Belfast west – Page 53 – Paddy Duffy Collection

Colonial Child

1981-10-012025-10-27Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

This is a difficult mural to interpret and might be incomplete. It appears to show an indigenous child, whose skin is marked with a Union Flag, feasting on the bloody arm of a human adult whose skull sits behind the child. It is perhaps a reference to the colonial exploits of the British in Kenya or in the Putumayo – please comment/get in touch if you can shed any light on the mural.

The mural is in the bricked-up display-window of a shop between Spinner Street and Leeson Street (on the eastern/Dunville Park side of the Falls Road).

Falls Road, west Belfast

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Copyright © 1981 Paddy Duffy
T00043 [T00022]

Blessed Are Those Who Hunger For Justice

1981-10-012025-07-19Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

This Whiterock Road mural shows a blanketman/hunger-striker being watched over by a uniformed volunteer, on a large tricoloured bunting/drape at the feet of an angel holding a banner reading “blessed are those who hunger for justice“. Above are the words “Their hunger, their pain, our struggle“. The shields of the four provinces of Ireland and two shamrocks complete the mural.

Whiterock Road, west Belfast

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Copyright © 1981 Paddy Duffy
T00017 T00044 [T00016]

The Final Salute

1981-10-012025-07-19Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

The first names of the ten deceased 1981 hunger-strikers — Bobby, Francis, Patsy, Raymond, Joe, Martin, Kiersn, Tom, Micky, Kevin — appear on a ribbon held by a tricoloured phoenix against a sunburst, flanked by Starry Plough and Tricolour and volunteers firing a final salute.

The ribbon was initially shorter, with the names of the first six to die – see the Peter Moloney Collection.

Painted by Con in Rockdale Street, west Belfast.

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Copyright © 1981 Paddy Duffy
T00042 T00026

Blessed Are Those Who Hunger For Justice

1981-10-012025-07-18Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

A hunger-striker lies in bed praying with rosary beads and bathed in beams of light coming from the hands of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

(Painted by Con, who describes the mural as an attempt to break through with nationalists (as distinct from republicans); though one source says “by a Ballymurphy man, named something like Tim Skillen/Skelly”.)

Rockmount Street, west Belfast

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Copyright © 1981 Paddy Duffy
[T00023] [T00028] T00039

Break Thatcher’s Back

1981-10-012025-07-23Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

A Long Kesh/H-Block blanketman is on his knees, protesting for (political) “status now”, surrounded by barbed wire and two flags on halberds: the Irish Tricolour and the Starry Plough.

The quote on the left (in the wide-shot, below) is from Sean O’Casey, not “Bobby Sands MP”: “You cannot put a rope around the neck of an idea; you cannot put an idea up against the barrack-square wall and riddle it with bullets; you cannot confine it in the strongest prison cell that your slaves could ever build.”

(The quote is reportedly from O’Casey’s prose lament for Thomas Ashe, either the initial pamphlet in November 1917 (?entitled “The Story Of Thomas Ashe”?) or the expanded version of 1918 (entitled “The Sacrifice Of Thomas Ashe” (auction site)), though no copy of this can be found on-line, only two poems ‘Thomas Ashe’ and ‘Lament For Thomas Ashe’ (eastwallforall).

Rockmore Road, west Belfast

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Copyright © 1981 Paddy Duffy
T00053 [T00030]
T00041 [T00015]

Incident At Narrow Water

1981-10-012025-07-18Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

This mural depicts (one part of) the IRA’s 1979 ambush of the British Army at Narrow Water Castle, near Warrenpoint (WP), on the same day that Louis Mountbatten was killed (see 13 Gone But Not Forgotten).

For interpretation of the piece and its role in the history of CNR muraling, see Visual History 4 – Paramilitary Murals (1981-1982).

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Copyright © 1981 Paddy Duffy
[T00025] T00037

British Repression

1981-10-012025-07-18Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

depicting (from left to right) Ireland in the grip of a fist with a Union Flag cufflink, a prison guard whose mouth holds prison bars and the arm of a bleeding prisoner, and a naked figure in a tricoloured scarf crucified on a Union Flag.

There is a fourth panel to the right, of the island of Ireland bearing a cross “Made in Britain”.

At least three of the original images are by Jack Clafferty, a founder member of the Troops Out Movement (see the Peter Moloney Collection).

The Shape Of Things To Come

1981-10-012025-07-17Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

This is the second version of this mural, both from 1981. In the original – which can be seen in the Homer Sykes collection – the main panel was a large white rectangle with three volunteers with assault rifles and an RPG (and the signature in the bottom left, reading “Done by Beechmount youth against H Block”).

This version removes the gunmen and uses more of the main panel, describing “the shape of things to come” in a series of images showing of people rallying to the Irish tricolour, attacking a British soldier who falls among rubble. In the gable, the sunburst and Tricolour, with automatic rifle, remain. The words to the left read “I lie at night and try to think why / our lads in jail are prepared to die. // The British government sit back and laugh / but the people know that they are daft. // Four of our comrades have passed away / is there call for more to die[?] // O, British government use your sights / and give our lads their 5 just rights.”

Oakman St, Beechmount, west Belfast

The Lark And The Freedom Fighter

1981-10-012025-07-17Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

“The right honourable Bobby Sands Esq MP – Murdered by his fellow members of H.M. Govt”, “I have the spirit of freedom that cannot be quenched by even the most horrendous treatment. Of course I can be murdered, but while I remain alive, I remain what I am, a political prisoner of war, and no one can change that.” (From The Lark And The Freedom Fighter.) Barbed wire stretches over an Irish tricolour next to an image of Sands.

Shaws Road, west Belfast

The Training Ground

1981-10-012025-07-18Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

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.