“Free Gazz” is corrected to “Free Gaza” – graffiti in Pacific Avenue, Newington’s “best kept street, 1981”.
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Copyright © 2024 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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We Cannot Live Only For Ourselves
Westlife
“Another winter day/has come and gone away/In either Paris and [or] Rome/And I wanna go home” – words from the Michael Bublé-penned song ‘Home’ which boy-band Westlife released on its 2007 album, Back Home. For Egan, Feehily, and Filan, home is, or was, Sligo — the three went to Summerhill secondary school and were together in earlier bands; Byrne (and Bryan/Brian McFadden who was a member of the group from 1998 to 2004 but is not included in the mural) is from Dublin (WP).
“With a career spanning twenty years, Westlife are, Shane Filan, Nicky Byrne, Kian Egan and Mark Feehily. A true pop phenomenon with more number 1 hits than any other act apart from The Beatles and Elvis, Westlife have sold 50 million albums worldwide.”
The mural is behind Gilooly Hall, on Temple Street, Sligo. It was painted in 2015 by Kelan Curran (TAPA).
Previously from Sligo: Maud Gonne.
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Copyright © 2024 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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Committees Of The Rich
“Governments in capitalist society are but committees of the rich to manage the affairs of the capitalist class.” So wrote James Connolly in an August 1914 piece in the Irish Worker entitled ‘The War Upon The German nation’ (marxists.org), in which he contended that Britain was using its remaining area of superiority – military might – in order to crush the now-superior German capitalism, science, and labour. (It’s not clear whether, for Connolly’s purposes, Germany’s is a capitalist society.)
“Big” Jim Larkin is also shown, with his arms outstretched, as seen in the photograph included in We Only Want The Earth.
Nik Purdy/Blow Designs (ig), on the Mall, Sligo, next to The Model.
Also in Sligo: Maud Gonne | Westlife
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Copyright © 2024 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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Along The Shannon River
Leitrim’s “literary heritage” is recognised by this large mural by Nik Purdy/Blow Designs (ig) in Main Street, Carrick-On-Shannon. Clockwise from top we see portraits and quotes from …
Canon [William] Slator: “You’ll never find more beauty/Peace and welcome all combined/Than along the Shannon River/where your cares are left behind.”
Nora J Murray: “There are silver waters lapping/Under arches grey and brown/When the swans come up the river/To the bridge in Carrick town”
John McGahern: “I think fiction is a very serious thing, that while it is fiction, it is also a revelation of truth.” (2000 interview)
MJ McManus: “The people came to drink the soup/Ladled from greasy bowls/They died in whitewashed wards that held/A thousand Irish souls” (from the poem ‘Eighteen Forty-Nine’)
Susan Mitchell: “No bigger than a bulrush./I beside the rushy Shannon cry./There are no children on the shore./The singing voices sing no more./The sea draws all the rivers down./And love has sailed from Carrick town.” (from the poem ‘Carrick’ – Google Books)
The monument in front of the mural is also to Mitchell.
Purdy also did Committees Of The Rich in Sligo.
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Copyright © 2024 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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No Country For Young People
Above, “How many [Palestinian] children have to die? Ceasefire now” opposite a (former) shop called Tír Na nÓg [County/Land Of Young People], and, below, “End the occupation. Free Palestine. We are all Palest[in]ian” with drawings of Palestinian and Irish flags.
See previously: How Many Kids Have You Killed To-Day? | How Many Kids? (from the Painting For Palestine project on The International Wall)
Castle Street/Water Lane and Stephen Street, Sligo
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Copyright © 2024 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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Two Smart Alecs
“Alexander Green McMullan came from Tobermore to Belfast in the 1900s and was employed as a horse drawn delivery driver to local grocers. Two ‘Smart Alecs’: Thomas Mitchel, a grocer at My Lady’s Road, helped Alex set up his own grocery business by providing initial stock. By 1913, ‘Alec’s’ was open for business at 54 Imperial Street. He married Naomi (Nomi) Love who also had a good eye for business. She asked Alex to make a pulley line from the ceiling. This line displayed clothing which she sold ‘on tick’. The shop thrived. When a ‘Twelfth’ bonfire shattered the shop’s gable window, Alex seized the opportunity to increase selling space – he bricked up the gable wall, creating shelving for stock. The shop was very much a family concern. Their children, Alexander Green McMullan junior, and Isabel, worked in the shop, making pounds and pounds of butter, straight from the slab, which they wrapped in greaseproof paper. During the Second World War, loaves of bread, smuggled from the Free State, added to the family income as these were sold on to the grateful customers. Alex junior inherited his parents’ eye for a business opportunity. Using his engineering expertise and his Morris Oxford car, the entrepreneur delivered and collected washing machines daily to housewives. Daily rental was half a crown (12.5 pence). By the mid-1960s, Alex junior had sold his parents’ business but it remained in the common memory as ‘Alec’s Grocers Shop’.
Imperial Street, east Belfast
Other entries in the Eastside Lives Heritage Trail include Miss McMinn’s Girls’ Club | The Godfather Of Legal Betting | No Ordinary Woman | Desano’s. For a list of all fourteen, see the Trail’s pamphlet (pdf).
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Copyright © 2024 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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Meet The New Boss
This UVF poster urges residents of east Belfast who owe money to loan sharks not to sell drugs or find some other way to pay it back, but instead to get in touch with a political representative.
The Sunday World reported that repayments are being withheld after the Shankill UVF ordered the leadership in East Belfast UVF to stand down (in November 2023 – IRN | BBC) and took over the operation. The posters thus come from the old (East Belfast) guard, trying to thwart the new bosses and hoping to resume collection themselves.
SDLP councillor Séamus De Faoıte commented (in the Irish News), “Anyone who has knowledge of criminal activity or exploitation of vulnerable people should report it to the relevant authorities, but people do not need to take any lessons from the UVF when it comes to upholding the law.” (Also: BelTel)
Meanwhile, the endingtheharm.com campaign (part of the Executive/DOJ’s programme designed to tackle “paramilitary activity and organised crime”) continues. See They Control You for a 2019 version. For the mural on the right of the final image, see Herbie McCallum.
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Copyright © 2024 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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Castle Mall
Work by Wee Nuls (web) in Castle Mall (off High Street), Antrim.
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Copyright © 2024 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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My Lady Of Chimney Corner
Sculptor Anna Cheyne (WP) produced the piece ‘My Lady Of The Chimney-Corner’ for Antrim Council in 1998, inspired by the domestic and farming scenes in the 1913 book of the same name by Antrim native Alexander Irvine. The book is subtitled “A story of love and poverty in Irish peasant life” – Irvine’s parents were in a mixed marriage. (You can read the book at Project Gutenberg or at Google Books).
For more information on Irvine and the mural next to his Pogue’s Entry home (which is also the location of the blue plaque, below), see A Tale Of Ireland.
The two sides of Cheyne’s sculpture are shown above and immediately below. ‘Alexander Irvine Park’ is also home to a memorial garden to the victims of the covid-19 pandemic in the park – see the final two images, below. (A similar garden was installed at the Whiteabbey/Jordanstown foreshore.)
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Tosaíonn An Domhan Ar Leac An Doraıs
“Think global, act local – [the world begins on the doorstep]”. This environmental message is by UV Arts (ig) at Buncrana Youth Club, Castle Avenue, Buncrana, Co. Donegal (Inish Live), painted for Children In Crossfire (web | see also Derry Lama, A Wall For All, and Break The Bias).
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Copyright © 2024 Andy McDonagh/Eclipso Pictures (ig | Fb)
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Seosamh Mac Coille Collection 