The images in the windows of the McLean’s bookies on the Shankill Road suggest that betting on sports – even on George Best – is like playing roulette. The gate to the left (with barbed wire on top) is marked with the letters “U” and “R” of the nearby Ulster Rangers supporters club. (For two murals there, see previously: Save The Shankill | Doing Her Duty).
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Copyright © 2016 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X03289 northern ireland football wheel
The Royal Ulster Constabulary, Police Service of ‘Northern Ireland’, and An Garda Síochána are branded as agents of the status quo, enforcing the partition of Ireland and the capitalist system in this IRSP mural on Northumberland Street: “Know your enemy – reject political policing”.
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Copyright © 2016 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X03291 X03290 Irish republican socialist party inla national liberation army RUC PSNI gardai
Anti-Óglaıgh Na hÉıreann graffiti in Beechmount Street beneath a Sınn Féın banner using Martin Luther King to advocate for non-violent protest (shown previously in Always Avoid Violence).
See also: The F-Bomb.
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Copyright © 2016 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X03296 FTONH
“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
This is a new panel in the RNU (Fb)/Cogús (Fb) mural on Northumberland Street. If you can identify the image or the style, please get in touch. “End forced isolation, end controlled movement, end forced strip searches”.
For previous panels, see Free Stephen Kaczynski | The Popular Front | The Only Secure Community Is An Organised One
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Copyright © 2016 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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At the corner of the Falls Road and Northumberland Street, consumerism and republicanism collide.
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Copyright © 2016 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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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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Copyright © 2016 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X03281 monagh rd
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 ‘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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Copyright © 2016 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X03278 poblacht na heireann provisional government to the people of ireland
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
Seosamh Mac Coille Collection 