Thatcher

The Woman’s Role Is In The Struggle

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“Forced to endure years of brutality, humiliation, degradation and torture, the prisoners embarked on hunger-strike.” The 1980 hunger strike involved Brendan Hughes, Raymond McCartney, Tommy McKearney, Tommy McFeely, Leo Green, Sean McKenna, and John Nixon. On December first, three women in Armagh prison also went on strike (newspaper/posters from left to right): Mairéad Farrell on the dirty protest in her cell (for the original image, see Prison Walls), Mairéad Nugent, Mary Doyle.

The Relatives’ Action Committee was a women-led movement founded in 1976 in Turf Lodge (but with local groups in many places) in order to support the prisoners’ campaign for political status and the Five Demands. For background, see the NVTv documentary on Tar Anall | chapter 5 of Shattering Silence | the documents collected at hungerstrikes.org.
See also the previous posts The Conveyor Belt | Do You Care?
If you can identify the three speakers (perhaps Geraldine McKee. Rosemary Lawlor, Mary Ferris?), please comment or send an e-mail.

On the right, Farrell reads An Phoblacht/Republican News reporting on the assassination of politician and hunger-strike activist John Turnley by the UDA (WP). The headline on the cover reads “Don’t let Thatcher fill these [coffins]” and a graffitist has added “because Adams will” – a reference to the allegations of Richard O’Rawe (BelTel | The Blanket).

Initially without the quotation along the top. The mural was launched on the anniversary date: October 27th, 2010.

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Copyright © 2011 Peter Moloney

End Siege Of Short Strand

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Short Strand is a Catholic enclave of about 1,000 people in Protestant east Belfast. Throughout 2001 and 2002, the interface saw gun battles and rioting between the two factions. Here is a Guardian account of events in 2002. Above is a rejection of the new PSNI “There are many reasons for not joining the PSNI – this is just one” with a series of wanted posters (seen Collusion! Collusion! and Collusion Is State Murder plus one of Patrick Mayhew). Both parts by Ógra Shinn Féin. Divis Street, Belfast.

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Copyright © 2003 Peter Moloney

A Traitor And A Murderess

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“[The] Anglo-Irish Agreement proved one to be a traitor, the other the murderess she is.” The portraits are presumably of Margaret Thatcher and Garrett FitzGerald, who signed the agreement at Hillsborough Castle in November, 1985, though it is difficult to tell them apart – which is perhaps the point. A good picture of the pair can be found at the top of this Guardian article on the crafting of the document. This is the fifth (extreme right) of five murals on a wall in Ballycolman estate, Strabane.

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Copyright © 1989 Peter Moloney

1916-1982/Break Thatcher’s Back

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Here is a 1982 image of the Break Thatcher’s Back mural in Rockmore Road, Belfast, showing a blanket man with outstretched arms demanding “status now”, framed by a large “H” and surrounded by barbed wire, Tricolours, and the Starry Plough. In 1981, there was a Sean O’Casey quote on the left, rather than a lily and the year of the Easter Rising — 1916.

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Copyright © 1982 LC “free belfast”