I have already spoken of Kieran Nugent and the reason why he is called the first Blanketman.
I loved his courage.
Here there is another mural which represents Kieran.
Rockville street, Belfast 2015
I have also found in internet this interesting interview - from BBC - of Kieran explaining the reasons for his choice of wearing only a blanket and why he declared himself a political prisoner..."The
British government have declared war in this country and there is a war
going on in this country. We believe we are in there [prison] for
political reasons".
The video is from 27th of October 1980.
PS: You may need to listen to the video more than once as Kieran's accent is not so easy! ;)
Kieran Nugent died on 4 May 2000 from a heart attack.
This was one of the farthest mural I went to...I guess I walked more than 10 km for arriving there...the map that I had was great to give indications where you could find murals, but very poor in terms of real representation of distances and names of the minor roads...so I found myself searching for the murals in this area with no real map, no too many people around to whom I could ask and...well no real news, under the rain...
Today, when I was doing research on internet regarding this mural (also very poor information on-line...:( ).....I found out that I was actually wander around in the Ballymurphy area, famous for the massacre of the 9th of August 1971. When I said that now West Belfast is a much calmer area where it is possible to go...that it is....I am now shocked by thinking that in those quiet roads a civil war was happening 40 years ago....
Lenadoon Avenue, Ballymurphy, Belfast 2015
In this mural we find a mythological theme: the central figure of the mural is dying warrior Cú Chulainn. The four circles represents the shields of four province of Ireland.
The mural commemorates the IRA members from local area who have been killed, whose portraits and names are reported. left: Tony
Henderson: the first member of the I.R.A. 1st Battalion to die on active
service in 1971 aged 21. John
Finucane, Tony Jordan: killed in a car crash in the Falls Road, Belfast, in
1972 while in active service for IRA. Brendan
O'Callaghan: shot dead by the British Army while in a car park in the
Stewardstown area of Belfast, 1977. Joseph
(Joe) McDonnell: died in the 1981 hunger strike. right: Laura
Crawford: died when a bomb thatshe was
carrying exploded prematurely, 1975 Mairead
Farrell: shot dead in Gibraltar by the English Special Air Service (SAS),
in1988. Patricia
Black: died when an improvised explosive device she was carrying detonated
prematurely near London, 1991. Bridie Quinn: died in 1988. The mural was first painted in 1996.
This mural was painted on 2014 for celebrating the 100 year anniversary (“céad bliain”) of the Cumann na mBan (League of Women), constituted on the 2nd of April 1914.
The role of the group was very important during the Easter Rising of 1916 when the members were involved in the occupation of several places.
The main figure in the mural is Countess Markievicz, an Irish politician, member of the IRA. During the Rising in Dublin, she occupied Stephen's Green for the six days of the Rebellion.
In December 1918, she was the first woman elected to the British House of Commons, and from 1919 and 1922 she was also one of the first women in the world to hold a cabinet position (Minister of the Labour for the Irish Republic).
See some old photos of the women of Cumann na mBan here. More info on the mural (of this and of others in Belfast) can be found in the blog of Extramural Activity.
In the mural “Cnamb” stands for Cumann na mBan and “Ní saoirse go saoirse na mban” in Irish means No freedom until women's freedom.
Massacres leave deep scars in the victims' families but also in the entire society.
Each country unfortunately has its own.
As Italian, I am thinking to the Ustica Massacre on the 27th of June 1980, to the Bologna Massacre of the 2nd of August 1980 ...
And also Northern Ireland has its own....
The Ballymurphy Massacre began on the morning of Monday 9 August 1971. On that day the British Government introduced the so-called Interment Without Trial, within the Operation Demetrius: the plan was to arrest and imprison without charge or trial anyone suspected to belong to the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA).
In a period on three days, 600 British soldiers entered the Ballymurphy area of West Belfast and hundreds of people were taken, most of them innocent, unarmed civilians. 11 of them were killed during these three days by the British Army’s Parachute Regiment. Amongst them, there was a 45 year old mother of eight children.
According to the families of the victims no investigations were carried out and no member of the British Army was held to account.
The same regiment went months later in Derry (30 January 1972) and it is considered responsible of similar events, known as Bloody Sunday killings.
Divis Street, Belfast 2015
The Ballymurphy Massacre
Royal Television Society Award Winning Documentary 2013 FFresh Best Documentary 2013 NAHEMI Best in Festival 2013
Danny McAreavey, IRA member, shot dead by British soldiers on 6 October 1972 Joe McKinney, IRA member, died on 10 October 1972 when a bomb that he was assembling exploded prematurely Jimmy Quigley, IRA member, shot dead by British soldiers on 29 September 1972 John Donaghy, died on 10 October 1972 when a bomb that he was assembling exploded prematurely Patrick Maguire (real name Patrick Pendleton), died on 10 October 1972 when a bomb that he was assembling exploded prematurely.
The Mother by Padraic Pearse
I do not grudge them: Lord, I do not grudge My two strong sons that I have seen go out To break their strength and die, they and a few, In bloody protest for a glorious thing, They shall be spoken of among their people, The generations shall remember them, And call them blessed; But I will speak their names to my own heart In the long nights; The little names that were familiar once Round my dead hearth. Lord, thou art hard on mothers: We suffer in their coming and their going; And tho' I grudge them not, I weary, weary Of the long sorrow---And yet I have my joy: My sons were faithful, and they fought.
Someone told me that the plan of a trip at the beginning, and all what follows a trip (photos, stories, presents to friends and family..etc..in my case also this blog) become part of the trip itself and enhance its beauty...
What I am loving of this "extended-trip" is also the new things that I am learning...
In this case about the late history of Northern Ireland and of The Troubles, 30 years of conflicts (starting in the late 1960s) between the Irish republicans who wanted to join the Republic of Ireland and were mostly of catholic religion, and the Unionist/loyalist, mostly protestants, who considered themselves British and wanted to remain part of the United Kingdom. Another reason of the conflicts was also the discrimination in area such as housing, employment, policing, and electoral procedures, performed by the Unionist majority against the republican minority.
Several Republicans were imprisoned because of Troubles-related offences, and in 1972 after an hunger strike by some of them in Belfast Prison, the "Special Category Status" was introduced. This status granted some privileges to republican prisoners, such as the possibility of extra food and visits, and the exemption from wearing prison uniforms or doing prison work.
However, in January 1975, within a process also known as 'criminalisationpolicy', the British Government revised the SCS and decided to consider all the political prisoners arrested after the 1st of January 1976 as 'criminals', which meant to wear a prison uniform, do prison work and serve their sentence in the new Maze Prison, after know as H-Blocks.
The first prisoner sentenced after the 1st January 1976 was Kieran Nugent, that refused to wear the prison uniform declaring himself as political prisoner and not criminal. He then covered himself with the blanket of his prison bed. This passive protest was then taken as example by other prisoners and by 1978 nearly 300 Irish republicans were refusing to wear uniform.
The blanket protest ended in 1981 after ten republican prisoners starved to death during an hunger strike. After this, the "political privileges" were gradually inserted again.
But who was Kieran Nugent?
In 1976 Kieran was an 18 year old volunteer of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) who was sentenced three years imprisonment for possessing weapons and hijacking a vehicle....
Divis Street, Belfast, 2015
"I was brought straight to the blocks. Cell 17, D wing H1 or 2. I was stripped and beaten. The screws who knew me said, 'We are the bosses now. There are no OCs here'. A screw said to me, 'What size are you in the waist and what size are you for shoes?' I asked him 'What for?' and he told me 'For a uniform'. I said, 'You have got to be joking'. I was the only one in the H-Blocks. They dragged me into the cell. Davy Long [one of the warders] wanted me to compromise. He suggested I wore my own shoes and trousers if I wore a prison shirt. I just laughed. He locked the door. I lay on the floor all night without mattress, blankets or anything else. The heat was reasonable in all fairness and I slept"
(The Provisional IRA, pp. 349–350)
Nugent was given a blanket on the second day of his imprisonment.
back to work, back to normal life, back to ..no time! ;(
So, I have already said here that the Murals are the touristic attraction of West Belfast.
They illustrate the Irish political passions, starting from the beginning of the XX century, whether driven by republican ideals or by the will to continue to be part of the United Kingdom.
The easiest way to see them is to take one of the famous black taxi tour: a guy will drive you around - I guess - to the most famous murals and tell you probably the stories of each of those....
but....we do not like the easy way...do we? ;)....and anyway, for one person I think that the price would have been quite high..and, actually the biggest problem, I would not have had all the time needed for the photos..
So let's start a Murals hunt! :)
If you want to play as I did...be ready to do a lot of kilometres, but most important get the treasure map and the description of the treasure!! :)
To find the map you have to be already lucky, as at the central Tourist Information they did not neither know the existence...but Lonely Planet could not get wrong, so I found it at the Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich, Ireland's best known Irish language and culture centre....the map reports only the republican murals, but it is enough to begin the game! ;).... PS: thanks to Gerard, at the culture centre, just an optimal example of the kindness of the Irish people! :)
You can find the guide at the Irish Republican History Museum...museums are not really my passion, and I was too much in a hurry for enjoying it properly, but if you are looking for republican past memories you are at the right place! :)
Ok,...I will continue to tell you more in the next posts...
Now just enjoy the my beginning! :)
Falls Road, Belfast 2015
Falls Road, Belfast 2015 PS: I like to think at this photo as the "Missing Mural"
