Belfast – Page 69 – Paddy Duffy Collection

Political Leaders Are Not Listening

2022-12-192024-08-26Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

Left: After a break for the funeral of the Duke Of Edinburgh, the Loyalist Communities Council has resumed its protest of Brexit with a banner campaign (Irish News). The banner seems to be offering viewers the choice of one of four affiliations (“Europe – UK – USA – Ireland – choose one or the other! It’s your decision!) but the “correct” answer is at the bottom (and in the faded background of the Covenant): “Ulster is British and this we will always maintain!” even though “Political leaders are not listening!” (including, perhaps, Arlene Foster and the DUP.) The Belfast Agreement (Good Friday Agreement) allows people in Northern Ireland to identify themselves as Irish, British, or both.

Right: “Peace or protocol – it’s your decision”, aimed at Leo Varadkar on the day that he again became Taoiseach (Irish Times) and repeating his words back to him from a speech in 2018: “The possibility of a return to violence is very real”. At that meeting, Varadkar was anticipating violence by anti-Agreement republicans in response to customs posts on the Ireland-Northern Ireland border, and brought a newspaper describing the death of four customs officials, two lorry drivers, and three IRA volunteers at a Monaghan post in 1972 (BelTel).

The authors of this poster are not known, but the parallel statement (mutatis mutandis) would be that anti-Protocol agents – perhaps the “young loyalists” that the UVF “can no longer contain” (UK Daily; see also RTÉ from November) – might return to acts of violence such as the 1974 “Dublin & Monaghan Bombings” that killed 33 people – in the background of the poster is part of a photograph (included below) of bomb damage in Talbot Street – if the Protocol’s “Irish Sea border” is not removed.

Ballysillan Road and (below) Oakmount Drive (near Mount Vernon), north Belfast.

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Dreaming

2022-12-182025-10-24Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

Street art by Kitsune (ig) in Queen St (official title When You Weren’t Looking), for Hit The North 2022.

Queen Street, Belfast city centre

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The Glorious Dead

2022-12-182024-08-16Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

Four of the 700 NHS staff in the UK to die of Covid during the pandemic have come Northern Ireland, the most recent being dementia specialist Alan Henry in Antrim hospital (Express | BelTel | iTV). In the south, Defence Forces have been deployed to three nursing homes while 6,400 health workers are off sick (Irish Times). The mural above shows a masked nurse and doctor among a field of poppies. It has been added below the three painted boards commemorating Titanic, the Somme, and the WWII Blitz.

On the exterior of the Connswater Community Centre, east Belfast

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The Shipyard

2022-12-182024-08-17Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

The 36th (Ulster) Division Memorial Association (Fb) put on a play called From The Shipyard To The Somme (Fb | watch on youtube) in Connswater Community Centre in 2013. It follows a group of men from east Belfast who joined the Ulster Volunteers in Belfast but are now training at Abercorn barracks in Ballykinlar (later an internment camp) as members of the 36th Division, before going to the Battle Of The Somme in France.

Belfast – with one tenth of the population – provided about a third of the Irish soldier to participate in WWI. In the shipyards, Harland & Wolff responded to the slow-down in production not by putting everyone on short time but by letting go of employees, particularly unskilled employees, for whom the wages of soldiering were competitive (particularly if married), while skilled men were reclassified as “munitions workers” needed to fulfill war contracts (History Ireland | Long Kesh Inside Out).

Connswater Street, east Belfast

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Luminaries And Legends Of Eastside

2022-12-182024-08-15Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

Famous faces and landmarks from east Belfast: Van Morrison, CS Lewis, George Best, David Holmes, Harland & Wolff, Holywood Arches, Strand Arts Centre, Danny Blanchflower, Lucy Caldwell, Marie Jones, Sam McCready, Gary Moore, James Ellis, St Mark’s Dundela, Eric Bell, Dee Craig (the artist).

Connswater Street, east Belfast

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Disruption

2022-12-182024-08-11Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

Dublin artist Aches (ig) was in town for HTN 2020 working on a large wall in Kent Street car park, above the North Street bingo hall. The model is Stephen Considine from BipolarBear Wear (web | ig) which sells gear to raise money for mental health charities.

Youth Of North Belfast

2022-12-182024-08-11Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

The local New Lodge GAA club Cumman An Phıarsaıgh is named in honour of Patrick Pearse, executed after the 1916 rising. The club’s new mural features footballers contesting a ball and Pearse’s image appears at the centre of a Celtic cross along with part of his 1912 poem Mıse Éıre in the bottom corner (shown below in a close-up). Painted by Lucas Quigley and Michael Doherty. Replaces ‘New Lodge 2000‘.

Mıse Éıre: Sıne mé na an Chaılleach Bhéarra.
Mór mo ghlóır: Mé a rug Cú Chulaınn croga.
Mór mo náır: Mo chlann féın a dhíol a máthaır.
[Mór mo phıan: Bıthnaımhde do mo shíorchıapadh.
Mór mo bhrón: D’éag an dream ınar chuıreas dóchas.]
Mıse Éıre: Uaıgní mé ná an Chaılleach Bhéarra.

I am Ireland: I am older than the old woman of Beare.
Great my glory: I who bore Cuchulainn, the brave.
Great my shame: My own children who sold their mother.
[Great my pain: My irreconcilable enemy who harasses me continually.
Great my sorrow: That crowd, in whom I placed my trust, died.]
I am Ireland: I am lonelier than the old woman of Beare.

Wolf At The Door

2022-12-182024-07-20Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

The statues in CS Lewis Square are by sculptor Maurice Harron (who also did the Hands Across The Divide statue in London-/Derry). The seven statues are of Aslan the lion, Mr. Tumnus, Jadis the White Witch, Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, the stone table (in granite), Robin Red Breast, and, Maugrim, the talking wolf who is head of the Witch’s secret police. Most of the figures are in bronze but Maugrim – shown above – is made of about 5,500 pieces of stainless steel welded to a steel frame (Loop).

For images of the murals (by Friz – web | tw) in better condition, see Winter’s End; for the chain and ropes metal-work, see Of The River.