painted wall

Shan Van Vocht

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03735 2016-08-09 IntWall2016 Shan Van Vocht+

Ethna Carbery (the left-most of the four female figures, who wrote the song Roddy McCorley) and Alice Milligan (with her hand to her face) together founded both The Northern Patriot and The Shan Van Vocht (“the poor, old, woman,” i.e. Ireland), the latter being a monthly socialist newspaper that ran from 1896 until 1899 and included some early writings by James Connolly (pictured on the right of the mural), such as the piece “Socialism And Nationalism” which appeared in The Shan Van Vocht in January, 1897 and from which the quotation on the wall is taken: “If you remove the English army to-morrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organisation of the Socialist Republic, your efforts would be in vain.” (For the passage in broader context, see (previously) If You Remove The English Army Tomorrow.)

The other two women shown are Elizabeth (seated second) and Nell Corr (standing), Cumann Na mBan members from the Ormeau Road in Belfast, who were in Dublin on the morning of the Rising but headed north. (For more information and a mural depicting the political complexity of their family, see previously The Corrs.)

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03550 2016-06-21 IntWall2016 If You Remove+

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Young Ireland

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03732 2016-08-09 IntWall2016 Wolfe Tone+

The new mural on the International Wall is book-ended on the left-hand side by a host of Irish nationalists from the centuries before the 1916 Rising, who continue to watch over the unfolding drama of the nationalist cause. In chronological order, the figures depicted are …

  • Theobold Wolfe Tone (1768-1798), the main figure shown above, leader of the United Irishmen and the 1798 rebellion
  • Betsy Gray, female in green, who died in the 1798 rebellion
  • Henry Joy McCraken (1767-1798) second from the left at bottom, leader of the 1798 rebellion in County Antrim, rising on June 6
  • Mary Anne McCracken (1770-1876) on Tone’s cheekbone, political activist and anti-slavery and poverty reformer
  • Robert Emmett (1778-1803) obscured by pole, leader of a revolt in 1803
  • Anna Wheeler (1780-1848), female in purple, feminist author
  • James Fintan Lalor (1807-1849), bottom left, writer and political activist
  • Thomas Davis (1814-1845) small portrait below Gray, organiser of Young Ireland
  • John Mitchel (1815-1875) top row left of the pole, Young Ireland and the Irish Confederation
  • Michael Davitt (1846-1906) third from left at bottom, founder of the Land League and who took part in the Fenian Rising of 1867
  • John Devoy (1842-1928) fourth from left at bottom, one of the Cuba Five, exiled to the U.S. in 1871, and active in all of the Fenian Rising, the 1916 Rising, and the War of Independence

(There is a twelfth figure, in a bowler hat, top left. If you know who this is, please get in touch.)

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Where Did The Seeds Fall?

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03741 2016-08-09 IntWall2016 Kilmainham+

This part of the new mural on the International Wall uses the area of Kilmainham jail where most of the leaders of the Easter Rising were executed in order to tie together the blanket protest – Kieran Nugent and Maıréad Farrell are shown with raised fists –  the hunger strikers – including Frank Stagg and Michael Gaughan on the ground – and Roger Casement, walking towards the gallows. Casement was executed not in Kilmainham but in Pentonville Prison, England, convicted of treason for his attempts to secure German rifles and machine-guns for the Rising.

Between Bobby Sands and Mickey Devine in the lower centre of the image is a 200th-anniversary stone in Maynooth/Maıgh Nuad(h) of the 1798 rising. A photograph of the stone is available here. “The Tree Of Liberty: What is that in your hand? It is a branch. Of what? Of the tree of liberty. Where did it first grow? In America. Where does it bloom? In France. Where did the seeds fall? In Ireland.”

At the launch (on August 3rd) actor James Doran (see the final image, below) read from Casement’s speech from the dock after his conviction for treason.

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Willowbank Huts

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X03714 2016-08-04 IntWall2016 Willowbank Huts+

The old military huts at Willow Bank (or: Willowbank; the modern-day La Salle/Iveagh area on the Falls) – which were still in use in 1896 – provided a training ground for Cumann Na mBan and the Irish Volunteers in the run-up to the Easter Rising.

The small figures between the huts and the trainees in the foreground are Charlie Monahan (born in Ballymacarrett, raised in the Markets, who died in a car accident on the way to meet Casement’s arms on board the Aud (findagrave | An Phoblacht)), Manus O’Boyle (BMH witness statement), Jack White (who fought for Britain in the second Boer War and was later captain in the Irish Citizen Army (WP)), and Volunteer Sean O’Neill.

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Shared Space

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03706 2016-08-03 IntWall2016 Public Meeting+

In addition to the defacing of Carson (see We Won’t Have Carson), a 32 County Sovereignty Movement mural remains about a quarter of the way along the newly repainted International Wall on Divis Street. (And as is covered in a separate entry, an IRPWA POW mural was in progress at the far right end of the wall.)

We understand that the painters offered to repaint the 32CSM mural after the historical mural had been in place for six months, but that this offer was turned down. For the purposes of the launch, then, a cloth sign, was hung over the 32CSM mural (as seen in the image above). It reproduces a poster (see the original) advertising “a public meeting for the formation of Irish Volunteers”; Eoin MacNeill, author in November 1913 of ‘The North Began’, presided at the meeting – here is the text of The North Began – and the newspaper carried by the hawker on the left reads “MacNeill successful in call for Irish Volunteers” (whereas it originally read “Rotunda rally – Irish volunteers now exceed 180,000” as can be seen in the Carson post). However, this cloth was removed immediately after the launch, meaning that the wall appears as in the image below.

03693 2016-08-01 IntWall2016 32CSM GunRunning+

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Raising The Flag

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03694 2016-08-01 IntWall2016 1916+

For the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising, the whole of the International Wall on Divis Street (or, almost the whole wall, as will be explained in a subsequent post) has been repainted to depict a history of Irish republicanism, with special attention given to connections to Belfast.

As might be expected, a panel of the new mural depicts the GPO of 1916. A Tricolour is thought to have been raised over the Henry Street corner of the GPO by Liverpudlian Joe Gleeson – he sports a Liver bird badge on his bandolier – though he does not mention this in his statement to the Bureau of Military History: “We started out from Kimmage about 60 strong at about ten o’clock that Easter Monday morning …”. (A flag of the Irish Republic was raised by Harry Walpole (Irish Times) or Eamon Bulfin (Collins 22 Society, which states that Gearóıd O’Sullivan raised the Tricolour; Bulfin’s statement to the BMH says Gleeson did so).) Gleeson was one of 50 fighters from the Liverpool Irish Volunteers. (Caırde Liverpool has the names of 38 volunteers from Merseyside; this BBC article contains photographic portraits of a number.) The image here is a modified version of the 1941 stamp designed by Victor Brown showing an armed volunteer outside the GPO (stampboards).

The Belfast connection in this panel is supplied by Winifred Carney, member of Cumann Na mBan, assistant to James Connolly from 1912 until the Rising, and part of the occupying forces in the GPO during the rising, “armed with a typewriter and a Webley” (according to her WP page). She is seen here (on the right, beneath the flag) typing up communications by candlelight in the GPO.

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Always British

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03684 2016-07-25 Cluan Place 12th+

Here are three images from Cluan Place, the PUL street at the bottom of the (CNR) Short Strand in east Belfast. The first two show the flags and bunting in the street, flying from railings, light-poles, and chimney pots. In the third image, crosses have been added to the board at the entrance to the street featured previously Hard Hats Must Be Worn.

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03321 2016-03-07 Cluan Place Crosses+

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X03684 X03685 X03321 5 people shot houses burnt houses bombed 20 families intimidated out by sinn fein/IRA still loyalist no surrender

Generations Of Health

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03676-2016-07-24-5-women

These two murals of five women and five babies at the rear of the Maureen Sheehan health care centre are entering (at least) their eighth year of existence and are showing their wear due to both the natural and human causes, such as graffiti and burning (see previously: A Philosophy of Liberation). For the murals in better condition (in 2010) see M05732 and M05733.

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