PUL – Page 111 – Paddy Duffy Collection

Ballysillan UVF

1988-05-012025-08-28Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

“Always remembered, never forgotten”. This mural is unique in providing the length of the sentences being served by various members of the “B + D” company of the Ballysillan UVF: Kerr, Tarr, Bill, Watt, and Beattie are serving “Life”, while others – Courtney, Gilliland, Campbell, and Smith – are serving “stip” sentences (stipulated minimums) of twenty years or more; Stewart is being held “S.O.S.P”, that is, at the “Secretary Of State’s Pleasure”, presumably because he was convicted as a minor; the rest (Addley, McKay, McClure, McKinney, Murphy) are serving ordinary terms, except for Boreland and Suitters who are marked as “murdered” and Rollins who is “deceased”.

Here is a pamphlet from the Committee On The Administrative Of Justice on the “life” prisoners in NI prisons in the years prior to 1988 (pdf).

Suitters was shot by the IRA in 1975 at his shop (Sutton) not far from this mural in Legann Street.

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Copyright © 1988 Paddy Duffy
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Then And Now

1988-05-012025-08-27Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

“They fought then for the cause of Ulster, we will fight now.” The 75th anniversary of the Ulster Volunteers is celebrated in this mural in Dover Place, west Belfast. On the left of the Northern Island is an Ulster Volunteer in period (1912) garb standing on a patch of ground, on the right, a modern (1987) paramilitary in hood and fatigues standing on a city footpath. The Ulster Volunteers as such did not fight for Ulster – they instead joined the British Army and fought “for King and Empire” in WWI, after which Home Rule was applied only to 26 counties of Ireland and Northern Ireland was created and remained within the UK.

Deserted! Well – I Can Stand Alone

1988-05-012025-08-12Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

These two murals are side-by-side in Craven Street. On the right, a farmer’s wife defends the farm (the stone wall) in order to preserve it as part of the UK (the Union Flag) despite the threat of Home Rule; on the left, “in proud and loving memory” of three UVF volunteers assassinated by the IRA: Shankill Butcher Lenny Murphy, John Bingham, and William “Frenchie” Marchant. “Lest we forget.”

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Copyright © 1988 Paddy Duffy
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UVF 75th Anniversary

1988-05-012025-08-27Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

This mural celebrates the 75th anniversary of the Ulster Volunteers, 1912, with a portrait of Edward Carson and a rifle mounted on the back of a car (based on an image from 1914, included below). The Ulster Volunteers joined the Royal Irish Rifles as part of Kitchener’s Army in WWI, and when the war ended some of the survivors joined the northern RIC and the post-partition RUC, but at that point it is impossible to track them as a cohesive group and the only connection to the Ulster Volunteer Force of 1965 is the name.

Shankill Road (on the wall of the PUP offices, just west of ACT and the Bayardo memorial), west Belfast

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Copyright © 1988 Paddy Duffy
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This Is Loyalist West Belfast

1988-05-012025-08-03Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

These are three of the murals painted in Percy Place, west Belfast, painted by Alan Skillen in 1984. For a gallery of all eleven piece, see the street’s Visual History page.

The murals combined traditional PUL themes and iconography, such as King Billy and the monarchy, with the emblems and hooded gunmen of paramilitary groups.

The piece above is unusual in that it takes a familiar UDA device of four emblems in the quadrants of an Ulster Banner shield (see e.g. Sans Peur) but replaces three of them with the emblems of the UVF, PAF, and YCV. A crude outline of Northern Ireland has also been applied.

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Copyright © 1988 Paddy Duffy
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70th Anniversary Of The Somme

1988-05-012025-08-11Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

On the left of the lightning bolt are the soldiers of the 36th Ulster division (U.V.F.) R.I.R (Royal Irish Rifles) on the western front in 1916; on the right are “UVF prisoners of war, Long Kesh”.

A similar board was painted in the UVF compounds of Long Kesh. Of it, Billy Hutchinson (in his 2011 piece “Transcendental Art“) said, “My favourite mural was one inspired by the British anti-war poet, Siegfried Sassoon. Suicide In The Trenches depicts a UVF volunteer split down the middle by a bolt of lightning. Half of him depicts a 36th Ulster Division soldier under heavy fire in a rainsoaked WW1 trench. The other half shows a ’70s volunteer incarcerated behind barbed wire and over-shadowed by watch towers.” (The piece – W2021.1.8 in the Ulster Museum collection – includes the last verse from Sassoon’s Suicide In The Trenches.)

Craven Street, west Belfast. Hutchinson also describes the importance of the Orange Cross welfare organisation in selling prisoner art produced inside the prison. The door to the club is in black to the left of frame. Stevie McCrea of the RHC was killed in the Orange Cross in 1989 – see Stevie McCrea.

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Copyright © 1988 Paddy Duffy
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Notes For A History Of Ireland

1988-04-012025-08-28Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

These two pieces are both by cartoonist “Cormac” (Brian Moore), as reproduced on the wall of Corry’s Timber at the top of Springhill Avenue, west Belfast, by Mo Chara Kelly.

Cormac produced cartoons for Resistance Comics, Republican News (and then An Phoblacht/Republican News), Socialist Challenge (and then Socialist Action), and Fortnight. His “Notes (For A History Of Ireland)” appeared in RN and AP/RN for about 30 years.

The mural on the left reproduces a cartoon from February 1979, combining hatred of the “Britz” and RUC with criticism of a left-leaning London bookshop that no longer stocks the paper because “violence is only acceptable if it doesn’t happen here”.

The other is an eleven-panel version of the nine-panel image that appeared on the cover of the 1982 collection Cormac Strikes Back, showing the Union Flag crumbling and the Starry Plough rising from its ashes.

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Copyright © 1988 Paddy Duffy
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UDA A Battalion South Belfast

1988-04-012025-07-31Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

“UDA “A” batt. South Belfast. RSD [Roden Street Defenders (private Fb)] UFF”

This is the mural that greets travellers moving west along Donegall Road to the Village. The houses in Beit Street have been knocked down and their replacements, which face directly onto Roden Street, no longer reach all the way to Donegall Road, leaving this gable as a prime painting space.

UVF And UDA

1988-04-012025-08-11Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

These are murals from completing organisations, the UVF (above) represented by an Uzi above various flags and the emblem of the UVF, and the UDA (below) represented additionally by hooded volunteers on manoeuvres. They were together on the Crumlin Road, on waste-ground at the top of Queensland Street and at the top of Tasmania Street. On the gable next to the UVF flags large YCV and 36th Division emblems would be added – see the Peter Moloney Collection.

Cemented With Love

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“In loving memory of Rev Robert Bradford.” Bradford was killed in 1981 (see To Bathe The Sharp Sword Of My Word In Heaven) and the mural dates back to (at least) 1983. It perhaps shows the Lindsay Street arch, which was first mounted in 1964. On either side of the arch are written “Honour all men, love the brethren” and “Fear God, honour the King”.

The King Billy mural survived until 1988 and was reproduced on the other side of Donegall Pass in 1989 – see the Peter Moloney Collection. King Billy is subtly coloured red-white-and-blue, while the dying Jacobite is in green-white-and-gold.

At the junction of Apsley Street and Howard Street South, at what is now the entrance to Reverend Robert Bradford Memorial Park.