citizen

Looking for a link for my last post, I note that just now John Latta has a picture of Bobby Sands on his blog, pictured during the Maze "dirty protest". (Though the BBC, featuring the same photograph, identifies the prisoners as Freddie Toal and Hugh Rooney.)

This is something of a coincidence in that recently, as well as turning to Stanley Spencer, I've been thinking about Richard Hamilton's famous picture "The Citizen", a diptych inspired by the Maze protests. Half abstract composition in shit, half altarpiece.


I also remember taking the bus home from school late one night in 1984, and discovering that the top deck of the number 264 had been taken over by Celtic fans, in town to see a recheduled European tie against Rapid Vienna.

A wry account of the match, and the journey to get to it, can be found at Sidenetting. From my perspective, a schoolkid in full uniform, heading back to the suburbs but surrounded by a crowd of loud if good-tempered Glaswegians, the experience was electrifying. They sang songs in praise of Bobby Sands. I found it rather shocking and rather scary. But without doubt also exciting.

More recently, it seems that the British have been leaning on the Iranians to change the name of Tehran's Bobby Sands Street. Which is a street round the corner from the British Embassy.

Diplomats at the embassy of the Republic of Ireland in Tehran admit the street is something of a tourist attraction for Irish nationals visiting the 25-year-old Islamic republic, saying it drew large crowds during an Ireland-Iran World Cup football qualifier in 2001.