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1-1-2011 The Art of Memory: The urM als of and the Management of History Tony Crowley Scripps College

Recommended Citation Crowley, Tony. "The Art of Memory: The urM als of Northern Ireland and the Management of History." Field Day Review 7 (2011): 22-49. Print.

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Scripps Faculty Scholarship at Scholarship @ Claremont. It has been accepted for inclusion in Scripps Faculty Publications and Research by an authorized administrator of Scholarship @ Claremont. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Field Day review

Fig. 1: West Taxi Tours. St., Belfast, 2002.

22 1 Robert McLiam Wilson, Eureka Street (New York, 2007), 63–64 The Art of 2 ccdl.libraries.claremont. edu/col/mni/ (accessed 20 July 2011). Memory: The Murals of Northern Ireland and the Management of History

Tony Crowley

It was Povertyland. It was the land where the bad things happened … It was the land where they wrote things on the walls. Robert McLiam Wilson, Eureka Street1

Introduction

The online archive Murals of Northern Ireland, held in Claremont Colleges Digital Library and covering the period from the late 1970s to the recent past,2 shows how the nature and function of murals in Northern Ireland have changed. In and Belfast, they are the focal

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Fig. 2: Islandbawn Street, Belfast, 1983.

point of a tourist trail that has been the locally based organizations provide 3 http://www. established in the decade or so since the employment and wages in some of the most belfastcitytours.com/tours. html (accessed 20 July official end of the conflict following the economically deprived areas of Western 2011). of 1998. Now Europe. Although this commodification is 4 http://www. figured as ‘heritage’ and commodified a long way from the directly war-related belfasttaxitours.info/ (accessed 20 July 2011). in various forms — postcards, posters, function of the earliest murals (Fig. 2), it is 5 http://www.belfast- books and guided taxi tours (Fig. 1) — the by no means the only change that deserves taxitours.com/ (accessed 20 murals have become a source of revenue attention. Two others are: the attempt by July 2011). and profit for a number of organizations: the state to influence the development of ex‑prisoners’ associations, artists’ murals in both republican and loyalist collectives, local community groups, and areas; and the shift in the nature of traditional commercial projects. The republican murals, particularly in Belfast, impulse behind some of the tours appears and the political difficulties that this poses to be genuinely educative; in others, crassly for the republican movement — or at least exploitative. One West Belfast tour, for that part of the republican movement that example, exhorts its customers to ‘touch the signed up to the peace process and is now peace wall, or write your name on it, like involved in the political administration of millions of others, famous and otherwise, Northern Ireland. after all it is longer than the Berlin wall!’,3 while another offers a ‘welcome to the biggest outdoor art gallery in the world’,4 and yet another promises to ‘get into the State Intervention heart of the areas that bore the brunt of the conflict’ while guaranteeing ‘the Next to two recently painted murals on opportunity to take photographs and a Brompton Park in , a republican brief stop at the souvenir shop’.5 While heartland in North Belfast and site of it is easy to sneer at the blatant selling of frequent violence during the conflict, are ‘history’ at £8 per head for an hour and a two plaques. One (Fig. 3) announces that half’s tour, it should be remembered that the murals were ‘Officially Opened By The

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Fig. 3: Plaque, Brompton Park, Ardoyne, Belfast, 2009.

President Of Ireland Mary McAleese’ on Department for Social Development, the the 19 June 2009 [McAleese was born in Office of the First Minister and Deputy Ardoyne]. The other declares that ‘This First Minister, and the International Fund project has been funded through the Re- for Ireland. The murals themselves are imaging Communities Programme which representations of the annual Ardoyne is supported by the Shared Communities Fleadh (Fig. 4) and, more abstractly, a Consortium’. The former declares its aims triptych of children (Fig. 5). A mile or to be ‘Renewing Communities, Rebuilding so away, down the in the Confidence, Reviving Hope, Restoring heart of loyalist West Belfast, there are two Pride’, and it details the sponsoring other recent murals with accompanying bodies: the British National Lottery, the plaques. One plaque, attached to a mural Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the presenting an ‘A–Z history of the Shankill

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Fig. 4: Brompton Park, Ardoyne, Belfast, 2009.

Road’, is situated on North Boundary Street the support and participation of the local (Fig. 6) and indicates that it has replaced community’. On nearby Hopewell Crescent, an earlier mural that represented the bitter another mural depicts an event called and long-standing Drumcree parade stand- the ‘Gold Rush’ (Fig. 8). In this case the off. It includes a photograph of the former plaque announces that this mural ‘replaces mural, together with an explanation that a paramilitary image of two silhouetted notes that it ‘depicted a fraught time in gunmen representing the Scottish Brigade’ the late 1990s when violence and dispute (of the Ulster Defence Association). The new attended a traditional march image, painted by artist Tim McCarthy, to the church at Drumcree through the ‘represents an event in July 1969 in Nationalist Garvaghy Road district of Christopher Street when children digging in Portadown’ (Fig. 7). In contrast, the newer the rubble of the then demolished “Scotch mural has the aim of ‘celebrating history Flats” discovered a hoard of gold sovereigns. and tradition and depicting images of Word spread quickly and thus began “the those who have become celebrated far and Gold Rush”’. The details of funding and beyond’, and was the product of a research support on this plaque are identical to those collaboration between the artist, Lesley relating to the A–Z mural. Cherry, and the Lower Shankill Community The appearance of such murals in Association (LSCA). Installed in 2009, republican and loyalist areas is the direct the mural was funded by the ‘Re-imaging result of a major initiative — the Re- Communities Programme of the Arts imaging Communities Programme alluded Council of Northern Ireland’ and delivered to in the plaques. According to the report by together with the that reviewed the programme, it was LSCA; the plaque notes that the project established in 2006 to tackle the issue of ‘would not have been possible without ‘the public representation of community

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Fig. 5: Brompton Park, Ardoyne, Belfast, 2009.

6 H. Dawson, S. Dunn and V. separation’, in the form of ‘public symbolic Department of the Environment, the Morgan, Evaluation of the displays, including marches, banners, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, and Re-imaging Communities Programme: A Report flags, wall paintings, bunting, and painted the Belfast Art College. Responses to the to the Arts Council of kerbstones’.6 Introduced with the aim of scheme were mixed. As Bill Rolston has Northern Ireland (Belfast, ‘converting and transforming these visible noted, a number of murals produced under 2009), vi–vii. 7 Dawson, Dunn and signs of and inter-community this scheme were very popular — some Morgan, Evaluation of the separation’, the intention was ‘to encourage becoming ‘a badge of local identity’ or Re-imaging Communities communities to reflect on and plan for ways the locus of communal pride.8 Others Programme, vii (hereafter Evaluation). of replacing divisive imagery with imagery were rejected by the local community, 8 Bill Rolston, Politics and that reflects communities in a more positive no doubt sceptical about the merit Painting: Murals and manner’.7 Initially intended to last three of repetitive depictions of fairy tales, Conflict in Northern Ireland (London, 1991), 57. years, with a budget of £3.3 million, and circuses, jungle scenes and animal life; 9 Des Wilson, ‘The Painted to cover 60–80 community-based schemes, Des Wilson, the West Belfast community Message’, Circa, 8 (1983), the programme exceeded expectations by priest, denounced the ‘astounding 19–20. 9 10 Rolston, Politics and funding 108 projects before its suspension absence of sensitivity’ in one work. Painting, 63. in 2008; further funding of £500,000 in Artistic intentions notwithstanding, the December 2008 led to work on another 15 impact of state imperatives was clear in projects. the absence of political content — ‘no The Re-imaging Communities flags, sectarian slogans, paramilitaries or Programme was not the first attempt by protesters, , police, helicopters, the state to influence murals in Northern or guns’.10 This was public art with an Ireland. Between 1977 and 1981, the official stamp, designed in part to foster Northern Ireland Office funded a similar the idea that ‘government had a caring side’ scheme through Belfast City Council and to legitimize ‘the newly established Community Services Department, the Community Services Department of

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Fig. 6: North Boundary St., Belfast, 2009.

Belfast City Council and some respectable relationships, inclusion of the marginalized, 11 Rolston, Politics and community groups’.11 Whatever its success, opening up the arts, and raising the profile Painting, 68. 12 Evaluation, 52. and Rolston’s assessment is ambivalent, by of artists. Some of these developments 13 Evaluation, ix–xii. 1981 the scheme had run its course. But by seem advantageous, even if others appear 14 Evaluation, ix. then, the appearance of the first generation to be little more than entries on a liberal of republican murals — opposed in almost political wish-list. Who could possibly all respects to the officially sanctioned object to enhanced ‘community cohesion’, works — had created an entirely different the acquisition of ‘skills and experience context. in the role of management’ by working- An informed evaluation of the post- class people, consultation with ‘children, conflict Re-imaging Communities minority ethnic communities, learning Programme would need to take into disabled, disaffected youth, the elderly, and account the history of wall painting in those living in disadvantaged areas’, ‘the republican and loyalist areas between the successful development of a wider audience late 1970s and the present. Yet, although for, and increased participation in, the the official assessment of the programme arts’, and the generation of ‘a more complex pays only perfunctory attention to this awareness and perception of the role of history (in a section that begins by noting art within societies’?13 When analyzed in that ‘painting on walls ... is of very ancient detail, however, the success of the statist origin, often dating back to prehistoric approach is open to serious doubt. It is times, and examples can be found in questionable, for example, whether the many parts of the world, often in caves changing of a number of murals in Ardoyne or on rocks’),12 it nonetheless presents a or the Lower Shankill actually has led number of significant issues. For example, to ‘the creation of spaces that are less it stresses a variety of positive aspects of intimidating and therefore more welcoming the re-imaging scheme under the headings to all sections of the community’.14 For of shared spaces, community relations, one thing, it is hardly as if the ‘welcoming’ strengthening of communities, building murals predominate. Next to the re-imaged management experience, catalysts for Ardoyne murals, there are a number that further improvement, building external celebrate nationalist views of Irish history

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Fig. 7: Plaque for Fig. 6.

or commemorate IRA volunteers killed ‘unwelcoming’ murals that keep members during the war. Likewise, alongside the of the ‘other’ community from strolling revised loyalist murals, there are numerous around the Bone (the Oldpark area of others that represent paramilitary North Belfast) or the estates of the Lower organizations or commemorate the lives of Shankill? loyalist paramilitaries. But what kind of This is not to belittle the efforts cultural analysis could assert that it is the of the people involved in the Re-

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Fig. 8: Hopewell Crescent, Shankill, Belfast, 2009.

imaging programme — members of the Thus, a ‘positive’ representation is what 15 Dawson, Dunn and local community, artists, or even the the state agencies consider communal Morgan, Evaluation of the Re-imaging Communities administrators at the Northern Ireland aspirations should be. It is indeed noted Programme, ix. Arts Council. Nor is it to suggest that the in the review that ‘not everyone was 16 Dawson, Dunn and spending of £4 million on the scheme is a immediately persuaded of the value of Morgan, Evaluation, xiii. waste of money (certainly not compared the projects or of the need to remove with the operational costs of the Royal or replace locally symbolic art works, Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and British especially murals’. Citing the fact that ‘the army for a day during the war). But it is removal of paramilitary symbolism is an to argue that the impulse for re-imaging emotive subject for some communities’, is driven at least in part by the ideological the review mentions ‘“gatekeepers” who imperatives of the British/Northern Irish were anxious about what they perceived to state, whatever the effects on the ground. be an abandoning of the symbols of their This is clear at a number of points in the community’ and who ‘required constant review, as when it notes that ‘many symbols re-assurance concerning the implications of of sectarian aggression and racism in the the projects’.16 The tone of the document form of murals, paramilitary memorials, is revealing, suggesting as it does that emblems, flags and territorial colours the question is really one of solicitous have been removed and/or replaced with management of the benighted or disturbed, imagery that reflects the aspirations of the rather than the presentation of the actual communities in a more positive manner’.15 values, fears and beliefs of the communities Apart from the curious conflation of in question (supporters of paramilitary racism and sectarianism, this denies the organizations or not). This is indicated stark fact that in some areas it is precisely most clearly when the report characterizes the paramilitary memorials, as well as symbolic displays, ranging from parades emblems, flags and territorial colours that to painted kerbstones and murals, as accurately indicate the ‘aspirations’ of the ‘sectarian, antagonistic and offensive’. They community — or at least sections of it. may indeed be so; the historical reality

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17 Evaluation, xi. is that there are different groups (‘sects’) for example, there may be a clash of 18 Evaluation, xi. that are deeply opposed to the ‘aspirations’ interests around the issue of tourism and its 19 Evaluation, xi. 20 Glenn Patterson, Lapsed espoused by others. But it is not made clear economic benefits. For, as tourist firms well Protestant (, 2006, in the report who finds these expressions of know, the tourists are paying in large part 60. identity ‘offensive’, and on what grounds. for the voyeuristic frisson of wandering 21 Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Troubles Archive This has the effect of dismissing those for safely around areas in which violence took Essays (Belfast, 2009), 1. whom such displays (which carry with them place relatively recently. The attraction for a sense of belonging and security, as well the tourists presumably is that they are not as violent exclusion and opposition) are in any danger (there were not that many anything but ‘offensive’. There is a wider back-packers on the Falls Road in 1980), issue here about political expression — but that they nonetheless feel that they have did someone introduce a right not to be some sort of access to the reality of a bitter offended? conflict. Would they continue to come if the The state’s use of the Re-imaging murals were solely to become depictions of, programme for its own purposes is say, the founding moment of Protestantism also made clear in the official report’s or the hedge-schools of eighteenth-century approbatory assertion that ‘as a result of Ireland — anything, in fact, but the war the projects many relationships between and the ongoing differences between ‘sects’. communities and the statutory sector So, if tourism dries up for that reason, were established or built upon’ (the report the state may well have helped kill the mentions explicitly the forging of links (sectarian, antagonistic and offensive) goose with the Housing Executive and the Police that provided if not quite the golden egg, Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).17 then at least one source of revenue in some And in comments hailing the fact that of the poorest areas of Northern Ireland. community involvement has sometimes led to ‘general environmental tidy-ups and the planting of trees and shrubs’ Republican Murals: Aesthetics, Politics (presumably on the basis that a litter-free, and War verdant estate means a paramilitary-free estate).18 As well as the suggestion ‘by The appearance of republican murals some that the programme itself, along from around the time of the first hunger with the attendant publicity, promoted a strike in 1980 marked a significant public sense that Northern Ireland was development in the realm of public art changing and moving forward, and that in Northern Ireland. Yet, while there is this contributed to an important message some valuable documentary work on to the outside world in relation to the these murals, few critical or theoretical generation of investment and tourism’.19 studies address them. In fact, the attitudes Developing links with state bodies may be from established commentators seem to a good thing (it depends on the nature of be either hostile, as in Belfast novelist the contacts), and the same could be said Glenn Patterson’s description of the murals of community tidy-ups (although provision as distasteful ‘kitsch’,20 or dismissive. of adequate maintenance services might The collection of thirteen pamphlets — be a more effective alternative). But it is Troubles Archive Essays — published by important to be clear that a particular the Arts Council of Northern Ireland as statist ideology is in play here, not least a companion to the permanent Troubles because the interests of the state may Archive exhibition at the Ulster Museum, not in fact coincide with those of local typifies this narrowness. Despite the fact communities (fractured as they are). In that this ‘inclusive resource’ claims to be re-imaging the murals to accord with the ‘reflective of the relevant work of all parts official narrative of progress and peace, of the arts community’,21 the republican

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Fig. 9: Beechmount Avenue, Falls, Belfast, 1981.

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murals are not mentioned in a garnering development of republican murals. In that includes essays on topics such as ‘The the early days much of the wall-painting Impact of the Conflict on Public Space and was not organized, nor was it necessarily Architecture’, ‘Prison Art and the Conflict representational, and it varied greatly in in Northern Ireland’, and ‘A Fusillade of terms of quality and sophistication. The Question Marks: Some Reflections on the first republican murals of any level of Art of ’. Such studied silence is complexity were produced in relation to remarkable in light of the critical attention the hunger strikes, as part of the attempt paid to almost all other aspects of artistic to gain support both within nationalist production in Northern Ireland during the areas and, particularly during the past forty years, literary work in particular second in 1981, from an (with poetry given perhaps more than international audience. And it is clear that its fair share). It is all the more striking, the target audience influenced the content given that thousands of murals have been of these murals. Thus, the effort to garner painted in public spaces since the late sympathy from nationalist communities 1970s, that they played an important role within Northern Ireland, Ireland and in the conflict, and that they have attracted Irish America, explains the preponderance an enormous amount of popular interest. of Catholic symbolism in hunger strike This lack of attention is unfortunate, since murals (Fig. 9) (a feature that dropped it has meant that a number of significant away relatively early in the development questions have not been addressed. For of republican iconography). And the need example: Who commissioned the murals? to address a wider audience demanded a Who paid for the materials? How much focus on the political aspects of the hunger would a mural cost? Who were the strikes, a factor that became significant muralists (the names of only a few are once Sinn Féin had decided on its policy of known)? Were the muralists paid, and if running prisoners as election candidates, so, how much? Were they trained? Did this particularly after the election and death change over time? Who decided where a of (Fig. 10). Indeed, as the mural would be sited and when it would strategy of the Provisional republican be painted? If there was opposition to the movement shifted with its adoption of the placing of a mural, what happened? Who ‘armalite and ballot box’ policy in 1981 decided on the style and content of the (and the eventual dropping of abstentionism murals? What if there were aesthetic or in relation to specific elections in 1986), political objections? Who decided when a the murals were incorporated as part mural could be painted over, or changed, or of the republican movement’s political renewed? Why were some murals retained, groundwork. That is not to say that the while others disappeared relatively quickly? military and political emphases were Were all murals subject to graffiti, or did separated out in the wall paintings, since some have a ‘protected’ status? There are although they consistently figured the IRA’s few answers to these and related questions, tactic of armed struggle as heroic, either which is puzzling. Perhaps it is simply the abstractly, or specifically, for the duration case that, like the members of the arts of the war, at least there was no question establishment, many other interest groups of playing down the nature of the violence would like to whitewash the past in this (Fig. 11). On the contrary, the murals were respect. But as this essay will now argue, sometimes used to celebrate specific IRA particularly with regard to republican operations, as in a representation of the murals, this may be a more difficult task IRA bomb and ambush at , than many appear to think. , in 1979, which inflicted the Here I can give only a few broad biggest loss of life on the British army in indications of general trends in the a single incident during the conflict, when

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Fig. 10: Shaw’s Road, West Belfast, 1981.

eighteen soldiers were killed (Fig. 12). Yet the strategy of armed struggle and electoral despite the relative crudity of the depiction politics and two appeared on the side of in this case, this is a good example of the the Falls Road offices of Sinn Féin. The complex ways in which murals functioned, first depicts two workers reading a copy given the overdetermined nature of their of the Sinn Féin newspaper / audience. For even at the most basic level , which itself figures of territorial marking, such a mural would IRA volunteers firing a salute over the have operated differentially on distinct 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic. constituencies — people living in the And the second combines an advert for immediate vicinity of the street where An Phoblacht/Republican News with a it appeared, members of the nationalist representation of IRA volunteers firing community in a particular part of the an M60 machine gun at a British army city, other citizens (many murals were helicopter along with the Gaelic slogan on main roads), the media, and of course ‘Fiche Blian Ag Streaghailt Bua do Muintir the RUC and British army. This is not to na h-Éireann’ (‘Twenty Years of Struggle say that wall paintings were not targeted for Victory to the People of Ireland’) towards an audience on occasion — as in (Fig. 14). As noted earlier, references to the opportunistic adaptation of an advert violence were consistent in republican for Harp Lager (‘some guys have all the murals throughout the war, but the 1980s luck’) in order to engage members of also saw the use of murals specifically Crown forces as they entered nationalist for electioneering purposes as Sinn Féin West Belfast. At other times murals began to contest elections after 1982 — were primarily directed at an ‘internal’ even though campaigning for general audience, as when the local community elections to the British parliament was was reminded, with no doubt unintentional conducted on an abstentionist ticket (a irony, of the nature of the Irish National fact that republican wall painters alluded Liberation Army (INLA) presence in the to through frequent attacks on the role of Markets area of South Belfast (Fig. 13). parliamentary politics. As the electoral Many of the republican murals painted tactic became increasingly profitable for in the 1980s sought explicitly to represent Sinn Féin, including its president Gerry

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Fig. 11: Rosnareen Avenue, , Belfast, 1982.

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Fig. 12: Warrenpoint mural, Rockville Street, Falls, Belfast, 1981.

Fig. 13: Markets area, Belfast, 1983.

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Fig. 14: Sinn Féin Offices, Falls Road, Belfast, 1989.

Fig. 15: , Belfast, 1989.

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Fig 16: Bond Street, Markets, Belfast, 1983.

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Fig. 17: Falls Road, Belfast, 1983.

Adams’s victory in the West Belfast the rhetoric of revolutionary socialism (an parliamentary seat in 1983, claims for its ironic development, given that an emphasis efficiency became more pointed. One mural on left politics was one of the causes of even suggested that a vote for Sinn Féin was the secession of the Provisionals in 1969) a way of striking against the British army (Fig. 16). The second was the explicit itself (Fig. 15). linking of the republican campaign with Sinn Féin’s move into electoral politics national-liberation struggles elsewhere in was accompanied by a realignment of its the world. The third, as Sinn Féin sought to political discourse to the left, a change position itself as an anti-colonial movement that was registered in the murals in a with a cultural nationalist bent, was an number of different ways in the 1980s attempt to align political republicanism and 1990s. The first was the adoption of with the burgeoning revival

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Fig. 18: Beechmount Avenue, Belfast, 2000.

in Northern Ireland. Though this was not Republican Re-imaging always an uncontentious move, republican wall-painting often championed the cause As it became clear that the end of the of Irish, not least in the use of exhortatory conflict in Northern Ireland was a slogans — ‘Saoirse nó Bás’ (‘Freedom or possibility, particularly during the ceasefires Death’), ‘Sealadaigh Abú’ (‘Victory to the (1994–96, 1997–2005) republican murals Provisionals’) — as a way of Gaelicizing began to evolve once more, sometimes the public face of republicanism. The subtly and sometimes more obviously. fourth development in republican politics Shifts in content and style signalled changes that was marked on the walls was the to republican ideology in the face of altered impact of feminism on a movement that, circumstances. As the military campaign despite the active participation of women started to wane (despite the reminders of in all spheres of its activity, had remained the IRA’s capacity to inflict spectacular overwhelmingly patriarchal (Sinn Féin’s damage in the 1996 bombings at Canary Women’s Department was eventually Wharf and Manchester), the murals established in 1980) (Fig. 17). As this last began to move away from depictions of example indicates, these shifts in republican the war and to articulate instead current politics were not discrete but were often issues and historical concerns. A number related and indeed contingent upon each of murals, for example, asserted the other. The walls themselves indicated how overarching demand for the withdrawal the discourse of revolutionary socialism of British troops from nationalist areas entailed a commitment to anti-colonialism, and the disbanding of the RUC as an and national-liberation struggles and implicit condition for the end of conflict. feminism were linked in ways that Others addressed questions that remained challenged the male-dominated structures of central significance to republicans, of republicanism while reflecting larger, including collusion between loyalist international developments. paramilitaries and Crown forces (Fig. 18); the use of plastic bullets in nationalist areas

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Fig. 19: New Lodge Road, Belfast, 1997.

by the RUC; and, most important of all, off the Falls Road (Fig. 20). Another the release of republican prisoners as part development was an attention to cultural of any peace deal. One particular mural is history (including local history). Some interesting in this respect (Fig. 19), in that murals portrayed elements of the cultural it takes the form of a retrospective collage nationalist tradition — Gaelic games and of images which had become iconic and traditional music — while others depicted which were taken from different media: events in nationalist history, such as the BBC pictures of an IRA rooftop protest in Great Famine 1845–52, the Flight of the a British prison; a portrait of IRA volunteer Earls 1607, the United Irish rising of 1798, Mairéad Farrell taken from the Derry Film and the 1916 , and one was and Video Collective documentary Mother even an intervention in the ‘revisionist’ Ireland; republican posters from the 1976– debates in Irish historiography (Fig. 21). 81 prison campaign for the reinstatement Specific aspects of local history were also of political status; photographs of women represented, as in a striking pair of murals protesting during the hunger strikes and in the New Lodge area of North Belfast, banging bin lids at the death of Bobby which made a comparison between social Sands; and images lifted from earlier conditions past and present (Figs. 22, murals, including representations of the 23). Finally, there was a type of mural dirty protestors at the prison and that came to prominence in the 1990s women being strip-searched at Armagh and which has endured: commemorations prison, as well as the central motif of wrists of the republican dead. This was hardly bound by barbed wire, first depicted on a new theme, since twentieth-century a very early mural at Beechmount Street, republicanism placed great emphasis on

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Fig. 20: Beechmount Street, Belfast, 1981.

Fig. 21: Oakman Street, Belfast, 1996.

acknowledging the deaths of its activists Since the Good Friday Agreement 22 From Pádraig Pearse’s and volunteers (‘… the fools, the fools, in 1998, there has been a remarkable graveside oration at the funeral of Jeremiah the fools! They have left us our diversification in the nature, function and O’Donovan Rossa, 1 dead …’).22 And recent commemorative provenance of the murals in republican August 1915. murals date from the early 1980s. One areas of Northern Ireland (the same can of the first was dedicated to two INLA be said of murals in loyalist areas). In volunteers in Divis Flats, though the mode Derry’s , for example, the work of was only fully established after the hunger the independent Bogside Artists’ collective strikes, most notably in the memorials to covers topics of historical note — John the iconic Bobby Sands (Fig. 24). Hume alongside fellow Nobel Peace Prize winners Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother

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Fig. 22: New Lodge Road, Belfast, 1999.

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Fig. 23: New Lodge Road, Belfast, 1999.

Fig. 24: Sebastopol Street, Belfast, 1998.

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Fig. 25: Beechmount Avenue, Belfast, 2010.

Fig. 26: Rockmount Street, Belfast, 2010.

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Fig. 27: Divis Street, Belfast, 2009.

Fig. 28: Divis Street, Belfast, 2006.

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Fig. 29: Springfield Road, Ballymurphy, Belfast, 2010.

Teresa, and Nelson Mandela; the civil that needs to be fought for — somewhere rights marches of the late sixties, early or other it will find expression on a wall, seventies; and the massacre making an intervention in public space, of civil rights marchers by the British demanding attention. army in Derry in 1972 — all of which The recourse to the walls is a fascinating sit alongside a mural asserting the Irish phenomenon, suggesting both a certain ancestry of Che Guevara (his grandmother type of confidence (even the walls can was from Galway). In West Belfast the convey the message) and desperation (only independent Irish language organization the walls can convey the message). And Pobal uses the walls to argue for a this makes the absence of critical response Language Rights Act in Northern Ireland, all the more peculiar. It may be that the while elsewhere in the area the centenary failure to engage critically with the murals of the republican youth movement Fianna is simply a matter of distaste for the war Éireann is celebrated (Fig. 25), the Sinn and all its bitter, violent consequences; Féin Trade Union Department hails James they are a reminder of a period that is Connolly (Fig. 26), Beechview Antigonish best forgotten. But for the republican Credit Union advertises its services, ‘joy- movement, memory is an art that cannot riding’ is attacked, tourism in West Belfast be neglected — hence the proliferation of is promoted, the 2008–09 Israeli war on murals commemorating the republican dead Gaza is denounced (Fig. 27), solidarity is and the prodigious number of permanent offered to Basque separatists, and anti- memorials (there were 444 in 2006). And slavery campaigner Frederick Douglass’s yet the focus on the suffering of those who Irish connections are recalled (Fig. 28). In gave their lives to republicanism raises a short, murals have become a crucial mode difficult issue for the leadership of Sinn by which a whole variety of messages — Féin in particular: the relationship between political, historical, aesthetic, informational the past and present, or to put it another — are conveyed in nationalist and way, between the dead and the living. Some republican areas. If there is a significant things — declarations of no-go areas or historical moment to be recalled, or bold assertions of victory — can simply an important ideological message sent, be painted over and thus confined to the a memory that needs to be fostered, past, although they can sometimes persist information that has to be shared, a death in palimpsestic form. Other issues can that has to be commemorated, a cause be kept alive to nourish commitment to

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the republican movement — calls for an he had dedicated his life. So this particular 23 http://www.nisra.gov. inquiry into the killing of eleven people in mural’s take on the struggle is, at the very uk/deprivation/archive/ NIMDM2005FullReport.pdf Ballymurphy during the introduction of least, sceptical. (accessed 20 July 2011). internment in 1971 (Fig. 29), for example, Republican activists who died during 24 , Voices from or deaths of the New Lodge Six in 1973, or the war appear as heroic figures from the Grave (London, 2010), 293. the shooting of , an unarmed a beleaguered and yet richly endowed IRA volunteer, in 1992. But reminders of community; but the political and economic the heroic sacrifice and deaths of republican realities of republican areas of Northern activists can intensify the question, ‘How Ireland are shocking. As the latest official does the present requite the sufferings of report on multiple deprivation confirms, the past?’ A plaque in the Clonard Martyrs ‘Saor agus Sóisialach’ (‘Free and Socialist’) Memorial Garden, in Bombay Street, one is hardly a phrase that applies to West of the first streets to be burned out in Belfast. The top four most deprived wards Belfast in 1969, dedicated to the people in Northern Ireland — itself one of the of Clonard by republican ex-prisoners, poorest regions of the salutes those ‘who have resisted and still — are Belfast wards Whiterock 2 and resist the occupation of our country by 3 and Falls 2 and 3 (closely followed by Britain’ and whose ‘reward will only be a New Lodge in fifth place and Shankill united Ireland’. But if only a united Ireland in sixth).23 Given the dependency of the is the appropriate reward, the question Northern Irish economy on public sector arises — how close is it to being achieved? employment, the economic situation It is a question that cannot be ignored. In is bound to worsen. Sinn Féin, like its an effort to sell the peace process, veteran partners at Stormont, will be forced to do republican told IRA volunteers the bidding of a British Tory government that they would see a united Ireland in whose priority is the slashing of public 2003 (three years after the unveiling of the expenditure and the dismantling of Clonard memorial); in 2010 Sinn Féin MLA the welfare state. Where will this lead? proclaimed that it could be became a ‘dissident’ 2016 (a prediction, like that of Cahill, that (a term that Sinn Féin spins as a way seems guaranteed to remain unfulfilled). of discrediting anyone who disagrees The mismatch between political promise with its strategy and practices — despite and historical reality also appears in a the fact that its own members used to coded way in a mural on Belfast’s Divis pride themselves on the title) because he Street, which acknowledges the roles of believed that Sinn Féin and IRA policies two key republican activists — Kieran had ‘sentenced young people, young Nugent, the first prisoner to go on the Republicans and young working-class , and Brendan Hughes, people to another generation of fighting’.24 officer commanding of the IRA Belfast Hughes, like many other ‘dissidents’, Brigade and leader of the 1980 hunger did not in fact believe that violence was strike. The deaths of Nugent (2000) and a viable option after the Good Friday Hughes (2008) were highly problematic for Agreement. Others have a different view. the republican movement. The pathetic and Once again the writing is on the wall. Sinn isolated death of Nugent, who had become Féin may attempt to control the art of alcoholic, highlighted the lack of organized memory through its repertoire of images, support for ex-prisoners. Hughes, fatally but it faces a hard sell in presenting the weakened by the hunger strike, died bitterly present situation in Northern Ireland as the critical of Sinn Féin leaders successful outcome of twenty-five years of and Martin McGuinnes for having sold violence and suffering (even if many, for out the socialist republican cause to which a variety of reasons, are buying it at the

48 The Art of Memory

moment). Yet, though walls can be painted over and slogans like ‘Brits Out’ can be cleaned up, some of the ‘dissidents’ have deployed precisely the same arguments and, more importantly, the same tactics as an earlier generation of republicans (Adams and McGuinness among them). It is not, to paraphrase Yeats, that the dead men and women of republicanism ‘are loitering there / To stir the boiling pot’, but they are watching from those walls as the pot heats up in the poverty, dispossession and political disappointment of the years to come.

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