Flyer on an ‘alcohol free’ sign at the top of Berwick Road/Paráıd An Ardghleanna showing a darkened figure behind prison bars: “This could be your brother, sister, mother, father, son or daughter. Who’s next? Support our POW’s!”
The wide shot, below, shows the flyer’s position above the “PSNI not welcome in Ardoyne” signage, featured previously (Unwelcome To Ardoyne).
The Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus, white-headed sea-eagle (WP)) is typically found only in North America, but the one above can be found in Ballymurphy.
“A friend is a hand that is always holding yours no matter how close or far apart you be; A friend is someone who is always there and will always always care. A friend is a feeling of forever in the heart.” A new community mural in Ballymurphy shows locals seated in a circle of hands. Among the surrounding quotes (visible in the second image, below) are two lines from Robert Burns’ Auld Lang Syne (“And there’s a hand my trusty friend [fiere] And gies [gie’s] a hand to [o’] thine”, and, “We’ll take a cup of kindness yet For auld lang sang [syne]”)
The other lines are from …
I’ll Tell Me Ma (“Out she comes as white as snow, rings on her fingers a bells on her toes”, and, “My Aunt Jane she called me in, she gave me tea out of her wee tin”)
I Know My Love (“I know my love by her way of walking”)
The Gypsy Rover (“The gypsy rover came over the hill, down through the valley so shady”)
The Fields Of Athenry (“Low lie the fields of Athenry, where once we watched the small free birds fly”)
The Cobbler (“Oh, my wife she is humpy, she’s lumpy, my wife she’s the devil, she’s black, and no matter what I may [do] with her, her [tongue it goes clickety-clack]”)
and a skipping song (“On the hillside stands a lady, who she is I do not know”)
A wide shot (third below) shows the other two murals on this stretch of Ballymurphy Road: Between and Bryson-Mulvenna.
Unlike Ken Kesey’s Further, this bus goes Between, “Bringing sunshine to the children”. ‘Between’ was (and is) a Cork-based group who sponsored trips to Cork (Blarney Castle appears in the background of the mural), Monaghan, Donegal, and elsewhere, for the children of Ballymurphy and the Shankill during the troubles. The figures in the lower-right corner are shown in detail in the image below. The plaque to Gerard McDade remains on the wall. The mural was unveiled on 2014-09-20 – Ciaran Cahill has images from the launch.
Above is another piece of the multi-panel work by Gerard Kelly (“Mo Chara”) at the top of Springhill, showing a forearm in the colours of the Palestinian flag with a fist clenched around a strand of barbed wire, causing blood to drip down.
Above is a detail from the Gerard “Mo Chara” Kelly mural at the northern end of Springhill Avenue: a lone figure in Palestinian colours is about to hurl a Molotov cocktail at a tank in Israeli blue-and-white with a (reversed-Nazi) swastika on its side.
The full mural is shown below. The portion to the left appeared in Palestine Abú and the portion to the right in Hellfire.
The plaque above was unveiled on the 40th anniversary of the death of Martha Campbell, on May 14th, 2012. Campbell was the last person to die in the protracted gunfire that followed the bombing of Kelly’s Bar in Ballymurphy on the 13th. UVF gunmen are attributed the killing by McKittrick (186), but no one has officially taken responsibility for the death (WP). A tribute site exists on-line, which maintains that the bullet came from Henry Taggart rather than Springmartin.
Roles are reversed, compared to the first book of Samuel: the Israeli ‘David’ has become a ‘Goliath’ tank, while the role of underdog is filled by Palestinian teenager Faris Odeh who was shot and killed a few days after standing up to this tank (WP). The AP photograph on which the mural is based can be seen in this May 2012 edition of (the Pakistani) The Nation.
Pro-Gaza mural/stencil on Northumberland Street decrying continued US support of Israel: the bloody bars of the US flag stain the Star of David (in the place where the stars would be) and run down the wall. Sponsored by the IRSP/INLA. The phrase “These colors don’t run” dates to 1942 or 1943 in Iowa (see page 10).
Here is another piece of the new Gerard “Mo Chara” Kelly murals in Springhill: a figure in a black-and white keffiyeh give the two-finger ‘V for victory’ sign beneath the Terence McSwiney (WP) quote: It is not those who can inflict the most but those that can suffer the most who will conquer.
