About 100 people came out to Marine Gardens for the live broadcast of the coronation of Charles III on May 6th (Mid & East Antrim youtube), one of about nine such live-streams across Norther Ireland (Bel Tel).
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Copyright © 2023 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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“At this place of reflection, we proudly honour our heroic volunteers, who made the ultimate sacrifice for the freedom & sovereignty of Ireland and the Irish people. We salute our many comrades, who spent numerous years in captivity, and who’s [sic] lives were often blighted by the experience. Never forgetting the WOMEN & MEN of Creggan and the Derry district, who stood steadfastly with the volunteers. BEIR BUA.” The 12 Troubles-era hunger strikers and 43 Derry brigade members are at the top of each panel with 115 named comrades/comrádaithe (and three unnamed) below (and on the side wall – first image below), with each name preceded by “Com.” as though establishing a new category of activist.
The memorial garden is next to the George McBrearty mural and Crann Na Poblachta in Linsfort Drive, Creggan.
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Copyright © 2023 Andy McDonagh/Eclipso Pictures (ig | Fb)
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A ceremony to mark the forty-second anniversary of the deaths of IRA volunteers George McBrearty and Charles “Pop” Maguire – shot by the SAS on May 28th, 1981 – was held last Sunday (May 28th) in the garden of remembrance in Linsfort Drive, Creggan (Derry Now). On patrol in Creggan with two other IRA men, McBrearty and Maguire pursued and a car whose driver they suspected of being an SAS soldier and eventually stopped it at the bottom of Couch Road/Southway at the edge of the Brandywell. The driver shot McBrearty as he approached the car and Maguire was shot by the driver and/or by other undercover soldiers from 14th Intelligence who emerged from two other cars. A third volunteer was injured. (Lost Lives 2330)
The “Crann Na Poblachta”/”Tree Of The Republic” – a silver birch – was originally planted in front of the previous mural to George McBrearty mural in Rathkeele Way (see Freedom Fighter For The Republic) (Derry Journal). Both that mural and this one were painted by ‘Bogside Artist‘ Kevin Hasson.
There is a plaque to McBrearty & Maguire near the spot where they were killed on Coach Road/Southway (see M01544).
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Copyright © 2023 Andy McDonagh/Eclipso Pictures (ig | Fb)
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The Imperial War Museums’ ‘Living With The Troubles’ exhibition is open and free to the public (with advance booking available) at the Lambeth Road, London, location, from now until next January. The curators explain their intentions and hopes for the exhibition on youtube.
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Copyright © 2023 Peter Moloney
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“No more ‘promises’ … No more excuses … Fix it now! Wall of protest #FiftyYearsOfFailure It’s not subjective … it’s not debatable. The data doesn’t lie.”
The general concern of this campaign is persistent under-investment in Derry and the northwest. One of the placards reads carried by a protester reads, “Belfast’s economy has grown 14% since the [1998] Good Friday Agreement, Derry’s has shrunk 7%” but the complaint goes back “fifty years”, based on the approval in 1965 (BBC) and construction by 1968 of what was initially called the “New University Of Ulster” at a new site in Coleraine rather at Magee University College in Derry. The final panel of the long board includes the logo of the Derry University Group “fighting for a cross-border independent university for the north west” (tw). (1965 was also the year that Craigavon was created.)
For more on the campaign see Bel Tel | Derry Now.
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Copyright © 2023 Andy McDonagh/Eclipso Pictures (ig | Fb)
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Australian artist Fintan Magee (ig) in Ebrington Square, Londonderry, showing a young girl – a symbol of the next generation – (Bel Tel) behind obscure glass. To the right is a dove; the orca in the bottom right is Dopey Dick, who swam up the Foyle in 1977 (Fb).
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Copyright © 2023 Andy McDonagh/Eclipso Pictures (ig | Fb)
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“In honour of the men and women from Ballyclare and surrounding areas who gave their life in war. ‘They shall grow not old as we that are left grow old, age shall not weary them nor the years condemn, at the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them’. Lest we forget.” With emblems of the Royal British Legion (left), Navy and Merchant Navy (right), and a separate stone for the UDR “When danger threatened, some made the supreme sacrifice”.
The main obelisk is dedicated “in the honoured memory of those men from Ballyclare & District who gave their lives for King and country in the Great War 1914-1918, 1939-1945. ‘Look not on this in sorrow but in pride and may ye live as nobly as they died.”
The remaining image shows the info board describing two aeroplane crashes around Big Collin Mountain, in which eleven airmen died while on training flights, one the result of an engine fire, the other crashed into the side of the mountain.
Ballyclare War Memorial Park, Ballyclare Road, Ballyclare. There are also separate murals in Erskine Park to the locals who died in WWI and in WWII.
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Copyright © 2023 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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Bristol Blenheim X6273 Consolidated Liberator bomber EV954
The inspiration for this new street art by emic (ig | web) – perhaps in both pose and pallette – was Seamus Heaney’s poem ‘Blackberry Picking’ (Derry Journal). A young person appears to be searching intently: “You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet/Like thickened wine: summer’s blood was in it/Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for/Picking.” (Full poem)
The official title is “Younger Days”; in Creggan, Derry, for Gasyard Féıle; with support from the Communities In Transition programme.
Replaces Creggan 75; there is still republican graffiti on the adjacent wall (final image): “Stop normalisation of RUC/PSNI”.
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Copyright © 2023 Andy McDonagh/Eclipso Pictures (ig | Fb)
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The Shankill Memorial Garden next to West Kirk Presbyterian is home to memorials to WWI (see Who Went To War And Never Returned) and the Shankill Bombing (see In The Shadow Of Death) . It has also become the site of many small memorials to local people, including volunteers in the UVF. For “S Company” see S Company, C Company.
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Copyright © 2023 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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Extramural Activity 