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
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 1981 Paddy Duffy
[T00023] [T00028] T00039
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
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 1981 Paddy Duffy
T00053 [T00030]
T00041 [T00015]
“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
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 1981 Paddy Duffy
T00018
“The people arose in ’69, they will do it again at any time”, “Maggie Thatcher think again, don’t let our brave men die in vain.” “Done by Beechmount youth against H Block & Armagh.”
The two tones of black suggest that the mural was painted using household paints contributed by local residents.
The Clowney Street phoenix is the oldest continually-existing mural in Belfast. This photo of it is from July, 1981, at the height of the (1981) hunger strike.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 1981 Paddy Duffy
T00004 [T00057]
