Looking Down The Barrel Of A Gun

2014-01-09 ArmedReadyClose+

Another UVF mural in the Westwinds estate (Newtownards) in which the traditional motto of “For God and Ulster” has been replaced by “Armed And Ready”. As can be seen in the shot of the whole just below, there are two masked figures, both armed, and one points his weapon directly at the viewer and at pedestrians walking up the footpath, as can be seen in the final shot.

2014-01-09 ArmedReadyFull+

2014-01-09 ArmedReadyWide+

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2014 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X01611 X01613 X01614 [X01605]

Who Can Endure The Most

2014-01-01 HughesFaces+

“It is not those who can inflict the most but those who can endure the most who will conquer.” 1981 hunger-striker Francis Hughes is flanked by blanketmen Hugh Rooney and Freddie Toal and surrounded by a host of other republican faces in this 2011 mural commemorating the 30th anniversary of the strikes. Painted by Seany McVeigh.

Top 1. Wolfe Tone 2. Mairead Farrell 3. Thomas Ashe 4. Kevin Lynch 5. Michael Gaughan 6. Padraig Pearse, [FH] 7. Thomas McElwee  8. Constance Markievicz 9. Joe McDonnell 10. Terence MacSwiney 11. Frank Stagg 12. fuiseog

Middle 1. Hugh Rooney, 2. Kevin Barry 3. Patsy O’Hara 4. Máire Drumm 5. James Connolly, [FH]  6. Denis Barry 7. James O’Donovan Rossa 8. Bobby Sands 9. Mickey Devine 10. ? 11. Freddie Toal

Bottom 1. Roger Casement 2. Kieran Doherty 3. Michael Fitzgerald 4. Seán McNeela 5. Tony D’Arcy 6. Ray McCreesh, [FH] 7. Joseph Murphy 8. Andrew Sullivan 9. Seán McCaughey 10. Martin Hurson 11. Anne Devlin

2011-06-02 HughesFacesProgress+

00470 2011-05-28 HughesFacessquaring+.jpg

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2014/2011 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X01609 X00384 [X00469] X00470 1981-2011 30 H-block

Reserved

2013-12-28 Reserved+

The final large spot on (republican) Northumberland Street wall has been claimed, we know not by whom. A small, bookmark-shaped, span of wall also remains further down the road. See the Visual History page for Northumberland Street for details.

“Watch this space”, as they say. Or, as in the piece (below) on the Cliftonville Road (first seen last year), “new mural loading”.

The piece in the centre-left is one to O’Neill & Beattie.

12 09 11 NewMuralLoading+

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2012 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X01524 X00625 hourglass timer bee

Liberating Minds

Here is the completed Frederick Douglass mural in Northumberland Street. With quotes from …

  • Douglass himself (“It is easier build strong children than to repair broken adults.”)
  • Abraham Lincoln (“As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.”)
  • Angela Davis (“We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society.”)
  • Muhammad Ali (“Why should I drop bombs on brown people in Vietnam while so-called negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs …”)
  • Steven Biko (“The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”)
  • MLK (“I have a dream … black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last, free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.””)
  • Bob Marley (“Until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race.”)
  • Nelson Mandela (“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”)
  • Paul Robeson “The artist must elect to fight for freedom or for slavery. I made made [sic] my choice. I had no alternative”,
    and
  • (without attribution) James Connolly (“The worker is the slave capitalist society, the woman [female worker] is the slave of that slave.”)

Northern Visions TV documentary on the production and launch of the mural.

See also: in-progress shots, in Frederick Douglass.

Update: John Lewis was added in 2014; see As I Would Not Be A Slave.

Update: Aung San Suu Kyi X’ed out in 2017; see The Freedom Of Others.

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2013/2021 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X01821 X08471c [X08470] X08469 [X08468] X01821c
thank you sister Rosa Parks Harriet Tubman Barack Obama Betty Sinclair Mary Ann McCracken Aung San Suu Kyi, Haitian Revolution, Chief Joseph, El Salvador, CoMadres

Whatever The Cost May Be

2013-12-24 BloodTearsSweat+

A message from “E.B. [east Belfast] Loyalists” in Castlereagh Parade, combining two speeches of Winston Churchill’s: “We have nothing to offer but blood, tears, and sweat” and “Whatever the cost maybe, we shall fight on the beach’es [sic], we shall fight in the fields and on the street’s [sic]. We shall never surrender.”

1940-05-13: “I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined the government: I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask: What is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us, to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime.”

1940-06-04: “We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender. “

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2013 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X01520

Their Sacrifice, Our Freedom

Information plaques were added (in 2007?) to the 14 panels in Thorndyke Street originally launched in 2004. They were originally off to the side of each panel (see e.g. the entry for this panel in Peter Moloney’s Collection), but have now been placed at the bottom of each panel on top of the illustration – three examples are given in this entry.

The paintings themselves do not appear to have changed, though there is one small change to the Jim Maultsaid WWI panel (compared to 2004) – Maultsaid’s name has been painted out.

The plaque for the Maultsaid panel reads: At the outbreak of the Great War in August 1914, when Lord Kitchener, the War Minister, was desperately looking for men, he had asked Sir Edward Carson for a brigade consisting of four battalions. Carson offered him a division consisting of twelve battalions, uniformed and equipped at Ulster’s expense. The UVF was transformed rapidly into the 36th (Ulster) Division. On the 1st July 1916 the 26 (Ulster) Division took part in the Somme Offensive. Nine Victoria Crosses were awarded for acts of valour on that day. Men of the 36th (Ulster) Division won four of these. Of those, three were awarded posthumously. Of the 9,000 men of the Division who took part in the attack, scarcely 2,500 answered roll call on 3 July; while of 400 officers, more than 250 were killed or wounded. The Division lost 5,500 officers and other ranks killed, wounded and missing as a result of the first two days of the Somme offensive. The illustration depicted is derived from a drawing by Jim Maultsaid, an American citizen. He joined the 14th Royal Irish Rifles, which was drawn from members of an organisation called the Young Citizen Volunteers (YCV). – East Belfast Historical And Cultural Society”

For a list of entries for each panel in their original (2004) form, see East Belfast Historical And Cultural Society.

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2013 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X01521 X01608 X01539 X01540

The Dark

2013-12-23 TheDark+

“I don’t mind being called a dissenter, I’ve been a dissenter all my life”. Mural to, and quote from, Brendan Hughes, IRA volunteer and leader of the 1980 (first) Maze hunger strike (WP).

Painted by Rebel Rebel of Gael Force Art in October, 2013. Previously at this location: End Internment.

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2013 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X01518

Red-Eye

2013-12-23 Superman+

We have it on the authority of the Superman wiki that Superman’s eyes glow red when using his super-power of heat vision. He really hates this wall!

This is the last, but not least, superhero at the entrance to Sliabh Dubh, incomplete at the time of our earlier entries (Wallbusters | The Walls, Unbroken | Cartoon World).

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2013 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X01517

Place Of Pride

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

An owner, with Ireland’s Saturday Night (which ceased publication in 2008) tucked in his coat pocket, shows off his greyhound.

The words of the poem read

“In the east of the city, isolated alone, is a dear little place we like to call home.

Old strengthened by new, the homes and the streets, looking out for each other, a broad smile when they meet

The once terraced streets, some narrow, some wide, behind so many faces a story there lies

In the east of the city by the lagan’s fair side, looking back at its history our hearts fill with pride.”

Next to No More in Edgar Street, Short Strand

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2013 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X01513