While walking in West Belfast in the North of Ireland last year, I photographed many political murals including the one at left.
"History Is Written by the Winner" is the message. Not that you would have to beat the people there on Oakman Street over the head with that sentiment.
I think of Belfast often and enjoyed discovering history around each corner. I lived on Clonard Rise off the Falls Road for the month of June 2006. Just down the street from the massive mural of hunger-striker Bobby Sands on the side of the Sinn Fein headquarters. Wandering through West Belfast was a history lesson by mural. But I also had the opportunity to interview a middle-aged West Belfast mom who in her youth spent time in an English prison because of her role in a bombing. I met a man who had been imprisoned for seven years for possession of a rifle and his 20-year-old son who showed me the bullet scars in his back.
I think of all of that again because it was announced over the past week that there was further agreement between Sinn Fein and the DUP in how policing powers will be transferred from British to local hands. The latest in the peace process.
People equate peace with economic prosperity. And in a recession, who doesn't want that? But I remember that West Belfast woman sitting on a basement couch in Ballymurphy telling me that the hunger strikers wouldn't have missed "one breakfast" for the Good Friday Agreement. They had wanted reunification of the northern six counties with the Irish Republic. And I haven't heard much about that in the news these days.
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