PEOPLE OF DERRY….WHAT YOU HAVE TO WAKEN UP TO!

What you have to waken up to is that THE STORY of our struggle for human rights as depicted on the walls we painted is being STIFLED out of existence. Day in, day out, this is what is going on, never mentioned in the radio or press except in a derogatory fashion. Never mentioned in relation to culture or art in this so-called “city of culture”. Never mentioned unless it be with the aim of planting in your mind a negative view of them that you never had and never wanted. You are being brainwashed. Simple as that… and lied to blatantly for the purpose. No response permitted from us who are stonewalled by the media run by these people.

One last time THE BOGSIDE ARTISTS DID NOT RECEIVE £45K FOR FIXING UP THE MURALS. WE RECEIVED NOT A SINGLE PENNY. THE MONEY WAS TAKEN OFF US BY DUP/SINN FEIN. Got it? We are sick to death of people stopping us in the street to congratulate us on our windfall. YOU HAVE BEEN LIED TO! And not for the first time. Indeed they are trying to brainwash the entire world.

Never mentioned in relation to Derry in all the bumph and articles distributed by the PR boys behind the £47 MILLIONS+++ publicity campaign called “the walled city”, never mentioned in the tourist publications or adverts or videos. “The People’s Gallery” never ever mentioned BY NAME anywhere! When was the last time you heard or read the words? Never mentioned on television or radio. But you will hear plenty about the so-called Turner Prize until you are mouthing the words in your sleep. And if you are so naive as to think that this is doing anybody a favour you are as deluded as they need you to be. What the game is about is ownership of the Bogside. They want it, we are in their way. “Moving away from the past” an impossibility on any level is but a pretext for wholesale looting and exploitation of that past and the things that matter to us.

For over a decade never featured or mentioned on the Arts Council website or those of DCAL, ILEX . NITB,”Discover northern Ireland” or any other mainstream arts, culture or tourist websites. Not mentioned in the UK anywhere as the full weight of the UK/Northern Ireland political and media machinery and the Apparatchiks put in place to run them are behind the brutal campaign.

Thousands of tourists, right in front of your eyes, marched past them in their droves day by day, week by week, year by year as if they were not there. You have seen this, marched right past them as if they were forbidden to look just as they used to march them past our studio in the Bogside… when we were allowed to have a studio. A deliberate, long-running and concerted attempt by evil people to deceive the entire world. Now they move in for the kill…  or so they think.

YOUR story stifled. YOUR story belittled and degraded and us with it. The gallant struggle of your forefathers for democratic rights, a living example for all the world, to be swept under the carpet as if it never happened. Fine art too if we may say so ourselves. INTOLERABLE! is too good a word.

All of these outfits working in harmony to the beat of a DUP/Sinn Fein alliance scripted by Westminster, with the SDLP alas, too passive or ideologically compromised to oppose it, to eradicate any real vestige of what happened here over the last three decades. Good for business… for some… but a crime of vast proportions against all of us and one for which the whole world will most certainly condemn us all if it is ever allowed to reach its orchestrated conclusion.

What is happening to the only real and important example of culture in the city is criminal, Philistine, unjustifiable at any level but pursued diligently by a great many people, virtually all of them doing the bidding of Westminster and getting fat jobs and fatter salaries for doing so. You can call it betrayal if you like because no other word can describe it. Do you see the British government dumbing down Nelson’s column with a view to eradicating, making sure it is never mentioned anywhere, removed from all books and websites etc, etc, etc? What would the average Englishman think of them if they even thought of it? But that is precisely what is going on with THE PEOPLE’S GALLERY.

We are doing our best to keep the murals alive and get their message out into the world. And what a message it is! A message people need to hear more than ever.

It is about YOU and us, our collective experience, our long years of suffering and conflict, our holding onto dignity and faith in ourselves despite overwhelming odds. A message too about the value and real purpose of ART. A message, above all, to ALL people living under oppressive regimes everywhere from North Korea to China and even America of the spiritual power of FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION, the very message we gave to the Chinese and could well have been arrrested for! A fact that was kept from you of course by your media in case it might have made us look good. All this stifled! All this targeted! By whom?

The police state we are afflicted with is doing its damndest to annihilate all of it. No mention of the murals and no mention of us is they road they travel. All are agreed… and YOU are not consulted. The murals, YOUR STORY and that of your fathers and mothers has nothing to do with your, they are telling you without spelling it out. Your past is not your own. An intolerable case of overt discrimination if ever there was that we can do nothing about. You would be hard pushed indeed to find a worse example of fascist behaviour, short of murder, in any civilzed society in the world. Can we take the government to court?

No. They know that. And even if we were to take any of them to court for defamation or slander or discrimination, a crooked Masonic judge would readily be found to put paid to us for good, and there are plenty of those around the UK… whatever evidence we presented. What then do we do? This is no paranoid fantasy by the way but a most real expectation given our long experience of the judiciary in action concerning Bloody Sunday for which crimes nobody ended up on trial.

WHAT WE CAN DO IS RESTORE THE MURALS TO THEIR FORMER GLORY. THAT IS ALL WE CAN DO. BUT IT WILL BE ENOUGH!

They know that too well of course which is WHY they stopped our grant for refurbishing our murals and took nine months to do so!

Don’t say you all support us and then can’t be bothered throwing a fiver in our direction when it is so easy to do. Is not the rescue of your story from targeted oblivion worth the price of a pint to you? You know now what is really going. We have shown you on this blog countless times. You can see it for yourselves. YOU KNOW!  What is going on would make Josef Stalin blush with embarrassment. People who contact us about it are appalled to the point of revulsion at the outrageous arrogance and injustice of it all, as are we. How could you not?

RESTORING THE MURALS is the only viable solution to this abominable behaviour.  Let all of us together do something good for once. It is YOUR STORY, whoever you are, that is being stifled out of existence. Who gave them the right? Did you?

                                                           Let’s do the world a favour! If you are an artist or someone with a social conscience this must surely concern you.