Charles, Prince Of Wales, and Camilla, Duchess Of Cornwall, will visit Ireland north and south this week (beginning in Belfast on Monday 23rd). The éırígí stencil and flyer shown above are from last year’s visit to the north, at the start of which he shook hands with Gerry Adams (BBC-NI). Charles is the titular head of the parachute regiment, which served in Northern Ireland from the late sixties to the nineties, including in Derry during Bloody Sunday.
UFF/UDA/UYM (North Down, 2nd battalion, D company) memorial mural in Bloomfield estate, Bangor, to Andrew McIlvenny and Roy Officer, with hooded gunmen on a bed of poppies flanking the UFF clenched fist.
Smithfield Market houses a wide variety of shops (BelfastCity) including Filipino groceries, dressmaking, hairdressing, jewelry, a nail bar, computers, carpets, bicycles, e-cigarettes and also – shown above – My Old Toy Box (Fb), sellers of model toys. Cash only!
Three images of flags. In the one above, flags are seen on either side of the Short Strand “peace” line: the Irish tricolour and the flag of Palestine stand over a Union flag hung next to the local bonfire site.
The second is a “flag of flags” in Tullycarnet – the Union flag, the cross of St. George, St. Andrew’s Saltire, and the Ulster banner, all together around the red hand of Ulster and the crown, and “No Surrender”.
In the third, the flag of Hamas flies above the red-and-yellow Starry Plough of the Irish Republican Socialist Party in Derry’s Bogside.
The eagle of Isaiah 40:31 flies outside the New Life church in the no-man’s land between the security gates on Northumberland Street: “Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” (BibleHub)
The signature and the giant “coins” in front of it are shown below, along with the Síocháın/Peace tower. The (brown) cross in the middle of the area is shown in Cross Of Crosses.
Here are two images of the extremes of the Mná Na hÉıreann mural.
In the four corners are circles of Betsy Gray, Anne Devlin, Mary Ann McCracken, and Máıre Drumm. Gray and McCracken were Presbyterians; Gray fought (or at least, was killed) in the 1798 rebellion, as did McCracken’s brother Henry Joy; Mary Ann went on to work for the poor of Belfast and lobby against slavery. Anne Devlin assisted in Robert Emmet’s 1803 rising. (National Graves Assoc) Máıre Drumm was vice-president of Sınn Féın and commander of Cumann Na mBan, who are shown marching on the right-hand side.
In the cloth cap and holding a rifle is Eithne Coyle, a leader and later president of Cumann Na mBan, imprisoned both by the Black and Tans before the treaty and after it by the Provisional Irish government (WP). For the photograph on which her pose here is based, see An Phoblacht‘s History Of Cumann na mBan, which also includes the photo of marching women (discussed previously in Mothering Sunday In Beechmount) though the faces have been changed here, presumably to those of more contemporary volunteers. The same is probably true of the third woman with a bin lids on the left – leave a comment or send an e-mail if you can put a name to any of these faces.
Here are two details from the Mná Na hÉıreann mural. This one shows three Derry women protesting the conditions in Armagh Women’s Prison and in the H-Blocks. This article on Mary Nelis (the protester on the right, with Kathleen Deeny and Theresa Deery) describes the photograph on which this part of the mural is based. The women in Armagh prison were allowed to wear their own clothes and so were not ‘on the blanket’ as their male counterparts in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh were. However, they did engage in a “no wash” protest, which lasted from February 1980 until March 1981, and three of them – Maıréad Farrell, Mary Doyle, and Margaret Nugent – joined the 1980 hunger strike.
In the second image, below, grieving mothers, wives, and sisters stand over a coffin draped in the Irish tricolour with paramilitary gloves and beret on top.
Countess Markievicz, carrying a flag of Cumann Na mBan, and Ethel Lynch, carrying a flag of the Derry IRA, take centre stage in the Mná Na hÉıreann mural in London-/Derry/Doıre’s bogside. Markievicz is famous for her role in the Easter Rising of 1916 (WP); Lynch died in December 1974 of injuries sustained when a bomb exploded prematurely. (Derry Journal – also contains the photo on which the painting above is based.) Between them, “Liberty leads the people” waving an Irish tricolour.
