This is the sixth mural by the Bogside Artists, commemorating the hunger strike. The main figure is Raymond McCartney, shown after 53 days on hunger strike in 1980; the female figure is perhaps Mary Doyle (the other two female strikers were Maıréad Farrell and Maıréad Nugent).
“Eastway Wall Art Project – a Re-Imaging Communities Programme – aims to help all communities in urban areas tackle the visible signs of sectarianism and racism and to create a positive welcoming environment for everyone. Living gallery envisaged by Creggan Enterprises and created by Guildhall Press & Tom Agnew. Signage and artwork fabricated locally by Globaltech. [acknowledgements] The Eastway Wall itself has undergone major refurbishment including the construction of two new pillars to frame the wall. The lower Eastway natural-stone tower maintains the historical link between Rath Mór and the Grianán of Aileach ring fort in Donegal. The higher Eastway structure comprises two sections of a factory chimney stack once located on the nearby Bligh’s Lane site and demolished in 2008. This was added to preserve an important link with the area’s industrial heritage.”
The image above shows the second through the eighth panel. A few of the info boards, including the main one, are shown below. (For the Creggan Story and its info board, see M05174.)
Above the panels shown, some panels just have single words in them – for five of these see Vibrant.
A picture from the courtyard of the Times Bar, on York Street, with both Northern Irish and Union flags, and the crest of the IFA, the association overseeing soccer in Northern Ireland. (Previously from the Times Bar.)
March 2013 is the 25th anniversary of the Michael Stone’s attack on mourners attending the burials of the Gibraltar 3 in Milltown cemetery. Stone killed three people. The mural combines images of mourners taking shelter from Stone’s attack with the civil war memorial in Ballyseedy, Co. Kerry (WP) which was famously connected to the Gibraltar 3 in a mural prepared for the return of the coffins to Belfast – see A Legitimate Right To Take Up Arms. (Here is a copy of Tragedies In Kerry.) Images of the mural in progress were presented in a separate entry. (See that post for the photographs on which the mural is based.) The Gibraltar 3 are portrayed on the left; Stone’s victims are on the right. In the top right is an IRA volunteer who had been shot two days earlier, on the night that the coffins of the Gibraltar 3 arrived in Belfast.
25 years ago – 1988 – puts us firmly in the era of video, and so you can see footage on youtube relating to each of these events:
Death On The Rock, a famous Thames Television production about the SAS killings of IRA members Maıréad Farrell, Danny McCann and Seán Savage on March 6th in Gibraltar.
Michael Stone’s attack on mourners at their funerals in Milltown cemetery, March 16th, which killed Thomas McErlean, John Murray, and Caoımhín Mac Brádaıgh (Kevin Brady).
The memorial depicted in the background of the mural is a civil war memorial in Ballyseedy, Co. Kerry (WP) which was famously connected to the Gibraltar 3 in a mural prepared for the return of the coffins to Belfast – see A Legitimate Right To Take Up Arms. Here is a copy of Tragedies In Kerry.
Two new murals are going up side-by-side on the International Wall (Divis St.), a bookmark-style one for Marian Price and a large piece commemorating three IRA members killed in Gibraltar on March 6, 1988 (WP), IRA member Kevin McCracken who was killed on March 14th in Belfast, and the three who were killed by Michael Stone at the funerals of the ‘Gibraltar Three’ in Milltown cemetery, Belfast/Béal Feırste, on March 16th (WP).
We’ll have the finished pieces in a few days. Below, a wide shot of the Milltown scene, in progress, and below that, Marty Lyons working from a photograph of the incident, perhaps this second in this set, on which the left side of the mural is based, while the center and right-hand side are based on this one (by Bobby Ingram).
A mural in Emerson Street, Londonderry, featuring UFF/UDA volunteer Cecil McKnight and additionally naming Lindsay Mooney, Ray Smallwoods, Gary Lynch, Ben Redfern, and William Campbell. McKnight is shown standing in front of a mural in the adjacent Bond’s place circa 1990 (facing the Trooper mural). The Londonderry crest (left of centre, over McKnight’s right shoulder,) is featured in the mural in Vita, Veritas, Victoria.
A house in Shankill Parade sports an “Ibrox Stadium G51 – Rangers Football Club” plate over the door. (G51 is the postcode for Glasgow and the surrounding area.)
A small RNU (Republican Network for Unity, a dissident (political) group) mural and ONH (Óglaıgh Na hÉıreann, a faction of the Real IRA) stencil below the advertising hoarding at the corner of Northumberland Street and the International Wall on Divis Street.