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DERRY'S WALLS:
The Work of the Bogside Artists

by William Kelly

When Sir Henry Docwra took over the settlement of Derry in 1600, he began a series of plantations in Ulster that effectively ended the autonomy of the Irish Celts. Henceforth, Ireland would be divided, not only geographically with settlers concentrated mainly in the North, but religiously between Protestants and Catholics.

This city has known four names. Its original name was Daire Calgaigh, meaning "oak grove of Calgach". In the tenth century it was renamed Doire Colmcille, or "the oak grove of St. Colmcille", in remembrance of St. Colmcille who had established a monastic settlement on the site 400 years earlier. In 1609 when the English government decided to plant Derry with loyal subjects, Derry entered into an agreement with the city of London to provide the necessary planters. At that time, the name was changed to Londonderry. In 1984 the city council decided to change this to Derry. Nomenclature can be a political minefield the North of Ireland, an issue that is admirably addressed by Brian Friel in his play "Translations".

Derry has had a troubled history: it was here in 1688 that the thirteen apprentice boys slammed the gates of Derry shut before the Catholic forces of James II. Some months later the great Siege of Derry began. The siege led to the death of a quarter of the city's 30,000 inhabitants.

In the wake of the siege the city, thanks mainly to its magnificent port, began to grow a strong industrial base, leading to the development of a vibrant linen industry. Derry was particularly renowned for its shirt making, an industry that still features in the town today. The port also made Derry a principle centre of emigration for the North West. In the sixteenth century many Presbyterian settlers left Derry for a new, peaceful life abroad. As the famine of the mid-nineteenth century decimated the west coast of Ireland, so people flocked to Derry to board the famine ships to the USA and to Canada. Many never survived the journey on these "floating coffins". Derry was their last sight of Ireland as they sailed away.

The struggle for Irish independence has continued, on and off, for over eleven hundred years from one rebellion to the next, nationalists ever ready to take advantage of whatever difficulties the invading English might find themselves in.

In the Great Famine of 1845 to 1850, over a million people starved to death, a half million were evicted from their homes by landlords, and a million and a half emigrated to America, Britain, and Australia. The tragedy not only profoundly affected the politics and development of these countries but served also to strengthen the nationalist aspiration of Ireland to be free to govern itself. Many expatriots driven from their homeland to America were only too willing to support "the cause".

The Home Rule Bill of 1921 left the North its own colonial statelet to govern as it saw fit. Ulster became a "Protestant state for a Protestant people" that kept itself in power by the suppression of the Catholic minority. Unionism and loyalty to the crown of England became the bulwark of the new state while Catholic nationalists considered themselves a dispossessed and alienated people. Ireland was demographically and politically divided and has remained so to this day.

In 1968 the Catholics, inspired by the black movement in America, took to the streets in their demands for democratic rights. There followed over thirty years of bloody strife with some 3,600 people killed, most of them civilians, and over 30,000 injured. In a place with a population of well under two million, most people were personally and directly touched by what they call "The Troubles".

In a statement on 19 July 1997, the IRA announced another "complete cessation of military operations". This came fifteen months after the ending of their previous ceasefire on 9 February 1996. Though levels of violence have fallen steeply in recent months, sporadic assassinations and so-called "punishment beatings" meted out by paramilitaries still occur throughout the province. It will take a long time and great resolve politically and culturally to eradicate the many historical barriers that militate against mutual tolerance and the acceptance of differences.

Derry, the "maiden city", has a population of roughly 107,000 people, the vast majority of them Catholic. Its worst experience of "The Troubles" came on 30 January 1972 when soldiers from the British Army's 1st Parachute Regiment opened fire on unarmed and peaceful civilian demonstrators in the Bogside, killing fourteen people. The march, which was called to protest against imprisonment without trial, was "illegal" according to British government authorities. Later, the infamous Widgery Tribunal set up by the British government found the soldiers were not guilty. Lord Widgery, himself a man of military experience, did little to hide his chauvinistic bias.

In any event, this tragedy, known as "Bloody Sunday", came as a climax to three years of continuous street protests that saw many people injured or imprisoned.

It was in Derry on 13 August 1969 that the drive for civil rights lost its control in the aftermath of a confrontation between the civil police force and Catholic protesters during the traditional Apprentice Boys march through the city. Rioters were driven back into the Bogside and there followed a pitched battle that lasted two days. On the afternoon of Thursday, 14 August, the new prime minister of Northern Ireland, James Chichester- Clarke, called the British prime minister, Harold Wilson, and asked for troops to be sent to Derry. "The Battle of The Bogside" had ended with the commencement of direct rule from Westminster. This served to ignite the flames of armed struggle on both sides. Tit-for-tat killings became commonplace culminating in the Omagh bombing of 15 August 1998 when twenty-nine people died and more than two hundred twenty were injured from a massive car bomb explosion in Omagh's crowded town centre. It was one atrocity among many, and for politicians from both sides of the divide it was a crossing of the Rubicon in their quest for peace.

The huge murals of the Bogside Artists stand as dark sentinels to this history of pain and conflict. There are presently eight murals in all, situated along Rossville Street in the heart of the Bogside, the Catholic warren of the city; and the three artists have plans for a further four, the last of which will be a peace mural, a covenant of sorts with the future. Not only have they depicted Bloody Sunday and its victims but the famous "Battle of the Bogside" and "Operation Motorman" that occurred in the Bogside on 31 July 1972 resulting in two civilian deaths. These fatalities, like the fatalities of Bloody Sunday, still pose questions that demand answers from the British government. In Derry's Guildhall an ongoing inquiry into the event of Bloody Sunday, set up by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, is underway.

Tom Kelly, his brother William, and their mutual friend Kevin Hasson have been working on their murals project since late 1993 when the group formed. Older and wiser now, they see their work as commemorative. Theirs is a public art after all, dealing with subject matter that goes far beyond mere aesthetics or the values of the dilettante. Their work is distanced greatly from its Belfast, for there is nothing hostile or sectarian about it. It is designed to educate, commemorate, and edify. As Tom explains in the words of Bishop Desmond Tutu, "a wound must be cleaned out and examined before it will heal". It is the unexamined wound that festers and finally poisons. Our work shows the wounds." This determination to tell their own story is what drives the Bogside Artists.

"It is not graffiti", as Tom points out. "This is not anger- fuelled immature destruction of private or public property: This is real art done by the people and for the people. That's what makes it authentic. That's what gives it meaning in a world where meaning has all but been destroyed by ambition and the greed for money. It honours our past. Our work commemorates the real price paid by a naive and innocent people for simple democratic rights. If this is not to be commemorated, what is?"

The artists expect to finish their final mural for the Bogside by the summer of 2004.

© 2004 William Kelly