“Remember With Pride” (with a poppy). Although the dates of his birth and death are given, Stevie “Top Gun” McKeag’s name appears only on the side-wall of this new mural in the lower Shankill estate. McKeag was the top assassin in the UDA during the 1990s, claiming at least 12 victims. Both his WP page and this Guardian article describe his career and preeminent standing within the UDA.
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Copyright © 2022 Paddy Duffy
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At first glance the piece above looks like a colourful mural but it is in fact a large painted carving of lions rampant on either side of the emblem of the Shankill Protestant Boys flute band, named for the Shankill Boys of the original Ulster Volunteers and the Ulster Special Service Force unit within it which was designed to be a unit of “first responders”, ready to react at short notice to action by republicans or British forces anywhere in northern Ireland (historyireland).
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Copyright © 2022 Paddy Duffy
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UVF volunteers (l-r) Thomas Chapman, James McGregor, Robert McIntyre, William Hannah, and Robert Wadsworth, who were killed between 1973 and 1978, are commemorated in a new mural in Carnan (or “C. Coy”) Street. The mural is unusual in that it shows bare-faced full figures; loyalist murals sometimes include head-shots (at the top of the mural, in the apex of a gable wall, e.g. Standing Guard) but only masked men appear as full figures. There is a similarity in composition and style (and perhaps even palette) to existing Republican murals such as this one of five B. Coy IRA volunteers in Ballymurphy.
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Copyright © 2022 Paddy Duffy
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Four generations of headgear and rifles, from 1912 to the present, are featured in this new UVF board in Glenwood Street. A portion of the previous No. 4 Platoon ‘graveyard scene’ mural it replaces can be seen in the top right, with black figures superimposed. The title of the post, which comes from Ecclesiasticus 44, appears on the accompanying info panel along with a verse from Laurence Binyon’s poem For The Fallen. The fourth verse of Binyon’s poem is more often quoted, as in What Do We Forget When We Remember and At The Going Down Of The Sun.
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Copyright © 2022 Paddy Duffy
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“With courage and vision you will dare to take risks, have the strength to be compassionate, and the wisdom to be humble. Courage is the foundation of integrity. – Mark Twain.” (The quote does not appear to be from Twain but is widely attributed to Keshavan Nair, who wrote a book on “lessons from the life of Ghandi”.)
This board above the Red Hand Commando mural in Glenwood Street honours three UVF men who turned to politics and community work: Augustus (Gusty) Spence, who was among the earliest members of the UVF and after release in 1984 joined the PUP and set up the Shankill Activity Centre; David Ervine, also a UVF and PUP leader – see David Ervine and Memory Chair; Plum Smith, a founder member of the RHC and later shop steward and PUP leader – see RIP Plum Smith.
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Copyright © 2022 Paddy Duffy
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The main battles of the 36th (Ulster) Division (“XXXVI”) are listed – Somme, Thiepval, Messines, Ypres, Cambrai, Somme (1918), St. Quintin [St. Quentin], Lys, Courtrai – and those who died are commemorated on this new board. The main board is surrounded by smaller boards, part of the Poppy Trail, bearing the names, ages, addresses, ranks, and units of deceased soldiers. For example: William Lyttle, aged 18, 16 Tenth Street, 9th batt. Royal Irish Rifles, Rifleman 13044.
The same (main) board has also been mounted on the Shankill: see Improving Your Environment.
Replaces: They Haven’t Gone Away and Welcome To The Shankill.
The info board above reads: “Thousands of brave Shankill men marched down our road and off to war, over 1500 of them never returned, with over 150 losing their lives on the 1st day of July 1916.”
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Copyright © 2022 Paddy Duffy
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John Henry Patterson went from Ireland to Kenya, where he killed several lions after months of hunting. He wrote an account of the hunt entitled The Man-Eaters of Tsavo which has inspired three movies; the lions, named The Ghost and The Darkness, were both over nine feet in length. Back in Ireland he commanded a battalion of the UVF and was involved in the Larne gun-running of 1914: Operation Lion.
The final panel (on the right) shows the star of David and a quote from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “In all of Jewish history we have never had a Christian friend as understanding and devoted.” The interim panels described Patterson’s raising and leading of the Jewish battalions of the Royal Fusiliers in WWI. After dying in obscurity in Los Angeles in 1947, his remains were transported to Israel in December 2014 and reinterred (video). For more, including a recording of Patterson’s voice, see this BBC Magazine article.
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Copyright © 2022 Paddy Duffy
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To celebrate International Peace Day, 2020, the Imagine mural from 2011 between the security gates was extended in three directions. The new panels (printed by Alexander Boyd Displays (web) on aluminium) now take up the whole space between the gates, blocking out, on the left, Mark Ervine’s Global Commodity, on the right, (Manchester) United’s Big Lily, and below, a space used recently by Shankill graffitists to support Donald Trump and Israel and to attack the EU.
Since the new panels are the usual whitewashing of history in favor of landmark buildings and people in black-and-white (i.e. before the Troubles) – though the bottom panel does appear to include a bonfire or riot image (see final image) – this is arguably a net loss.
The City Council held a 45-minute Zoom event of poems and music called ‘Shaping Peace Together‘.
(Out of view to the left) “In understanding, all walls shall fall down” – Kahlil Gibran
(On the right) “A further shore is reachable from here” – Seamus Heaney
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Copyright © 2022 Paddy Duffy
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“Are you one of Kitchener’s own?” asks this mural in Northumberland Street: “We here pay grateful and everlasting tribute, to all foreign nationals across the empire, who courageously and passionately fought side by side with their British counterparts, for King and country, during the First World War.” The left-hand side (second image) features images of soldiers from the West Indies and India, including “The Flying Sikh”, Hardit Singh Malik and a French lady as she “pins flowers on a regiment containing Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus.” On the right, images of the “presentation of Colours to the 51st Battalion Canadian expeditionary force” and of Canadian “bluebird” nurses in the Canadian Army Medical Corps.
Replaces (part of) Welcome To The Shankill. See Belfast Live for an image from the launch.
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Copyright © 2022 Paddy Duffy
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Four people were killed in the course of The Falls Curfew, the 36 hours from July 3rd to 5th in 1970 during which 3,000 houses on the lower Falls were cordoned off after a weapons search of the area devolved into a riot. The curfew ended with a march of women and children from Andersonstown bearing relief (represented in Falls Curfew 1970).
The information in the centre of the board includes an augmented version of the Wikipedia infobox on the event. Erected in the spot previously reserved by “the Official Republican Movement”.
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Copyright © 2022 Paddy Duffy
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Paddy Duffy Collection 