The Chipyard (Fb) – west Belfast take-away puns on the east Belfast Harland & Wolff “shipyard”, with its two famous cranes, Samson and Goliath. “Traditional fish & chips & homemade ice-cream.”
The “Do not use” sign – from last year – is Saoaradh (web) reserving a wall in Braemar St (on the Falls Road) that has never (to our knowledge) been used by anyone else. As the image above shows, the space is now being used – in part – by a hunger strike 40th anniversary board.
During WWII, Tom Moore worked with motorcycles and tanks (rather than aircraft) in India and Burma (Myanmar) and achieved the rank of captain. He became famous during the pandemic for raising about 33 million pounds for NHS Charities during the pandemic. He died in February of this year, aged 100 (WP). He is honoured by this new mural in Tullyally, Londonderry.
An appeal for positive graffiti (or non-political murals??) languishing in a builder’s yard on Lanark way, similar to the mural in Castlemara – see Spray-On Culture (and a different tactic from the ‘Spray Is Not The Way’ board in Portadown a decade ago).
Joe McCann was IRA/OIRA OC in the Markets area of Belfast. He was famously photographed among burning buildings in Inglis’s bakery, during protests against the introduction on internment, crouched beneath a Starry Plough and holding an M1. (For more, see Battle Of The Markets, which features the same photograph.) For McCann’s death the following year (on April 15th, 1972) see Joe McCann. This new board replaces a tarp in the same location: see On The Brink Of Sectarian Disaster.
“Land for people not for profit.” About 900 people have been living in the former Woodstock Hospital – renamed Cissie Gool House – in Cape Town, South Africa, since 2017, in an on-going dispute with the city over housing and redevelopment of the site. In the most recent twist in the long-running tale, the occupants, campaigning under the name “Reclaim The City”, won a court battle to ensure that a survey of the residents must be undertaken by their own attorneys; the survey is ostensibly for the purposes to determine their eligibility for re-housing but the activists say it is a first step to eviction. (See IOL one | two | three | four.) “CMYC [Clonard Monastery Youth Centre web | Fb] supports the city Cape Town and Cissie Gool house”.
Darth Vader in a bowler and collarette on a Rathcoole porch demanding “equal rights” for “British citizens” and protesting the NI Protocol (“No Irish Sea border”), which is result of Brexit. Lord Vader is accompanied by more traditional icons of loyalism: King William III and Eddie The Trooper (who has his own Visual History page).
Faustina Kowalska was a Polish nun who, from age 19 onwards, claimed to have visions of a suffering Jesus, including one at age 26, of Jesus with red and white rays emanating from his heart and issuing instructions to have the vision painted – it appears here on the right. Kowalska died at age 33 in 1938, of tuberculosis, and was canonized in 2000 (WP). The “H Block Martyrs” pursued a vision of a United Ireland, and likewise died young, of starvation; this is the 40th anniversary of their deaths.
Both Kowalska placards are marked “This image is blessed. Please do not remove.” It is not clear if the hunger striker tarp on the left has also been anointed.
Six weeks after the first four deaths, the 1981 hunger strike’s long summer of mourning resumed with the death of Joe McDonnell, who died on July 8th, 1981. The “H” (for “H Blocks”) is on the Falls Road, next to the D company IRA memorial garden.