Some of the people on 35th anniversary march were perhaps among the “Short Strand Youth Against H-Block & Armagh” in 1981 but the speakers at the Dunville Park rally were intentionally drawn from the younger Sinn Féin leaders, including Nıall Ó Donnghaıle from the Short Strand (An Phoblacht).
In addition to the seven signatories of the Proclamation of an Irish Republic, 9 other leaders of the Easter Rising were executed in the wake of the rebellion. The portraits of all 16 are part of the — newly refreshed — mural of Walter Paget’s painting The Birth Of The Irish Republic. The mural now includes a bright red phoenix. (For the original mural, and Paget’s painting, see the painting’s Visual History page.) In order of appearance, the 16 (with links to their WP pages) are …
“An staılc ocraıs 1981 hunger strike – 35th anniversary march – Sunday 14th August – Assemble Divis tower 2pm”. With portraits of the deceased 1981 hunger strikers; Frank Stagg and Michael Gaughan are included even though they died in the 1970s.
Palestinian prisoner and hunger striker Bilal Kayed last week called off his hunger strike after 71 days of fasting, after reaching an agreement with his Israeli captors for his release in December, after a six-month “administrative’ extension to his original 14.5 year sentence (Alternative News). Hence the slogan “End internment, end administrative detention” (alongside “Free all political prisoners” and the IRPWA emblem). Update: Kayed released 2016-12-12.
The mural is at the right-hand end of the so-called International Wall in west Belfast. For the controversy over the painting of the mural adjacent to the historical panels on the rest of the wall, see The World Did Gaze In Deep Amaze.
Nora Connolly in her Cumann Na mBan uniform is the centre point of the ‘Howth Gun-Running’ panel in the new mural on the International Wall. Her sister, Ina, is shown to the right, unloading a rifle from a car outside their home in Glenalina Terrace. About 1,500 rifles were smuggled into Ireland on two boats, 900 of them on the yacht, Asgard, shown left-of-centre with Molly Childers and Mary Spring Rice aboard (the latter kept a diary of the trip; extracts are included in this RTÉ History Show video). Asgard docked at Howth on July 26th, 1914. (Here is a tcd.ie collection of images of Asgard’s journey; image #53 is the one reproduced in the mural). The other rifles eventually came ashore two weeks later at Kilcoole. (See this RTÉ article for an account of their tortured journey.)
The vintage Mauser rifles were received by members of Óglaıgh Na hÉıreann and Na Fıanna Éıreann (top left of the image above; here is the original photograph). The off-loading took place during the day but when the police and army met the marching volunteers at Clontarf they were able to capture only 19 rifles. As the army regiment involved returned to barracks it was pelted with stones or fruit by a crowd and killed three (with a fourth dying a week later), as recorded on the front page of the Irish Independent in the bottom left.
Below are two in-progress shots, and below those, two shots including the artist, Marty Lyons.
Ethna Carbery (the left-most of the four female figures, who wrote the song Roddy McCorley) and Alice Milligan (with her hand to her face) together founded both The Northern Patriot and The Shan Van Vocht (“the poor, old, woman,” i.e. Ireland), the latter being a monthly socialist newspaper that ran from 1896 until 1899 and included some early writings by James Connolly (pictured on the right of the mural), such as the piece “Socialism And Nationalism” which appeared in The Shan Van Vocht in January, 1897 and from which the quotation on the wall is taken: “If you remove the English army to-morrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organisation of the Socialist Republic, your efforts would be in vain.” (For the passage in broader context, see (previously) If You Remove The English Army Tomorrow.)
The other two women shown are Elizabeth (seated second) and Nell Corr (standing), Cumann Na mBan members from the Ormeau Road in Belfast, who were in Dublin on the morning of the Rising but headed north. (For more information and a mural depicting the political complexity of their family, see previously The Corrs.)
Seán Mac Dıarmada was born in Leitrim but worked on the trams in Belfast in 1905. He also, as member and organiser for many nationalist groups, including Sınn Féın (formed in 1905) and the Irish Republican Brotherhood. He is shown here speaking on Clonard Street in the lower Falls, in 1906, flanked by fellow Brothers Denis McCullough (l) and Bulmer Hobson (r), both from Belfast. (For a brief account of MacDıarmada’s life, see this previous mural on Extramural Activity The Mainspring, which shows MacDıarmada delivering his speech from the back of a coal cart, and also this Saoirse32 post. See also Mac Dıarmada for a board near where he lived in Ardoyne.
The other part of the picture illustrates the use of magic lanterns to display images on gable walls to spread nationalist history and ideology. On one wall is Eoın MacNeill’s article ‘The North Began’ (which also features earlier on the new wall; see Shared Space and We Won’t Have Carson. On the other wall is an image of An Gorta Mór/The Great Hunger. (Magic lanterns were used by Alice Milligan (NWCI | Field Day | also a kids version from Creative Centenaries) when she gave talks; for her newspaper work, see Shan Van Vocht.)
The image below shows that there were originally (or at least, in April) plans for a two larger faces to be featured.
The new mural on the International Wall is book-ended on the left-hand side by a host of Irish nationalists from the centuries before the 1916 Rising, who continue to watch over the unfolding drama of the nationalist cause. In chronological order, the figures depicted are …
Theobold Wolfe Tone (1768-1798), the main figure shown above, leader of the United Irishmen and the 1798 rebellion
Betsy Gray, female in green, who died in the 1798 rebellion
Henry Joy McCraken (1767-1798) second from the left at bottom, leader of the 1798 rebellion in County Antrim, rising on June 6
Mary Anne McCracken (1770-1876) on Tone’s cheekbone, political activist and anti-slavery and poverty reformer
Robert Emmett (1778-1803) obscured by pole, leader of a revolt in 1803
Anna Wheeler (1780-1848), female in purple, feminist author
James Fintan Lalor (1807-1849), bottom left, writer and political activist
Thomas Davis (1814-1845) small portrait below Gray, organiser of Young Ireland
John Mitchel (1815-1875) top row left of the pole, Young Ireland and the Irish Confederation
Michael Davitt (1846-1906) third from left at bottom, founder of the Land League and who took part in the Fenian Rising of 1867
John Devoy (1842-1928) fourth from left at bottom, one of the Cuba Five, exiled to the U.S. in 1871, and active in all of the Fenian Rising, the 1916 Rising, and the War of Independence
(There is a twelfth figure, in a bowler hat, top left. If you know who this is, please get in touch.)
This part of the new mural on the International Wall uses the area of Kilmainham jail where most of the leaders of the Easter Rising were executed in order to tie together the blanket protest – Kieran Nugent and Maıréad Farrell are shown with raised fists – the hunger strikers – including Frank Stagg and Michael Gaughan on the ground – and Roger Casement, walking towards the gallows. Casement was executed not in Kilmainham but in Pentonville Prison, England, convicted of treason for his attempts to secure German rifles and machine-guns for the Rising.
Between Bobby Sands and Mickey Devine in the lower centre of the image is a 200th-anniversary stone in Maynooth/Maıgh Nuad(h) of the 1798 rising. A photograph of the stone is available here. “The Tree Of Liberty: What is that in your hand? It is a branch. Of what? Of the tree of liberty. Where did it first grow? In America. Where does it bloom? In France. Where did the seeds fall? In Ireland.”
The old Nissen huts of Long Kesh are rendered in cartoon style of this ‘march against internment’ poster, which has been plastered over a commercial hoarding on Northumberland Street.
Seosamh Mac Coille Collection 