Here are close-ups, and a final wide-shot, of the “Reaching Out” suicide-prevention mural in Springmadden on the Springfield Road, painted by Lucas Quigley.
Above, a girl is carried away by balloon hearts; below, a fox peeks out from behind giant sunflowers and foliage sporting a ladybird while a butterfly looks on.
Graffiti in The Village area (south Belfast). The precise reason for the graffiti is unknown (leave a comment/e-mail if you know). Romanians were in the first wave of European immigration to Northern Ireland and came under attack especially in 2009. More recently, a Romanian had faeces thrown at him last week (BelTel) and attacks against immigrants, Poles in particular, have been on the rise in recent months. The latest is this attack (Tele) on a family in Templemore Avenue and an attack by a gang of fifteen people (Guardian). Last week saw “Locals only/Get out!” graffiti in east Belfast (U.tv – includes video| The Journal) and south Belfast (NewsLetter). Last year, “No blacks” graffiti was directed at two Nigerians, also in east Belfast (BBC). The Polish envoy has expressed his concerns to the PSNI (Guardian | IrishNews).
“Welcome to our park – Whitewell says “no” to racism.” Above is a detail from a new mural by Lucas Quigley showing children of different ethnicities playing together. The children are also cross-community: the two central figures are wearing Cliftonville and Crusaders kits – two rival north Belfast teams.
Graffiti in the Highfield estate complaining about/threatening someone allegedly reporting [touting] others to the authorities about unemployment claims [bru, brew; the dole].
According to one source, “bru” is originally a Glaswegian corruption of “bureau” from the 1930s.
“The test for whether or not you can hold a job should not be the arrangement of your chromosomes. A women is the full circle. Within her is the power to create, nurture and transform. Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.” This past Saturday (2015-03-08) was International Women’s Day. The board above (on one of the Donegall Road bridges) features the Westinghouse ‘We Can Do It!’ poster (often mistaken for Rosie The Riveter) (WP) though here with a women’s liberation badge on her collar (shown in large size on the right). She is between images of women at work. See also: The Home Front.
“Women have been trained to speak softly and carry a lipstick. Those days are over.” (Bella Abzug).
Above is a board on the Donegall Road bridge showing women drumming up an audience for a suffragette meeting in the Ulster Hall in November 1912. The image in the bottom right is of Emmeline Pankhurst being arrested in London in 1914; the top image is of Pankhurst on tour in the US in 1913 (LoC; see Pieces Of History for a description of the tour; she gave a speech entitled ‘Freedom Or Death’). Pankhurst spoke in Belfast at the 1912 meeting, though the speakers advertised on the placards are “Mrs Charlotte Despard, Miss Irene Miller, Mrs Edith How-Martyn, Miss Alison Neilans“.
The first suffrage group in Ireland was the North Of Ireland Women’s Suffrage Society, founded in Belfast in 1872 by Isabella Tod.
U.S. civil rights protester John Lewis (WP) – leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and co-organizer of the march on Washington in August, 1963 – made a visit to Dublin, Derry, and Belfast at the end of April (Newsletter | DerryCity.gov.uk). In honour of his visit, the ‘We Can Do It!” (a.k.a. “Rosie The Riveter”) figure at the left edge of the Douglass mural (under Barack Obama) on Northumberland Street was painted over and Lewis’s image – wearing the Presidential Medal Of Freedom – put in its place. For a wide-shot of the mural pre-Lewis, see Liberating Minds, which gives all of the quotes in the mural, including the quote from Abraham Lincoln that provides the title of today’s post.
Poster from the junction of Whiterock and Springfield Roads: “It’s not joyriding, it’s murder. Debbie McComb Aged 15 Killed by car thieves, March 1, 2002.” McComb died of her injuries after being hit by Henry Marley, who was driving a stolen car and drove through a red light. Her death and other deaths led to a substantial campaign against “death drivers” in 2002 (see, for example, An Phoblacht | The (Sunday) People). Marley was sentenced in April of this year for colliding into two other cars (Newsletter).
The poster above – seen in east and south Belfast – has been called “racist” by the Alliance party. “What happened to local jobs for local people? Why are local skilled workers denied job opportunities? Why is outside labour being used in their place? Why are hundreds of overseas workers employed at present on higher wages? Why are they not paying UK tax? Why are they not paying national insurance?”
The poster concerns the 600 temporary jobs at H&W refurbishing the oil rig ‘Blackford Dolphin‘. According to the BBC (video) only one third of the jobs could be filled from the Northern Irish workforce. A BelTel article from November 2013 specifies that another third came from Britain and the final third from “Poland and Lithuania”.
Below: Some posters with the H&W cranes in the background, just off the Newtownards Road.
Seosamh Mac Coille Collection 