Here are IRSP (web) and RNU (Fb) signs side-by-side in Bishop Street, Derry, both employing the idea of ’empowerment’. Above: “Empower your community – Join the IRSP, the party of Connolly and Costello”; below: “RNU for the community – support, empower & prosper”.
This notice is on the outside of the Belvoir Bar in east Belfast: “Property of east Belfast Ulster Volunteer Force – Not for sale” alongside a plaque to “fallen comrades” Robert Bennett, Roy Walker, Joseph Long, James Cordner, and Robert Seymour. It seems that the bar has been shuttered since 2011 (Belfast Telegraph | Irish Times).
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.
“I was only a working class boy from a [nationalist] ghetto, but it is repression that creates the revolutionary spirit of freedom.” This is a widely-quoted line from Bobby Sands, from an article in Republican News, 16 December, 1978 (page 7 pdf).
In this graffiti outside the Royal Victoria Hospital, west Belfast, a person in a white coat faces a tank bearing an Israeli flag. Israel’s renewed bombardment of Gaza on March 18th killed more than 400 people (Independent), including an OB-GYN specialist in Rafah (Al-Jazeera); on the 23rd, an airstrike on Nasser Hospital killed five (Reuters).
Detailed figures of casualties among health-care workers in Gaza can be found at Healthcare Workers Watch.
This entry updates Let The Fight Go On!!! from December 1st, which showed the new INLA 50th anniversary wall in Oakman Street but without the (pink) roll of honour on the left. Those listed in the roll of honour are: Hugh Ferguson, Danny Loughran, Brendan McNamee, Miriam Daly, Ronnie Bunting, Noel Little, Jim Power, Matt McLarnon, Joe Craven, Paul “Bonanza” McCann, Thomas “Ta” Power, John O’Reilly, Mickey Kearney, Emmanual Gargan, Gino Gallagher, John McColgan, Patrick Campbell, Christopher “Crip” McWilliams, Harry O’Hara, Barry “Bar” McMullan, Martin McElkerney, James McWilliams. The last five post-date the Agreement, starting with Patrick Campbell, who died in 1999 at the hands of drug-dealers in Dublin (Irish Times | Bel Tel).
The Miriam Daly board (mounted in 2016) was temporarily taken down while the frame was painted to mark the fiftieth anniversary (“1974-2024”) of the creation of the INLA on December 8th, 1974 (WP). “Let the fight go on” are the final words of (INLA) hunger-striker Patsy O’Hara; the group officially ended its armed campaign in 2009 (BBC).
See also the fiftieth anniversary graffiti in Waterford St | mural and graffiti in the Bogside, Derry.
Commemorations of the INLA’s fiftieth anniversary have so far been limited to graffiti – see Saoırse Go Deo in Derry and Let The Fight Go On in Belfast – but here we have two deliberately painted panels in the Bogside (specifically Meenan Square) (one replacing The Way We Were).
God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son (John 3:16). And greater love hath no man but to lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13, often used in the context of military sacrifice). But local homes are for local people. (The use of a stencil is a step up in sophistication.)
The Union Flag fills the empty frame where there used to be a list of locals who died in The Belfast Blitz.