Jeff Perks’s 1979 linotype “The Training Ground” was reproduced on Beechmount Avenue in 1981. It depicts the history of the British Army in Ireland. Rolston (“Politics, Painting and Popular Culture: the Political Wall Murals of Northern Ireland”, Media, Culture and Society 9.1, 1987) claims (p. 19) that the image would have been familiar to nationalists from the cover of “Ireland: Voices For Withdrawal” (shown below). The baton-wielding policeman on the right was also reproduced in a famous 1996 Derry mural (“68-96 Nothing Has Changed” M01279).
Missing on the far left are four Cromwellian soldiers (see M00123); on the right, the arrested are loaded onto The Conveyor Belt.
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Copyright © 1981 Paddy Duffy
T00020 T00035
Paddy Duffy Collection 