people worked in linen in Belfast, making it the city’s biggest employer. The profits enabled other industries to grow, including engineering, shipbuilding, tobacco, whiskey and rope-making. Belfast became a world leader in all of these industries. The recession between the world wars led to a dramatic reduction in the demand for linen, reinforced by changes in fashion, so the industry went into almost terminal decline and nearly disappeared. Today, however, the supreme quality of linen is valued once again – not least on the Milan, Paris and London catwalks.”
“Come one, come all, to the Welcome Hall, and come in your working clothes.” Amy Carmichael was born in Millisle, Co. Down, in 1867. In 1884 the family moved to Belfast, where Amy started Sunday classes in Rosemary Street Presbyterian for “shawlies” who worked in the mills. These were successful enough that a larger venue was required, and so, in 1887, the Welcome Hall, with seating for 500, opened in Cambrai Street (this subsequently became the Welcome Evangelical Church, where the blue plaque shown below is mounted). Carmichael then went to England (Manchester), Japan, Sri Lanka, and India (Bangalore). (Welcome Church | WP)
On this day in 1834, the Slavery Abolition Act came into effect (except territories managed by the East India Company), marking the beginning of the end for slavery in the British empire. Enslaved children below the age of six were freed; while enslave adults were designated as apprentices for a period of four or six years; 5% of British GDP went towards reimbursing owners (Independent | WP).
This made it safe for Frederick Douglass – “1818-1895, abolitionist and human rights campaigner” – to tour in Ireland and Britain when the success of his (first) auto-biography, Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass, might have allowed and encouraged his owner to re-capture him. Douglass had “illegally” escaped slavery in September, 1838, become a preacher in 1839, and by 1843, had joined a six-months-long speaking tour of the United States. (WP)
His tour of Ireland and Britain lasted two years and included speeches given in First Presbyterian Church in Rosemary Street and at the Assembly Rooms in Waring Street. In a letter to William Garrison he wrote, “Instead of the bright, blue sky of America, I am covered with the soft, grey fog of the Emerald Isle. I breathe, and lo! the chattel becomes a man.” And when leaving for Britain in January 1846 he wrote, “I shall always remember the people of Belfast, and the kind friends I now see around me, and wherever else I feel myself to be a stranger, I will remember I have a home in Belfast.”
Douglass returned to the US in 1847, where millions were still enslaved (until the 13th Amendment of 1865). In an 1857 address concerning Jamaica and the West Indies, Douglass said, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the roar of its mighty waters. The struggle may be a moral one or it may be a physical one, or it may both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and it never will.” (CUNY)
The piece was sculpted by Alan Beattie Herriot and Hector Guest (BBC) with funding from Belfast City Council and the Department For Communities (BelTel), and stands in Lombard Street. Douglass is presented as a 27-year-old; the old mural on Divis Street and the current mural on Northumberland Street portray him in later years.
Douglass carries a watch in his waistcoat pocket: “I could hardly indulge in the hope of someday owning a watch, yet in those hope-killing days of my slave life I did think I might somewhere in the dim and shadowy future, find myself the happy owner of a watch … a sign of wealth and respectability.”
See also: Olaudah Equiano, who toured in Ireland in 1791-1792, and, for Mary Ann McCracken, The World Affords No Enjoyment Equal To That Of Promoting The Happiness Of Others. “”In respect to political rights, we hold woman to be justly entitled to all we claim for man. We go farther and express our conviction that all political rights which it is expedient for man to exercise, it is equally so for women … Our doctrine is that ‘Right is of no sex’.” At Douglass’s farewell breakfast in January 1846, a Belfast Ladies Anti-Slavery Society was formed. Mary Ann McCracken was a founding member.”
“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.
Extramural Activity 