Art as Resistance – Sandhya Devi Ellis
This thesis was submitted in 1984 as part of my Fine Art degree at Hornsey Art School / Middlesex Polytechnic, in London.
I had planned to study the Mexican Mural Movement in tandem — and my research was buoyed up by the Wild Style graffiti and rap movement in full swing in New York City at this time — but I became preoccupied with these works in Belfast.
I was an active member of the Troops Out Movement (TOM) during the very late 1970s and early 80s. I travelled to Belfast several times, lastly as part of the Black Delegation to Belfast, organised by the Camden Black Workers’ Group.
A reciprocal Belfast-London visit forged links with organisations like Southall Black Sisters, Newham Monitoring Group, Southall Law Centre, and the Camden Black Workers’ Group.
Through these exchanges I made many friends in the republican community. These young people and experiences are unforgettable, and remain inspirational. I had such a good time!
What follows is the Belfast part of the research, excluding the sections of the thesis on New York and Mexico.
I had planned to study the Mexican Mural Movement in tandem — and my research was buoyed up by the Wild Style graffiti and rap movement in full swing in New York City at this time — but I became preoccupied with these works in Belfast.
I was an active member of the Troops Out Movement (TOM) during the very late 1970s and early 80s. I travelled to Belfast several times, lastly as part of the Black Delegation to Belfast, organised by the Camden Black Workers’ Group.
A reciprocal Belfast-London visit forged links with organisations like Southall Black Sisters, Newham Monitoring Group, Southall Law Centre, and the Camden Black Workers’ Group.
Through these exchanges I made many friends in the republican community. These young people and experiences are unforgettable, and remain inspirational. I had such a good time!
What follows is the Belfast part of the research, excluding the sections of the thesis on New York and Mexico.
Interviews with P. and C., Sinn Féin Youth Department, Beechmount Youth, in Belfast, August 10, 1983
P. I’m P. and I’m engaged in doing the wall murals in Belfast. The wall murals started in 1980/81 at the start of the H Block hunger strikes. At first all the wall was plain slogans although done in an orderly fashion, and then as things progressed we got into big full-size drawings on walls. Each drawing has a clear political message about the hunger strikes or about the war or about repression or anything like that.
Sandhya. So, it was started by the hunger strikes?
P. Yeah.
Sandhya. Why did you feel that you had to do it on those particular subjects? In London, for instance, you’ll get murals which are paintings of the local community or whatever.
P. The reason why we done the wall with a political message was that at that time the hunger strike was on. It was a very emotional period. It was the only message, the only thing what was on our minds at the time. It was the thing which was the news of today and that is why that was picked. The difference between the murals here and say in London is that in London you don’t have a war going, you don’t have repression, you don’t have people walking over you, Brits harassing you, people getting shot and all that there. There are a few sort of community wall murals with no political message, but them we ourselves have got into because we feel a political message is far more important. And even trying to keep the political murals on the walls is a hard job ’cause every time we do a mural it’ll take us maybe a week at the most to do a mural on a wall from start to finish.
Sandhya. How do you actually go about organising to do a mural, like funding; you don’t get any funding, do you?
P. We start off with somebody has an idea. For instance, the first mural that we done was of Bobby Sands and what it was was a sort of compassionate wall mural for it really hit at people’s hearts. Somebody got an idea; the idea came from a poster from Iran sent over here during the hunger strikes. It showed a cross with a sort of skeleton on it. On other parts of the picture it was all skulls and faces which were very gaunt and black under the eyes and all the colour in the mural was black and white. And we just progressed from there.
Sandhya. Was it sent to you by Iranian students?
P. Ayatollah Khomeini sent it, a solidarity greeting.
Sandhya. So, that’s where you started from, that kind of idea. I would have got the impression that if you were going to get funding that they’d want you to do a more community type mural to ‘liven up’ the area and get away from the troubles.
P. Did you say ‘funding’? We don’t get funding. We raise all the money ourselves. The money we spend on murals now in that area would be almost £1,000. Maybe just less than that. Or if we have no money, what we’ll do is just go around all the doors in the area asking for tins of paint. Like, if anyone has any old tins of paint lying around in their yard, they would put them out; we would collect them and we would choose the paint to suit ourselves.
Sandhya. You don’t get any trouble as to where you’re gonna put the murals? A lot of them are on the sides of people’s homes.
P. Well, what we think is a good wall, we’ll go along and ask the people and if they say ‘no’, well, that’s dead simple; we don’t use it. But usually they’ll say ‘yes’ because they know that they’re gonna be good. Secondly, when they’re up, nobody’s gonna write their names on it. Nobody writes ‘NF’ [National Front] or whatever. Nobody’s gonna write graffiti. It hides the graffiti already on the walls; it brightens up the area. That’s why most people like it and most people agree to it.
Sandhya. So, what kind of response have you had from the Council then?
P. Nothing whatsoever.
C. I mean, we had no complaints, although two people have been lifted for doing the murals on the walls and the charge that was brought against them was defacing public property.
Sandhya. Who lifted them?
C. The RUC and the British army. There was one during the hunger strikes and one during the elections and both were lifted from the Twinbrook area. Generally, the RUC and army have harassed young people for drawing on these walls just because of the political message on these walls first of all and secondly, just in a campaign of repression against young people.
Sandhya. So, it’s youth groups that go round doing them?
C. Yeah. Most, nearly all, were done by young people. Beechmount has always been prominent and artistic.
Sandhya. As an area?
P. Yeah, we have no ‘artistes’.
Sandhya. You’ve had no training?
P. No, none whatsoever.
Sandhya. I’m quite interested in how you came to the decision that that’s what you were gonna do and how you organised together to go out and do wall murals, as opposed to, say, getting together to produce a magazine.
P. It was a gradual stepping stone sort of thing. We started off scrawling on the walls, just graffiti. You know, ‘Smash H Block’ and all that. Then we got into the idea of why not stick a tricolour on the wall, just an ordinary flag. We stuck that on the wall; we seen it’s a lot better than graffiti. Things just moved on from there. People who could draw started to come in and do the full-size walls.
Sandhya. Maybe you could talk more specifically about some of the actual murals.
Sandhya. So, it was started by the hunger strikes?
P. Yeah.
Sandhya. Why did you feel that you had to do it on those particular subjects? In London, for instance, you’ll get murals which are paintings of the local community or whatever.
P. The reason why we done the wall with a political message was that at that time the hunger strike was on. It was a very emotional period. It was the only message, the only thing what was on our minds at the time. It was the thing which was the news of today and that is why that was picked. The difference between the murals here and say in London is that in London you don’t have a war going, you don’t have repression, you don’t have people walking over you, Brits harassing you, people getting shot and all that there. There are a few sort of community wall murals with no political message, but them we ourselves have got into because we feel a political message is far more important. And even trying to keep the political murals on the walls is a hard job ’cause every time we do a mural it’ll take us maybe a week at the most to do a mural on a wall from start to finish.
Sandhya. How do you actually go about organising to do a mural, like funding; you don’t get any funding, do you?
P. We start off with somebody has an idea. For instance, the first mural that we done was of Bobby Sands and what it was was a sort of compassionate wall mural for it really hit at people’s hearts. Somebody got an idea; the idea came from a poster from Iran sent over here during the hunger strikes. It showed a cross with a sort of skeleton on it. On other parts of the picture it was all skulls and faces which were very gaunt and black under the eyes and all the colour in the mural was black and white. And we just progressed from there.
Sandhya. Was it sent to you by Iranian students?
P. Ayatollah Khomeini sent it, a solidarity greeting.
Sandhya. So, that’s where you started from, that kind of idea. I would have got the impression that if you were going to get funding that they’d want you to do a more community type mural to ‘liven up’ the area and get away from the troubles.
P. Did you say ‘funding’? We don’t get funding. We raise all the money ourselves. The money we spend on murals now in that area would be almost £1,000. Maybe just less than that. Or if we have no money, what we’ll do is just go around all the doors in the area asking for tins of paint. Like, if anyone has any old tins of paint lying around in their yard, they would put them out; we would collect them and we would choose the paint to suit ourselves.
Sandhya. You don’t get any trouble as to where you’re gonna put the murals? A lot of them are on the sides of people’s homes.
P. Well, what we think is a good wall, we’ll go along and ask the people and if they say ‘no’, well, that’s dead simple; we don’t use it. But usually they’ll say ‘yes’ because they know that they’re gonna be good. Secondly, when they’re up, nobody’s gonna write their names on it. Nobody writes ‘NF’ [National Front] or whatever. Nobody’s gonna write graffiti. It hides the graffiti already on the walls; it brightens up the area. That’s why most people like it and most people agree to it.
Sandhya. So, what kind of response have you had from the Council then?
P. Nothing whatsoever.
C. I mean, we had no complaints, although two people have been lifted for doing the murals on the walls and the charge that was brought against them was defacing public property.
Sandhya. Who lifted them?
C. The RUC and the British army. There was one during the hunger strikes and one during the elections and both were lifted from the Twinbrook area. Generally, the RUC and army have harassed young people for drawing on these walls just because of the political message on these walls first of all and secondly, just in a campaign of repression against young people.
Sandhya. So, it’s youth groups that go round doing them?
C. Yeah. Most, nearly all, were done by young people. Beechmount has always been prominent and artistic.
Sandhya. As an area?
P. Yeah, we have no ‘artistes’.
Sandhya. You’ve had no training?
P. No, none whatsoever.
Sandhya. I’m quite interested in how you came to the decision that that’s what you were gonna do and how you organised together to go out and do wall murals, as opposed to, say, getting together to produce a magazine.
P. It was a gradual stepping stone sort of thing. We started off scrawling on the walls, just graffiti. You know, ‘Smash H Block’ and all that. Then we got into the idea of why not stick a tricolour on the wall, just an ordinary flag. We stuck that on the wall; we seen it’s a lot better than graffiti. Things just moved on from there. People who could draw started to come in and do the full-size walls.
Sandhya. Maybe you could talk more specifically about some of the actual murals.
C. Well, I think the most prominent murals during the hunger strikes was the ones at the bottom of the Whiterock [Road]. There was one portrayed a blanketman in bed who was supposedly dying because the phase of struggle that was going on then. There was ten men and three women who were on hunger strike for political status. And what it depicted really was the sight the people couldn’t see of the dying man on his bed. He was a Catholic first of all, a picture of Our Lady standing at the edge of the bed with her hands out; and there was a H Block, symbol of repression. And the image that I got from it was that there were people dying on hunger strike, that this man’s a Catholic and he believes what he is doing is right and that the H Blocks was his cross that he had to bear and that he would eventually die if people didn’t come out. And under the mural it says: ‘Blessed are those who hunger for justice’. It kinda compared Jesus dying in Calvary as with the man dying on hunger strike and that both these people were dying because they believed that what they were doing was right and for them suffering and repression for saving human souls, as Jesus or whoever it was put it. And the men were dying for the Irish people.
Sandhya. Quite a lot of the murals have got direct religious references.
Sandhya. Quite a lot of the murals have got direct religious references.
C. It’s not that all these people are religious; I mean. It’s the nationalist community.
P. Because the church was attacking us during the hunger strike, hitting us with all these parables taken from the Bible, attacking us, telling us we were wrong; we counteracted that; we used our ones that we did ourselves. ‘Blessed are those who hunger for justice’, right, that’s out of the Bible too, just not to defeat the church.
P. Because the church was attacking us during the hunger strike, hitting us with all these parables taken from the Bible, attacking us, telling us we were wrong; we counteracted that; we used our ones that we did ourselves. ‘Blessed are those who hunger for justice’, right, that’s out of the Bible too, just not to defeat the church.
C. I mean, the Catholic Church was coming out with statements like, ‘The men are committing suicide. What they’re doing is immoral’, and what we’re saying is, if Bobby Sands, Francis Hughes, what they were doing is immoral, then Jesus Christ, what he done is immoral because you’re just contradicting yourself and what he was coming up with is political speeches in pulpits. There’s certainly a lot of men within the Blocks and within the community, our people as a whole who are Catholics, who believe in God and the Catholic church, and we wanted to get across to them. Them people who were devout Catholics, or Castle Catholics as we call them, people who didn’t or weren’t involved in the movement, who didn’t understand what the struggle is about of how they were being brainwashed, using a symbol or person which you could relate to in a religion, then people could relate to what was going on on a religious basis.
Sandhya. Can you tell me the story of the plastic bullets mural?
C. It came after there was a woman killed during the hunger strikes called Nora McCabe, who was going to the shops for cigarettes and a couple of packets of crisps and, as she turned the corner, two RUC Land Rovers turned up and shot her at point blank range and killed her. It was from there the mural started. Three or four young people decided to do a mural in relation to the murder of plastic bullet victims; that’s what really sparked it off. Chief Superintendent Crutchley, who was at that time head of the RUC in Belfast, was actually in the vehicle and had given the order to fire on Nora McCabe.
P. And since then he’s now an Assistant Chief Constable.
C. Of the Traffic Squad! A Canadian film crew was over. They actually witnessed the shooting of Nora McCabe and they’d taken film of it and at the inquest, when the film was shown and the RUC denied turning up Linden Street, it was on the film; the RUC were turning up Linden Street for all to see. And what happened, they demoted Crutchley into the traffic division from Superintendent of the RUC and he’s still there.
Further on down, people were on the street. So when Pringle got blown up, what they did was actually change it from the ordinary soldier on the street to somebody who was forcing these young British soldiers to work and to shoot other people, and that he was the instigator, or part of the hierarchy that was ordering these shootings. So what they actually done was to change the picture and show the person who was firing the plastic bullet just wasn’t the ordinary British soldier; it was people like Lieutenant Pringle.
Sandhya. Can you tell me the story of the plastic bullets mural?
C. It came after there was a woman killed during the hunger strikes called Nora McCabe, who was going to the shops for cigarettes and a couple of packets of crisps and, as she turned the corner, two RUC Land Rovers turned up and shot her at point blank range and killed her. It was from there the mural started. Three or four young people decided to do a mural in relation to the murder of plastic bullet victims; that’s what really sparked it off. Chief Superintendent Crutchley, who was at that time head of the RUC in Belfast, was actually in the vehicle and had given the order to fire on Nora McCabe.
P. And since then he’s now an Assistant Chief Constable.
C. Of the Traffic Squad! A Canadian film crew was over. They actually witnessed the shooting of Nora McCabe and they’d taken film of it and at the inquest, when the film was shown and the RUC denied turning up Linden Street, it was on the film; the RUC were turning up Linden Street for all to see. And what happened, they demoted Crutchley into the traffic division from Superintendent of the RUC and he’s still there.
Further on down, people were on the street. So when Pringle got blown up, what they did was actually change it from the ordinary soldier on the street to somebody who was forcing these young British soldiers to work and to shoot other people, and that he was the instigator, or part of the hierarchy that was ordering these shootings. So what they actually done was to change the picture and show the person who was firing the plastic bullet just wasn’t the ordinary British soldier; it was people like Lieutenant Pringle.
The army come along and throw paint over the murals quite regularly so you have to keep retouching them quite regularly and this particular bloke [Lieutenant Pringle] got his leg blown off and when it came to repainting the mural, they painted him with a wooden leg. That’s what happened; they were throwing paint at it; it was a regular occurrence; it happens all the time. So in this instance they put a wooden leg on it.
Sandhya. Can you tell me about the conveyor belt painting in Beechmount?
C. The conveyor belt was used; I think the mural depicts it. What it is: you were picked off the street first of all, or from the house at half six in the morning, interrogated for four days or seven days. From there you were beaten and interrogated and forced to sign statements for things you didn’t commit. From there, from Castlereagh, you went to Crumlin Road Jail; here you spent maybe a year or two years on remand. From there it was a process called internment where they brought you out from a year on remand and they asked you to plead guilty or not guilty. If you pleaded guilty, then your trial would be hurried up; if you didn’t plead guilty then you’d be left for another year on remand. In the Diplock courts was a judge, no jury. The sentence was imposed; it would be life, life imprisonment. From when they were sentenced, they were either brought to the H Blocks or Armagh Prison. It was just a cycle, a conveyor belt, from the home to the H Blocks or Armagh.
Sandhya. Can you tell me about the conveyor belt painting in Beechmount?
C. The conveyor belt was used; I think the mural depicts it. What it is: you were picked off the street first of all, or from the house at half six in the morning, interrogated for four days or seven days. From there you were beaten and interrogated and forced to sign statements for things you didn’t commit. From there, from Castlereagh, you went to Crumlin Road Jail; here you spent maybe a year or two years on remand. From there it was a process called internment where they brought you out from a year on remand and they asked you to plead guilty or not guilty. If you pleaded guilty, then your trial would be hurried up; if you didn’t plead guilty then you’d be left for another year on remand. In the Diplock courts was a judge, no jury. The sentence was imposed; it would be life, life imprisonment. From when they were sentenced, they were either brought to the H Blocks or Armagh Prison. It was just a cycle, a conveyor belt, from the home to the H Blocks or Armagh.
Sandhya. So, it was known as a conveyor belt system before you did the painting.
C. Yes.
P It takes in from Cromwellian times when Cromwell was killing all the Catholics, depicting them … We took the H Block conveyor belt system where Cromwell’s troops, what they were doing, what they’ve done, and what the Brits are doing here now is the exact same. And we went to the H Block murals.
Sandhya. So, that’s also depicted on the mural? The army and the RUC obviously don’t like what’s happening, so they go around chucking paint on it. But the response from the community – do they like it?
P. The community really surprised us ‘cos they really supported it. When we do a wall mural, we cover up the graffiti. All our wall murals brighten up the area. They bring ordinary people nearer, closer to the movement. They give them some identity. When we were doing it, they seen Brits harassing us. They say: ‘Those wee lads are only painting the walls, right, doing it right’. And the Brits is out every time we’re out doing the walls, it’s ‘Right, what’s your names?’, messing us about. When the wall mural’s finished, they throw paint at it. It was dead certain that we were out the next day painting it again. It was bringing it home to people that they were animals, that they were harassing us, because they were seeing it every day we were out doing something.
Sandhya. When you go out and paint murals, you go out in how many numbers? And how do you go about doing it?
C. Well, it depends on the size of the mural. Sometimes it’ll need two or three people, other times it’ll need five or six. But it doesn’t usually go over ten people, very small groups.
Sandhya. How do you actually come to an agreement on the design?
C. Usually what happens is Smart Arse [P.] comes up with this idea of what the wall murals should be and they bring it along to the others involved doing the mural and just argue their case and agree to put it up.
Sandhya. Do you grid the wall?
C. Aye, what most people do is draw it out with either chalk or crayons on the wall first, paint the wall black or white or whatever colour it needs to be painted first of all. Then they draw the design or the figures on the wall, then they paint it.
Sandhya. Have you looked at many other revolutionary murals from other parts of the world?
C. I haven’t seen any.
P. Neither have it. The only things that we have seen is posters from other parts of the world which we might use. We put them in. Well, we’ll not stick up a Salvadorian wall mural because it isn’t about here, but what we’ll do is show the similarities between the two struggles. There’s one at the bottom of the Avenue. The PLO one side and an IRA man on the other, and it shows you the PLO flag and the tricolour and they’re both holding the same gun. Solidarity.
C. Yes.
P It takes in from Cromwellian times when Cromwell was killing all the Catholics, depicting them … We took the H Block conveyor belt system where Cromwell’s troops, what they were doing, what they’ve done, and what the Brits are doing here now is the exact same. And we went to the H Block murals.
Sandhya. So, that’s also depicted on the mural? The army and the RUC obviously don’t like what’s happening, so they go around chucking paint on it. But the response from the community – do they like it?
P. The community really surprised us ‘cos they really supported it. When we do a wall mural, we cover up the graffiti. All our wall murals brighten up the area. They bring ordinary people nearer, closer to the movement. They give them some identity. When we were doing it, they seen Brits harassing us. They say: ‘Those wee lads are only painting the walls, right, doing it right’. And the Brits is out every time we’re out doing the walls, it’s ‘Right, what’s your names?’, messing us about. When the wall mural’s finished, they throw paint at it. It was dead certain that we were out the next day painting it again. It was bringing it home to people that they were animals, that they were harassing us, because they were seeing it every day we were out doing something.
Sandhya. When you go out and paint murals, you go out in how many numbers? And how do you go about doing it?
C. Well, it depends on the size of the mural. Sometimes it’ll need two or three people, other times it’ll need five or six. But it doesn’t usually go over ten people, very small groups.
Sandhya. How do you actually come to an agreement on the design?
C. Usually what happens is Smart Arse [P.] comes up with this idea of what the wall murals should be and they bring it along to the others involved doing the mural and just argue their case and agree to put it up.
Sandhya. Do you grid the wall?
C. Aye, what most people do is draw it out with either chalk or crayons on the wall first, paint the wall black or white or whatever colour it needs to be painted first of all. Then they draw the design or the figures on the wall, then they paint it.
Sandhya. Have you looked at many other revolutionary murals from other parts of the world?
C. I haven’t seen any.
P. Neither have it. The only things that we have seen is posters from other parts of the world which we might use. We put them in. Well, we’ll not stick up a Salvadorian wall mural because it isn’t about here, but what we’ll do is show the similarities between the two struggles. There’s one at the bottom of the Avenue. The PLO one side and an IRA man on the other, and it shows you the PLO flag and the tricolour and they’re both holding the same gun. Solidarity.
C. It’s the same with the women’s mural. It shows three women. There’s one from Ireland and two other persons, a Black person [Namibia] and one other [PLO] and it’s just showing solidarity and the whole thing about women; they’re all involved in the struggles as much as the men and yet women are fighting for their own liberation as well as national liberation.
P. And we have girls doing the murals as well.
Sandhya. Have you had any response from outside?
C. The good thing too was that there was a political message, for the people first of all, and secondly anybody from outside Ireland that came in during the hunger strikes and after that. You only have to see from walking down the road the number of tourists taking photographs of the murals and it’s brought the message actually outside of Ireland and into America and all over. The British army that were on foot patrol were actually taking photographs of the murals before they damaged or destroyed them. There was actually a big response and we actually got our message across to people outside of Ireland, which was good. It was a big highlight when any international groups came over and saw the murals.
Sandhya. There haven’t been any publications as of yet. There’s an article in Circa, isn’t there?
C. The Troops Out paper used that one on plastic bullets and most articles that I’ve seen there’s always a drawing or a wall mural along with the article.
Sandhya. They’re actually being used as sort of logos.
P. There was one on the news the other day. Showed you one of the murals in Beechmount just to go along with the article, just as background material.
C. The British media sometimes use them to depict the violence or the troubles going on. There was a play done, a Derry workshop. It was a bit pro-British, but what they done was ‘The Writing on the Wall’. And they used the various slogans and wall murals to depict different scenes within the play. They came out as messages. ‘The Writing on the Wall’ told the story of what was happening here. I think it does tell the story or part of the story that’s happening here because it depicts it and it’s visible to see. And somehow you get a message across in different ways. Some people talk to get the message across, some people write, some people sing; the drawings on the wall is just another way of getting the message across to people. People wouldn’t listen to you when you wanna talk to them, but maybe they just listen with the drawings on the wall. People often do this sort of thing with singing with a political message, but we’re doing paintings and getting our message across, because people couldn’t turn their heads when they are walking down the roads.
Sandhya. Staring them in the face. Have you been doing them constantly, regularly?
C. Yeah, right up until the elections.
P. The elections took time, once we got back to it.
C. There’s about five wall murals that have been asked to be done; people actually come along and say: ‘Will you do a wall mural?’
Sandhya. Just ordinary people? Is anyone volunteering and saying that they want the side of their house painted?
P. Yeah, giving us ideas. We get a lot of ideas, people coming along and saying, ‘God, that’s brilliant, but why don’t you stick something up there? Why don’t you do this?’ Even if we don’t, we might use that on another mural and they’re really giving us good help.
C. People are walking along the street and saying: ‘Look, I think something should be done there to highlight something else’. So they’re actually being involved and giving us advice and help and ideas.
Sandhya. So, it’s self-sustaining. What other ideas have you got coming up?
C. I wanna do one on [Gerry] Fitt [MP] and depicting him as what he is. There was a poster come out during the hunger strike. I remember Fitt being a bit … Queen Victoria and John Hume and different other people, and I just wanna highlight the constitutional politicians, the politicians that use the people and the power to betray the people. And that Fitt’s the biggest one among them and that he’s really blatant and that he’s sitting with people who are murdering and everyone who’s been involved in the struggle against the Irish people here and he’s sitting in the House [of Lords] at the moment and he calls himself a socialist and a republican. It’s fucking…
Hopefully we’ll be doing one about the murder of a young fella in Ardoyne called Danny Barrett. It was very obvious that it was murder. He was sitting at his own door. Although all the other cases were murder, it was blatantly obvious and the British have tried to play it down a terrible lot; we wanted to highlight his case as well as all the other cases, so we’re doing a mural on him.
P. One of the ones that we will do is a social sorta thing: the bad housing, no work, all that; not just that, but the reason behind it. The Brits, they’re the reason why it’s all bad round here, no work, poverty, people living way below the poverty line here. And then you just hit them with: ‘The British government is responsible for this’.
C. The thing we wanna get across also about the system – people can see British soldiers walking down the street, but indirectly they’re being oppressed every day of their lives by the system, by the state. They’ve been through unemployment, they can’t get their bru [unemployment money] the day they need it or they’re not getting enough money or they can’t get a job. Things that are indirect with the media, the radios that people listen to. I think that hopefully in a few months we’ll get into portraying the system as it really is, its policy through housing, unemployment. We can really highlight the system rather than the British soldier walking down the street which people can see every day of their lives.
P. Which shows the amount of education people now have, the amount of awareness, because, if you look at some of the older wall murals, some of the new ones, you can see a complete change. The first ones would be a straightforward ‘Up the IRA’ wall mural, the next one would have about four or five good political messages on it and it really shows you how people are becoming aware, how they’re progressing in their education. I think a couple of years ago there’s no way we would be doing one about housing or harassment; all we would have done is ‘Up the IRA’; that would have been it.
Sandhya. Now you’re progressing and getting a lot more ideas.
C. There’s also one in Ardoyne. It has ten coffins in a line and under it it says: ‘For those who understand, no explanation is necessary; for those who do not understand, no explanation is possible’. And above it you had ten coffins. That speaks for itself. How do people not understand what’s going on here? There’s no explanation that you can give if you don’t understand what’s going on.
Sandhya. What part has Sinn Féin played in the murals? There are a couple of Sinn Féin murals, aren’t there? Were they suggested? Were they done by Sinn Féin Youth?
C. Yeah, there’s one down on Beechmount Avenue. That’s done by Sinn Féin Youth and sponsored by An Phoblacht/Republican News. The idea came from Sinn Féin.
P. Yeah, they said you can do a mural for us. We took it and said ‘Yes’. They gave us the money.
Sandhya. It’s obviously a better quality paint. I can see it’s going to stay on the wall. Could you see this becoming a full-time occupation?
P. As a living? I don’t think so. Once you start getting into things like that, it takes all the excitement out of it. It becomes homegrown. This way you get really excited about doing it. It’s active.
C. It’s an integral part in terms of pulling the masses across. There’s various different things that need doing and although it is important, there’s other things that have to be done over all. And if you get going on just doing wall murals you actually forget what’s going on around you, and that’s bad.
Sandhya. You get detached from what you’re doing?
C. I think the people know that we’ve started something that will not stop, that will keep on going, even generations afterwards. There’ll be the next phase of the story; it’ll not stop.
P. And we have girls doing the murals as well.
Sandhya. Have you had any response from outside?
C. The good thing too was that there was a political message, for the people first of all, and secondly anybody from outside Ireland that came in during the hunger strikes and after that. You only have to see from walking down the road the number of tourists taking photographs of the murals and it’s brought the message actually outside of Ireland and into America and all over. The British army that were on foot patrol were actually taking photographs of the murals before they damaged or destroyed them. There was actually a big response and we actually got our message across to people outside of Ireland, which was good. It was a big highlight when any international groups came over and saw the murals.
Sandhya. There haven’t been any publications as of yet. There’s an article in Circa, isn’t there?
C. The Troops Out paper used that one on plastic bullets and most articles that I’ve seen there’s always a drawing or a wall mural along with the article.
Sandhya. They’re actually being used as sort of logos.
P. There was one on the news the other day. Showed you one of the murals in Beechmount just to go along with the article, just as background material.
C. The British media sometimes use them to depict the violence or the troubles going on. There was a play done, a Derry workshop. It was a bit pro-British, but what they done was ‘The Writing on the Wall’. And they used the various slogans and wall murals to depict different scenes within the play. They came out as messages. ‘The Writing on the Wall’ told the story of what was happening here. I think it does tell the story or part of the story that’s happening here because it depicts it and it’s visible to see. And somehow you get a message across in different ways. Some people talk to get the message across, some people write, some people sing; the drawings on the wall is just another way of getting the message across to people. People wouldn’t listen to you when you wanna talk to them, but maybe they just listen with the drawings on the wall. People often do this sort of thing with singing with a political message, but we’re doing paintings and getting our message across, because people couldn’t turn their heads when they are walking down the roads.
Sandhya. Staring them in the face. Have you been doing them constantly, regularly?
C. Yeah, right up until the elections.
P. The elections took time, once we got back to it.
C. There’s about five wall murals that have been asked to be done; people actually come along and say: ‘Will you do a wall mural?’
Sandhya. Just ordinary people? Is anyone volunteering and saying that they want the side of their house painted?
P. Yeah, giving us ideas. We get a lot of ideas, people coming along and saying, ‘God, that’s brilliant, but why don’t you stick something up there? Why don’t you do this?’ Even if we don’t, we might use that on another mural and they’re really giving us good help.
C. People are walking along the street and saying: ‘Look, I think something should be done there to highlight something else’. So they’re actually being involved and giving us advice and help and ideas.
Sandhya. So, it’s self-sustaining. What other ideas have you got coming up?
C. I wanna do one on [Gerry] Fitt [MP] and depicting him as what he is. There was a poster come out during the hunger strike. I remember Fitt being a bit … Queen Victoria and John Hume and different other people, and I just wanna highlight the constitutional politicians, the politicians that use the people and the power to betray the people. And that Fitt’s the biggest one among them and that he’s really blatant and that he’s sitting with people who are murdering and everyone who’s been involved in the struggle against the Irish people here and he’s sitting in the House [of Lords] at the moment and he calls himself a socialist and a republican. It’s fucking…
Hopefully we’ll be doing one about the murder of a young fella in Ardoyne called Danny Barrett. It was very obvious that it was murder. He was sitting at his own door. Although all the other cases were murder, it was blatantly obvious and the British have tried to play it down a terrible lot; we wanted to highlight his case as well as all the other cases, so we’re doing a mural on him.
P. One of the ones that we will do is a social sorta thing: the bad housing, no work, all that; not just that, but the reason behind it. The Brits, they’re the reason why it’s all bad round here, no work, poverty, people living way below the poverty line here. And then you just hit them with: ‘The British government is responsible for this’.
C. The thing we wanna get across also about the system – people can see British soldiers walking down the street, but indirectly they’re being oppressed every day of their lives by the system, by the state. They’ve been through unemployment, they can’t get their bru [unemployment money] the day they need it or they’re not getting enough money or they can’t get a job. Things that are indirect with the media, the radios that people listen to. I think that hopefully in a few months we’ll get into portraying the system as it really is, its policy through housing, unemployment. We can really highlight the system rather than the British soldier walking down the street which people can see every day of their lives.
P. Which shows the amount of education people now have, the amount of awareness, because, if you look at some of the older wall murals, some of the new ones, you can see a complete change. The first ones would be a straightforward ‘Up the IRA’ wall mural, the next one would have about four or five good political messages on it and it really shows you how people are becoming aware, how they’re progressing in their education. I think a couple of years ago there’s no way we would be doing one about housing or harassment; all we would have done is ‘Up the IRA’; that would have been it.
Sandhya. Now you’re progressing and getting a lot more ideas.
C. There’s also one in Ardoyne. It has ten coffins in a line and under it it says: ‘For those who understand, no explanation is necessary; for those who do not understand, no explanation is possible’. And above it you had ten coffins. That speaks for itself. How do people not understand what’s going on here? There’s no explanation that you can give if you don’t understand what’s going on.
Sandhya. What part has Sinn Féin played in the murals? There are a couple of Sinn Féin murals, aren’t there? Were they suggested? Were they done by Sinn Féin Youth?
C. Yeah, there’s one down on Beechmount Avenue. That’s done by Sinn Féin Youth and sponsored by An Phoblacht/Republican News. The idea came from Sinn Féin.
P. Yeah, they said you can do a mural for us. We took it and said ‘Yes’. They gave us the money.
Sandhya. It’s obviously a better quality paint. I can see it’s going to stay on the wall. Could you see this becoming a full-time occupation?
P. As a living? I don’t think so. Once you start getting into things like that, it takes all the excitement out of it. It becomes homegrown. This way you get really excited about doing it. It’s active.
C. It’s an integral part in terms of pulling the masses across. There’s various different things that need doing and although it is important, there’s other things that have to be done over all. And if you get going on just doing wall murals you actually forget what’s going on around you, and that’s bad.
Sandhya. You get detached from what you’re doing?
C. I think the people know that we’ve started something that will not stop, that will keep on going, even generations afterwards. There’ll be the next phase of the story; it’ll not stop.
Interviews with K. and M., Beechmount Youth, and J., Friends of Irish Youth, London November 29, 1983.
K. Duncan [Smith] was in Belfast taking photos. He got in contact with me and suggested me coming over - this was start of ’82 - about doing a mural in the exhibition. GLC funded it. He thought it would be a good idea having a wall mural. He’s been showing slides, photos and things about Northern Ireland.
Sandhya. Painting murals in Belfast is very different from coming to London and painting in a gallery, approaching a different audience.
K. It’s not really. I don’t think it is because you want to get the same point over to people all over the place, no matter where it is, whether it’s in England, Belfast, America. When you paint you want to express what you’re feeling; hopefully others will take it in and understand what the mural means and understand what is happening in Northern Ireland. I don’t think it would really matter where you were doing it.
Sandhya. But the idea of a mural is that it’s on the street and it’s there permanently, people walk past and have to see, whereas in a gallery people have to hear about it and then come and see it. You’re talking to gallery goers.
K. It’s there for them to come and see, on the wall. I don’t really think it matters where it is. We do them in Belfast to try and let people know that don’t know, let them know what’s happening. It’s the same doing them in London, trying to let the people here know.
Sandhya. Some of the murals in Belfast are about actual incidents that have happened, things which they’ve been living through for years and years. To have them on the walls, to see them every day might be considered unnecessary.
K. Some people over there don’t really know what’s happening, with things like brutality. We do all the murals to try to emphasise that prisoners are being beat up by the screws and some people don’t know what’s happening to the fellas inside.
Sandhya. The big slogans on flats (eg. ‘Victory to the Hunger Strikers’) have been going on for years?
K. June ’81 started getting more artistic, getting the main point over. What was going on before with the slogans, only in an artistic way attracting people’s attention to it instead of messing up the estates with those big slogans. You were putting over the same point.
Sandhya. Have there always been some kind of visual presence in the streets? Have the slogans been going on for hundreds of years?
M. Painting ‘Up the IRA’ has been going on for a long time.
Sandhya. Would it have been youth painting the slogans on the flats?
K. Young people between ten and twenty.
J. Have you seen it when they use the billboards. It was an ad for IPA bitter: ‘Great stuff this IPA’. They’d sprayed out the faces and changed it to ‘Great stuff this IRA’.
Sandhya. Are you doing these murals to try to establish an Irish identity and culture that’s been lost and destroyed by the British presence?
K. In a way, I suppose, aye. We started doing the murals in June ‘81 to emphasise the support for the hunger strikers. I wouldn’t say that people have lost their identity; they’re fighting for it. They know what it is but you can’t have it if somebody else is fucking ruling you who you don’t want.
M. There’s always an Irish-speaking school.
K. It’s been set up so that the children will be brought up to speak Irish.
M. Everyone used to talk it, then you weren’t allowed to talk it.
K. It’s starting up again. Most of the youth and other people have started going to Irish classes which have been set up by ex-prisoners who have learnt Irish in jail.
M. The Women’s Centre wanted us to do a poster: ‘Gruelling days in Ireland.’
K. On a moonlit night the sky’s orange; you see nothing but shadows, black shapes.
M. We had three men in it and then a woman came in and started up about why there was no women in it – so I had to change my approach after that.
K. Everything that’s done now includes women. Before, we got our image out of magazines and pictures of people in combat uniform; with a mask on you don’t know whether it’s a bloke or a woman. Could be a woman and I’m sure plenty of them are women but we couldn’t tell and when we drew it they’d look like men. So we’ve started including women in our work. The mural sponsored by the Women’s Centre on the Falls Road [Women’s Department of Sinn Féin], PLO, SWAPO and Cumann na mBan in the middle [women’s IRA volunteers].
Sandhya. Painting murals in Belfast is very different from coming to London and painting in a gallery, approaching a different audience.
K. It’s not really. I don’t think it is because you want to get the same point over to people all over the place, no matter where it is, whether it’s in England, Belfast, America. When you paint you want to express what you’re feeling; hopefully others will take it in and understand what the mural means and understand what is happening in Northern Ireland. I don’t think it would really matter where you were doing it.
Sandhya. But the idea of a mural is that it’s on the street and it’s there permanently, people walk past and have to see, whereas in a gallery people have to hear about it and then come and see it. You’re talking to gallery goers.
K. It’s there for them to come and see, on the wall. I don’t really think it matters where it is. We do them in Belfast to try and let people know that don’t know, let them know what’s happening. It’s the same doing them in London, trying to let the people here know.
Sandhya. Some of the murals in Belfast are about actual incidents that have happened, things which they’ve been living through for years and years. To have them on the walls, to see them every day might be considered unnecessary.
K. Some people over there don’t really know what’s happening, with things like brutality. We do all the murals to try to emphasise that prisoners are being beat up by the screws and some people don’t know what’s happening to the fellas inside.
Sandhya. The big slogans on flats (eg. ‘Victory to the Hunger Strikers’) have been going on for years?
K. June ’81 started getting more artistic, getting the main point over. What was going on before with the slogans, only in an artistic way attracting people’s attention to it instead of messing up the estates with those big slogans. You were putting over the same point.
Sandhya. Have there always been some kind of visual presence in the streets? Have the slogans been going on for hundreds of years?
M. Painting ‘Up the IRA’ has been going on for a long time.
Sandhya. Would it have been youth painting the slogans on the flats?
K. Young people between ten and twenty.
J. Have you seen it when they use the billboards. It was an ad for IPA bitter: ‘Great stuff this IPA’. They’d sprayed out the faces and changed it to ‘Great stuff this IRA’.
Sandhya. Are you doing these murals to try to establish an Irish identity and culture that’s been lost and destroyed by the British presence?
K. In a way, I suppose, aye. We started doing the murals in June ‘81 to emphasise the support for the hunger strikers. I wouldn’t say that people have lost their identity; they’re fighting for it. They know what it is but you can’t have it if somebody else is fucking ruling you who you don’t want.
M. There’s always an Irish-speaking school.
K. It’s been set up so that the children will be brought up to speak Irish.
M. Everyone used to talk it, then you weren’t allowed to talk it.
K. It’s starting up again. Most of the youth and other people have started going to Irish classes which have been set up by ex-prisoners who have learnt Irish in jail.
M. The Women’s Centre wanted us to do a poster: ‘Gruelling days in Ireland.’
K. On a moonlit night the sky’s orange; you see nothing but shadows, black shapes.
M. We had three men in it and then a woman came in and started up about why there was no women in it – so I had to change my approach after that.
K. Everything that’s done now includes women. Before, we got our image out of magazines and pictures of people in combat uniform; with a mask on you don’t know whether it’s a bloke or a woman. Could be a woman and I’m sure plenty of them are women but we couldn’t tell and when we drew it they’d look like men. So we’ve started including women in our work. The mural sponsored by the Women’s Centre on the Falls Road [Women’s Department of Sinn Féin], PLO, SWAPO and Cumann na mBan in the middle [women’s IRA volunteers].
Sandhya. Are they separated into different divisions?
J. Cumann na mBan was a separate thing to complement the IRA. Now it’s merged; the women of Cumann na mBan have gone into the IRA. Cumann na mBan formed after 1916.
K. There’s always been women fighting in all struggles, not just in Northern Ireland. It hasn’t just started recently; it’s been going on for hundreds of years.
J. Women were to first ones to come out against the Treaty. The women have always been the strongest element, really politically more principled.
K. Very active.
Sandhya. Have you been inspired by any music or songs or slogans?
J. ‘The people arose in ’69 and will do it again at any time.’
J. Cumann na mBan was a separate thing to complement the IRA. Now it’s merged; the women of Cumann na mBan have gone into the IRA. Cumann na mBan formed after 1916.
K. There’s always been women fighting in all struggles, not just in Northern Ireland. It hasn’t just started recently; it’s been going on for hundreds of years.
J. Women were to first ones to come out against the Treaty. The women have always been the strongest element, really politically more principled.
K. Very active.
Sandhya. Have you been inspired by any music or songs or slogans?
J. ‘The people arose in ’69 and will do it again at any time.’
K. We didn’t wanna write ‘Out of the ashes arose the Provisionals’. So, with the civil rights marches of late ’68, early ’69, when the people started to fight back, it was the people who arose in ’69 instead of the Provisionals. They didn’t arise; they were always there.
Sandhya. Do some of the slogans come from songs or vice versa?
K. When you buy a badge with a phoenix on it, underneath it it says: ‘Out of the ashes arose the Provos’, which I think is stupid. It shouldn’t be; the Provisionals were always there.
Sandhya. That was the second mural that was done. Have you got any plans for doing a mural depicting a general history?
K. The conveyor belt was done about when Cromwell came. The idea came from a book cover. The five demands that the hunger strikers wanted. Starts with Cromwell’s men coming in. The guns start arising. Then the B-Specials who were legalised, who were supposed to be disbanded. What they did was to give them paramilitary uniforms; they called them the UDR. They’re the remake of the B-Specials. The UDR man pushes the fella out onto the conveyor belt – Castlereagh, Crumlin Road, H-Block. When you get scooped, you’re brought to Castlereagh Barracks, etc. It was supposed to finish with a coffin coming off; it was during the hunger strike.
Sandhya. Have you done any of what you’d like to see Ireland being?
K. The ‘New Ireland, join Sinn Féin’. One that was done to emphasise Sinn Féin during the election, give people the support. People seem to think Sinn Féin was only a political ‘front’ for the IRA. Since the elections they opened ten advice centres in North and West Belfast. They’re set up to help people in each individual area. It says: ‘For a new Ireland vote Sinn Féin’. It shows marching people. We have ‘youth’; you can’t push them aside because they are the next generation. ‘Youth of today is the man of tomorrow.’ You have culture; you’ve your own language; bring it back; make Ireland independent on its own. Better houses; in West Belfast the houses are really terrible. Brits Out; well, that’s a natural thing; everybody wants the Brits out. We want jobs and education for all. I believe that they’re the party that will get it. You’re not gonna fucking get it by voting fucking SDLP.
The mural we’re doing now is also about that. The idea comes from a fella called Bob Corrigan; he’s in H-Block 5 of Long Kesh. He sent me out a few paintings that were smuggled out in a cardboard box. I decided to bring them over and we came to the decision as to which one we should do. The wall is painted in a tricolour, green, white and orange. On it you have three fellas and a woman. In the woman’s hands she’s holding a piece of paper; it says on it: ‘Women’s rights. Equal opportunities for men and women’. Then you have an IRA man; he’s holding a piece of paper and on it is says: ‘Education’. Everyone needs an education to get on in life. Then there’s another fella; he’s holding a pick and on the shaft of the pick it says ‘employment’, which emphasises you need jobs to get money to live, for food, to pay your rent, pay your bills. So, this was his idea that came out and we decided to do it because it states the four basic needs of the struggle.
Sandhya. Have you ever approached the Arts Council of Northern Ireland for anything?
K. No. We wouldn’t get anything off them because no government or offshoot of the government is gonna finance you or finance the youth for doing the paintings that are politically against what they want. They’re there to see that Ireland runs smoothly with the British law; they’re not gonna finance somebody to fight against them. The youth raise the money for buying paint themselves; they run discos, sponsored walks. Some are sponsored like the one for An Phoblacht/Republican News. The women’s one, that was sponsored by the Women’s Department of Sinn Féin.
So far we only done one that brought good publicity: the PLO one up RPG Avenue – a lot of backlash from the press about that one. ‘The IRA and the PLO were joining together, joining forces’, they were saying. The real name is Beechmount Avenue. But we changed it to RPG because there’s a lot of rocket launching in Beechmount. Rocket propelled grenade: it’s a Russian-made rocket launcher.
M. Then the press turn round and say that they can’t get anyone to come and change the name back. They were talking to council workers and one of them said they’re not gonna come in and change the name.
K. In some parts of West Belfast and other parts of Northern Ireland they’re putting up name plates in Irish, the names of streets, above the English one.
M. There’s some streets [named] after the hunger strikers.
Sandhya. Have there been any monuments in Belfast?
K. I think there’s one or two down in the South of Ireland, Cork, Kerry, not of the hunger strikers. They’re going back to the 1916 uprising.
M. They put up the small monument for Kidso O’Reilly [who was shot by the British army].
K. They’ve done a mural on the ground where he was shot, some bricks round it. There was a few name plates put up just round the corner from where Bobby came from, names of the Volunteers that died on hunger strike. They fucking ruined them, put big fucking scrapes in the marble. They also wrecked the burial ground where the Volunteers were buried in the cemetery [Milltown]. Bobby, Joe [McDonnell} and Kieran [Doherty] were buried there.
M. There is a monument to all the Volunteers who died.
K. On the plaque itself where they were buried, an iron railing runs around it and steps leading up to it. They pulled the railing off, which cost a lot of money to put up. It was six marble squares with individual blocks with about six names on each block. They came and threw paint and scraped the marble. You can’t prove it was the British; everybody knows. Michael McCartan was shot in the back whilst doing a slogan – ‘Smash H-Block’. PC McKeown, the cop that shot him dead, says the paint brush in his hand was a gun. Could you imagine? Painting with a gun! Jesus! We did a mural of it. We done two figures; one was an SS officer and the other was an RUC officer and above it we wrote: ‘Auschwitz Concentration Camp’. The SS officer was just a skeleton; his hands were skin and bone and the same with the cop. ‘Long Kesh concentration camp – 1945-1981.’ In the middle was a small poem: ‘Forty years, it’s just the same. They murder the people and have no shame’. We were trying to emphasise that the Germans were killing people and nothing was done about it then, just as what was happening in 1981. The Brits and the cops were killing people; nothing was being done about it. The boy, he just almost got it finished and the paint just runs down and there’s a drawing of a boy just lying there, holding a paint brush and a can of paint spilt over. Above the cop we wrote: ‘PC McKeown, SS/RUC’.
M. When you’re doing the paintings, any foot patrol that passed would take your names, get checked ten to fifteen times.
K. They hold you back from doing it. A few times we experienced them driving on to the footpaths in their armoured vehicles and trying to knock you off the ladder.
Sandhya. What murals have you got planned for the future?
K. We’d like to do one in solidarity with SWAPO. I got a poster from Foreign Affairs in Dublin [Sinn Féin]. It shows SWAPO coming down; they’ve got guns, rifles, spears, bows, arrows, crossbows. There’s a map of Africa and the inset shown ‘The Nation’, Namibia and what they’re fighting for, and it says ‘One Namibia, one nation’. What I was thinking of doing was taking a section of the people and painting them on the wall; doing South Africa and do Ireland and black out Northern Ireland and write ‘One Ireland, one nation’ to show solidarity with them in the same way as the PLO one was done.
Sandhya. Do some of the slogans come from songs or vice versa?
K. When you buy a badge with a phoenix on it, underneath it it says: ‘Out of the ashes arose the Provos’, which I think is stupid. It shouldn’t be; the Provisionals were always there.
Sandhya. That was the second mural that was done. Have you got any plans for doing a mural depicting a general history?
K. The conveyor belt was done about when Cromwell came. The idea came from a book cover. The five demands that the hunger strikers wanted. Starts with Cromwell’s men coming in. The guns start arising. Then the B-Specials who were legalised, who were supposed to be disbanded. What they did was to give them paramilitary uniforms; they called them the UDR. They’re the remake of the B-Specials. The UDR man pushes the fella out onto the conveyor belt – Castlereagh, Crumlin Road, H-Block. When you get scooped, you’re brought to Castlereagh Barracks, etc. It was supposed to finish with a coffin coming off; it was during the hunger strike.
Sandhya. Have you done any of what you’d like to see Ireland being?
K. The ‘New Ireland, join Sinn Féin’. One that was done to emphasise Sinn Féin during the election, give people the support. People seem to think Sinn Féin was only a political ‘front’ for the IRA. Since the elections they opened ten advice centres in North and West Belfast. They’re set up to help people in each individual area. It says: ‘For a new Ireland vote Sinn Féin’. It shows marching people. We have ‘youth’; you can’t push them aside because they are the next generation. ‘Youth of today is the man of tomorrow.’ You have culture; you’ve your own language; bring it back; make Ireland independent on its own. Better houses; in West Belfast the houses are really terrible. Brits Out; well, that’s a natural thing; everybody wants the Brits out. We want jobs and education for all. I believe that they’re the party that will get it. You’re not gonna fucking get it by voting fucking SDLP.
The mural we’re doing now is also about that. The idea comes from a fella called Bob Corrigan; he’s in H-Block 5 of Long Kesh. He sent me out a few paintings that were smuggled out in a cardboard box. I decided to bring them over and we came to the decision as to which one we should do. The wall is painted in a tricolour, green, white and orange. On it you have three fellas and a woman. In the woman’s hands she’s holding a piece of paper; it says on it: ‘Women’s rights. Equal opportunities for men and women’. Then you have an IRA man; he’s holding a piece of paper and on it is says: ‘Education’. Everyone needs an education to get on in life. Then there’s another fella; he’s holding a pick and on the shaft of the pick it says ‘employment’, which emphasises you need jobs to get money to live, for food, to pay your rent, pay your bills. So, this was his idea that came out and we decided to do it because it states the four basic needs of the struggle.
Sandhya. Have you ever approached the Arts Council of Northern Ireland for anything?
K. No. We wouldn’t get anything off them because no government or offshoot of the government is gonna finance you or finance the youth for doing the paintings that are politically against what they want. They’re there to see that Ireland runs smoothly with the British law; they’re not gonna finance somebody to fight against them. The youth raise the money for buying paint themselves; they run discos, sponsored walks. Some are sponsored like the one for An Phoblacht/Republican News. The women’s one, that was sponsored by the Women’s Department of Sinn Féin.
So far we only done one that brought good publicity: the PLO one up RPG Avenue – a lot of backlash from the press about that one. ‘The IRA and the PLO were joining together, joining forces’, they were saying. The real name is Beechmount Avenue. But we changed it to RPG because there’s a lot of rocket launching in Beechmount. Rocket propelled grenade: it’s a Russian-made rocket launcher.
M. Then the press turn round and say that they can’t get anyone to come and change the name back. They were talking to council workers and one of them said they’re not gonna come in and change the name.
K. In some parts of West Belfast and other parts of Northern Ireland they’re putting up name plates in Irish, the names of streets, above the English one.
M. There’s some streets [named] after the hunger strikers.
Sandhya. Have there been any monuments in Belfast?
K. I think there’s one or two down in the South of Ireland, Cork, Kerry, not of the hunger strikers. They’re going back to the 1916 uprising.
M. They put up the small monument for Kidso O’Reilly [who was shot by the British army].
K. They’ve done a mural on the ground where he was shot, some bricks round it. There was a few name plates put up just round the corner from where Bobby came from, names of the Volunteers that died on hunger strike. They fucking ruined them, put big fucking scrapes in the marble. They also wrecked the burial ground where the Volunteers were buried in the cemetery [Milltown]. Bobby, Joe [McDonnell} and Kieran [Doherty] were buried there.
M. There is a monument to all the Volunteers who died.
K. On the plaque itself where they were buried, an iron railing runs around it and steps leading up to it. They pulled the railing off, which cost a lot of money to put up. It was six marble squares with individual blocks with about six names on each block. They came and threw paint and scraped the marble. You can’t prove it was the British; everybody knows. Michael McCartan was shot in the back whilst doing a slogan – ‘Smash H-Block’. PC McKeown, the cop that shot him dead, says the paint brush in his hand was a gun. Could you imagine? Painting with a gun! Jesus! We did a mural of it. We done two figures; one was an SS officer and the other was an RUC officer and above it we wrote: ‘Auschwitz Concentration Camp’. The SS officer was just a skeleton; his hands were skin and bone and the same with the cop. ‘Long Kesh concentration camp – 1945-1981.’ In the middle was a small poem: ‘Forty years, it’s just the same. They murder the people and have no shame’. We were trying to emphasise that the Germans were killing people and nothing was done about it then, just as what was happening in 1981. The Brits and the cops were killing people; nothing was being done about it. The boy, he just almost got it finished and the paint just runs down and there’s a drawing of a boy just lying there, holding a paint brush and a can of paint spilt over. Above the cop we wrote: ‘PC McKeown, SS/RUC’.
M. When you’re doing the paintings, any foot patrol that passed would take your names, get checked ten to fifteen times.
K. They hold you back from doing it. A few times we experienced them driving on to the footpaths in their armoured vehicles and trying to knock you off the ladder.
Sandhya. What murals have you got planned for the future?
K. We’d like to do one in solidarity with SWAPO. I got a poster from Foreign Affairs in Dublin [Sinn Féin]. It shows SWAPO coming down; they’ve got guns, rifles, spears, bows, arrows, crossbows. There’s a map of Africa and the inset shown ‘The Nation’, Namibia and what they’re fighting for, and it says ‘One Namibia, one nation’. What I was thinking of doing was taking a section of the people and painting them on the wall; doing South Africa and do Ireland and black out Northern Ireland and write ‘One Ireland, one nation’ to show solidarity with them in the same way as the PLO one was done.
