banner/tarp – Page 2 – Paddy Duffy Collection

Seasaımıd Le Kneecap

2025-07-062025-08-01Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

“We stand with Kneecap” – Kneecap yesterday announced a ten-date November tour of Scotland, Wales, and England, adding on to a jam-packed schedule of upcoming gigs that includes a string of European festivals and a tour of the United States. (The trio’s full schedule can be found at their web-site.) In between the France and Belgium dates, on August 20th, Lıam Óg Ó hAnnaıdh will make a different kind of appearance, in court, to face terrorism charges stemming from his display of a Hezbollah flag at a gig.

This tarp is on the Felons’ Club/Cumann Na Méırleach Poblachtach Éıreannach, replacing Seas Leıs An Phalaıstín. See also Seas Le Kneecap on the Falls Road.

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2025 Paddy Duffy
T07198 [T07199] T07200

The Ulster People’s Army

2025-06-292025-07-22Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

The image of the Ulster Tower at Thiepval in (Ulster) Tower Street, east Belfast, has now faded beyond recognition (see 2022 | 2016) and so been covered over with a variety of flags affixed to the wall.

First is “The Ulster People’s Army – the Great War 1914-18”, then a graveside mourner, and then three along the bottom, two from a series of “British Armies In France” showing images of the Royal Irish Rifles (with, unusually, the leek standing for Wales in the quartet of national flowers) and these two flanking a third showing the East Belfast regiment of the Ulster Volunteers transformed into the 8th battalion of the RIR (107th brigade, 36th Division), marching past a throng on their way to fight “for King and empire”.

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2025 Paddy Duffy
T07104 [T07103] [T07105]
T07110
[T07106] T07107 T07108 T07109
T07111 T07112

To The People Of Ireland

2025-06-102025-06-14Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

The central space in Ardoyne’s Easter Rising centenary wall, combining stencils of the signatories to the Proclamation around a tarp of the document (see In Commemoration Of 1916) has been empty – except for some electoral signs – since 2019’s board marking the centenary of Sınn Féın (see Still The People Spoke). This new tarp returns to the Proclamation and Easter lily and matches the frame of signatories once more.

The last full mural on the wall fell down in 2014 and there does not appear to have been the energy to paint another full mural since then – but perhaps the fading paint around Clarke and Connolly will provoke a complete re-do.

For the stone in the right-hand corner, see the Peter Moloney collection.

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2025 Paddy Duffy
T06993

VE Day Celebrations

2025-05-062025-05-16Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

The eightieth anniversary of VE (“Victory In Europe”) Day is May 8th. Commemorative events in Belfast include a walking tour of the city centre (City Council) and a dance on the HMS Belfast (IWM); for events elsewhere in Northern Ireland, see VE-VJDay80. Pubs will be open for an extra two hours (until 1 a.m.) on the day.

Shore Road, north Belfast. For the monument and the “Lest We Forget” board in the background, see Remembrance Sunday.

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2025 Paddy Duffy
T06791 T06792 T06793 T06794 T06795 T06796

Remember The Hunger Strikers

2025-02-092025-03-15Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

In a classic image from the period, a blanketman/hunger striker looks down over the towers of Long Kesh. The image has appeared in a number of murals, going back at least to the mid-1980s in Ardoyne (Belfast); see also New Lodge (Belfast) in 1993 | Letterkenny in 1996 | Derry in 1998 | Springfield (Belfast) in 2004 | Divis St (Belfast) in 2006 | a portable board in Bellaghy in 2010 | this same spot in 2012.

Melvin Road, Strabane, close to the giant Proclamation.

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2025 Paddy Duffy
T06231

Poblacht Na hÉıreann

2025-02-092025-03-10Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

On April 24th, 1916, Patrick Pearse stood on the steps of Dublin’s General Post Office and read out a proclamation declaring an Irish republic; the proclamation had been prepared by the military council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood – Thomas Clarke, Seán Mac Dıarmada, Patrick Pearse, James Connolly, Thomas MacDonagh, Eamonn Ceannt, Joseph Plunkett – and their (printed) signatures were included at its end.

Copies of the proclamation were handed out on O’Connell Street and perhaps as many as 2,500 were printed in total (NMI) but now only about fifty copies remain (Irish Central). This giant copy of the proclamation was mounted in Melvin Road, Strabane, for the centenary of the Rising, reproducing (as the note at the bottom says) “a reproduction of the poster”. (For a discussion of attempts to recreate the Proclamation, as well as images of originals, see Type Foundry.)

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2025 Paddy Duffy
T06232

Today, Everyday, And Always

2024-12-292025-06-07Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

There was a David Ervine mural (and memorial sculpture) on the building at the corner of Albertbridge Road and Montrose Street South in east Belfast but the corner unit was knocked down and over time the hoarding around the site became dilapidated and graffitied. The hoarding has been given a new coat of paint and decorated with WWI memorial banners and small children’s cut-outs.

The other David Ervine piece (to the right in the wide shot) remains.

Image of the hoarding in 2021:

All Together Now

2024-12-292025-12-12Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

At the heart of this east Belfast homage to the healing power of soccer are German and British soldiers shaking hands over a ball in ‘no man’s land’ on the Western Front, on Christmas Day, 1914. The image is not from a contemporary photograph but a modern one of a 2014 sculpture depicting such an even by Andy Edwards (TruceStatue) (who also did the Pat Jennings sculpture in Newry – seen in Pat Jennings). For more images of the WWI soccer statue, see WWI Cemeteries.

It’s not clear that matches between opposing forces – rather than simple fraternisation – were actually played; see Wikipedia for a review of the evidence.

Dee Street, east Belfast.

Leader Of The Band

2024-07-242025-01-08Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

Jayden Braniff passed away in August in 2023 (Fb) from neuroblastoma. He was made an honorary member of the Pride Of Ballymacash (Lisburn) flute band (Fb). He is remembered by the Pride Of Ardoyne (Fb) and the Shankill Protestant Boys (Fb) in a tarp in Lawnbrook Avenue (upper Shankill, Belfast), next to the Walter Smith/Rangers tarp (one | two) and near his father’s house (Funeral Times).