“Death drivers are killing the community” – anti-joy-riding mural in Beechmount with a skeletal head crashing through a windscreen.
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Copyright © 2016 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X03286 Beechmount ave
Death Drivers
Belfast west
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)
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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.
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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”.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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X03274 woodbourne cr wilkommen fáilte maligayang pagdating vitajte welcome witamy welkom bienvenue shalom suffolk stewartstown
St. Dympna Intercede
On a headstone in City Cemetery: Che Guevara, the Virgin Mary, a guitar, a pair of football boots, and an invocation of St. Dympna, “patron saint of the nervous, emotionally disturbed, mentally ill, and those who suffer neurological disorders – and, consequently, of psychologists, psychiatrists, and neurologists” according to her WP page.
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X03250 slán chífidh muid níos moille thú goodbye we will see you later
One In Design And Intention
Religion and military might are one in this giant (see the wide shot, below) cross in Belfast’s City Cemetery, which commemorates the dead of World War I. The base (shown below) reads: The cross of sacrifice is one in design and intention with those which have been set up in France and Belgium and other places throughout the world where our dead of this great war are laid to rest. Their name liveth for ever more.” There is a similar memorial in Dundonald Cemetery. According to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, “There are now 296 Commonwealth burials of the 1914-1918 war and 274 of the 1939-1945 war commemorated here.”
Previously from the City Cemetery: The Depths Of Sectarianism
Previously on the same theme: And The Sword In The Other
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X03246 X03248 X03245
Free As A Bird
The mural shows a line of fir trees rather than steel gates but the robins on the spiked rail above give away that we’re on the “peace” line separating loyalist west Belfast from nationalist north Belfast and that the road is still closed. “Seasons Greetings” Belfast-style.
UPDATE Jan 3rd: a similar trompe l’oeil piece by Breandán Clarke could be found at this location previously, showing cars parked on the street (via Old Belfast Photographs/Glenravel History).
“Like a bird on a wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried in my way to be free.” – Leonard Cohen Bird On The Wire
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X03232 X03231 X03230 crumlin rd
Seosamh Mac Coille Collection 