Plúr Na mBan

“Women of substance – plúr na mban. The changing role of women the in Market area.” A century of women’s work, from cooking, child-care, and hand-wringing the washing in 1904 to using computers, reading books, and graduating from university in 2004. The pink symbol in the corner is the emblem of the New Belfast Community Arts Initiative.

Stewart Street, Markets, south Belfast

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Copyright © 2010 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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Free The POWs

This 1997 mural is a collage of images from the previous 30 years, including banging binlids on the ground, Maıréad Farrell in Armagh prison, men on the blanket, the cages of Long Kesh, marches in support of the hunger strikers, and reproductions of various posters, against Margaret Thatcher, plastic bullets, internment, and censorship. There’s a quote from Bob Dylan in the middle, “How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn’t see – the answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind, the answer is blowing in the wind.”

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Copyright © 2010 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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Lady In Red

Volunteers in Cumann Na mBan (or youth wing Cumann Na gCaılíní) from Ballymurphy and Springhill are remembered in a 2002 mural in Ballymurphy.

Anti-clockwise, they are Maura Meehan, Anne Marie Pettigrew, Dorothy Maguire, Eileen Mackin, Catherine (Cathy) McGartland, Anne Parker. All but Mackin are included in the Greater Ballymurphy plaque.

The volunteer on the right dates back (at least) to the 1982 poster below; the parade is perhaps based on a picture of Mao’s China?

Information from CAIN on four of the women shown.

Ballymurphy Road, west Belfast

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Copyright © 2004 Cathal Woods
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1982 IntWomensDay