The murals tend to depict local and international human rights struggles such as Israeli occupation in Palestine and an interpretation of Picasso's famous Guernica painting representing the bombing of a Basque town during the Spanish Civil War (April 26, 1937).
The wall commemorates political activists such as Cuban socialist Che Guevara, American leader of the Abolitionist movement Frederick Douglass and Kieran Nugent, the first Republican prisoner to take part in the ‘blanket protest’.
The Falls Curfew mural recalls Friday 3rd – Sunday 7th July 1970, when the British army raided a civilian house in the area, seeking paramilitary weapons. Numerous street battles between nationalists, the RUC and the Army ensued.The Army imposed a curfew, covering around 50 streets in the area for 34 hours. Anyone caught outside was arrested.
The army’s house searches caused widespread destruction to civilian property. During the curfew 4 civilians were killed and 75 were wounded. The mural depicts the breaking of the curfew, when Máire Drumm and 3,000 nationalist women marched through the Lower Falls bringing food to the residents.
Máire Drumm was later elected Vice-President of Sinn Féin. On 28th October 1976, Drumm was assassinated whilst recovering in the Mater Hospital, Belfast by a squad of loyalist paramilitaries comprising both the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and the Ulster Defence Association (UDA). Disguised as doctors they shot her in her hospital bed. She was 56 years old.
The Blanket Men
The blanket protest was part of a five-year protest during the conflict by the IRA and the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) prisoners held in the Maze/Long Kesh prison. The prisoner’s status as political prisoners, known as Special Category Status had begun to be phased out in 1976. Among other things, this meant they would be required to wear prison uniforms. The prisoners refused to accept that they had been administratively designated as criminals, and refused to wear the uniform.
