click here for Murals from 1981
click here for Contemporary Commemorative Murals

The rise of the mural culture that has become integral to Irish republican neighborhoods in the North, especially in Belfast and Derry, coincided with the escalation of internment in the late 1970s. Prior to the loss of Special Category Status, the internment camps themselves were places where a unique form of Irish Republican culture, art and language were spread and amplified among the highly organized and insular prisoners. After the Long Kesh prison protests began, this culture shifted its focus to smuggling correspondence and reports of the increasingly brutal conditions the inmates experienced, especially in the case of the solitary, stark, and seemingly inescapable H-block.

The earliest form of this emerging mural culture in the republican neighborhoods of the North was public “slogan writing,” especially of the phrase “Smash H Block.” This culture quickly expanded to incorporate images of Bobby Sands, his fellow strikers, Long Kesh, and other similarly evocative images. This shift to the incorporation of a more artistic form of expressing protest and solidarity reflects not just the growing prominence of the struggle of Irish POWs, but also the expansion of a larger international sympathy for the cause of Irish republicanism. Whereas unionist murals were popular starting at the turn of the twentieth century, reflecting Protestants’ position of power within the North, it was not until the hunger strike, a clear turning point for the IRA and Sinn Fein after 20 years of armed struggle, that republicans felt comfortable expressing their politics and history in the public spaces of their neighborhoods.