At the corner of the Falls Road and Northumberland Street, consumerism and republicanism collide.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2016 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X03295 X03294
Reclaim Coke
CNR
Death Drivers
“Death drivers are killing the community” – anti-joy-riding mural in Beechmount with a skeletal head crashing through a windscreen.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2016 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X03286 Beechmount ave
Do You Care?
James “Jim” Doherty was six years old when he was shot while playing in the front garden of his Turf Lodge home in 1972. Relatives For Justice and the family launched the board shown above at the entrance to the estate last October in order to push for a new inquiry into the death due to the insufficiency of the original investigation and the disappearance of the bullet taken from the body. (Belfast Media Group)
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2016 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X03281 monagh rd
Revolution 2016
The ‘Revolution 1916’ exhibition – items from which were shown in Belfast earlier in February (see Revolution 1916) – opened in Dublin this weekend, including two murals (see this An Phoblacht article for one of them). The three painters also painted the mural above for the mini-exhibition in Andersonstown, reproducing the left-hand grouping from Walter Paget’s Birth Of The Irish Republic and putting the proclamation in the background. For Paget’s original oil painting and other version of it, see the painting’s Visual History page.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2016 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X03278 poblacht na heireann provisional government to the people of ireland
Apostles Of Freedom
The plaque above is a new one outside the Andersonstown Social Club, mounted for the centenary of the Easter Rising: 1916-2016 – We serve neither king nor kaiser but Ireland. This plaque was erected to the memory of the men and women who give their lives in the fight for Irish freedom. “Apostles of freedom are ever idolised when dead but crucified when alive” – James Connolly (These are the opening lines of ‘The Men We Honour‘ 1898)
The plaque below is a previously existing one to volunteers from the First Battalion of the IRA’s Belfast Brigade and various other republicans and “also in memory of the civilians who died at the hands of the UDR, RUC, and loyalist extremists”.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2016 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X03280 X03279 south link an chéad chathlán de bhrıogáıd bhéal feırste óglaıgh na héıreann ı ndílchuımhne [ndılchuımhne] ar henderson mcdermott forsythe jordan finucan hall burke fennell rooney fox kane lennon o’callaghan mccartan sands mcdonnell doherty turley magill mckernan mcardle farrell mccracken macbrádaıgh twomey o’rawe mcdonagh ryan black roe mcairt dolan crawford mcauley dempsey best drumm keenan
The Mainspring
Seán Mac Dıarmada was born in Leitrim, left for Glasgow at age 15, and after two years returned to Belfast in 1905 and – according to the new mural above – spoke from the back of a coal lorry in Clonard Street, outside the Clonard branch of the Ancient Order Of Hibernians. Mac Dıarmada was for a short time an AOH member, before moving on to the Irish Republican Brotherhood and Irish Volunteers, which led to his participation in the 1916 Easter Rising and execution on May 12th of that year.
The title of today’s post is historian F.X. Martin’s assessment of Mac Dıarmada, quoted in a pamphlet on Mac Dıarmada from the National Library Of Ireland. The NLI made many letters from and to Mac Dıarmada available in 2016. (See also this Irish Times write-up).
Previously: A 2013 Mac Dıarmada mural in Ardoyne and a 2009 small board, also in Ardoyne.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2015 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X03275 clonard st quigley’s coal merchants séan executed by the british for his role
Ultras Celtic
The Green Brigade, founded in 2006, (web | WP) is an ultra-fanatical supporters club for Scottish football team Celtic. The poster above, which shows a supporter with scarf over the lower part of his face and aiming a slingshot, is in the Clonard area of west Belfast.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2015 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X03276 clonard st
Woodbourne Village
This new mural of local landmarks — including centrally St. John The Baptist Anglican church — by Fra Maher was erected last November (2015) as part of a re-imaging and re-development project sponsored by the Housing Executive, and joins the art on the Woodbourne police station in brightening up the area — see Only God Can Judge Me.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2016 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X03274 woodbourne cr wilkommen fáilte maligayang pagdating vitajte welcome witamy welkom bienvenue shalom suffolk stewartstown
I ♥ NLR
There are large-size photographs of former residents posted on the closed-up doors and windows of Stratheden Street in the New Lodge, as the JCBs move in to begin demolition.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2016 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X03270 X03272 X03271 I love the New Lodge Road sráid shraith éadain
Don’t Ever Give Up!
Positive thinking in a suicide-prevention poster from the Republican Network for Unity (RNU) in Ardoyne: Place your hand over your heart, can you feel it? This is called purpose! Your’re [sic] alive for a reason! … Don’t ever give up
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2015 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X03273 berwick rd
Seosamh Mac Coille Collection 