Northern Ireland’s first Prime Minister, James Craig, said in 1934, that Stormont was “carrying on a Protestant Government for a Protestant People” (NI Parliamentary Debates), though the phrase has now been transformed into the doubly alliterative “A Protestant parliament for a Protestant people”. In the centre of a long mural at the waste-ground at the top of Mountpottinger Road, people carrying Irish Tricolours tear down the statue to Northern Ireland’s most prominent leader, Sir Edward Carson, that stands outside Stormont, “claiming equality”.

The main issue that has tested the resolve of governments both local and national to the equality declared in the 1998 Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement is Orange Order parading through nationalist areas, such as the Garvaghy Road below Drumcree church in Portadown, and the Ormeau Road in south Belfast.

“Short Strand people support Garvaghy and Ormeau Roads.” On the left: The spectre of intolerance – Drumcree.” Centre: “A Protestant parliament for a Protestant people no more!” On the right “1996: Ormeau residents battered; 1997: Garvaghy residents beaten; 1998: The third reich to march.” and “Fascism lives! in Portadown”.

The piece is next to a hunger-strikers commemoration piece with ten portraits on shaped wooden boards against a painted background with blanket-man Hugh Rooney in the center. Between the two is a “spirit of freedom” lark and the names of the ten deceased 1981 strikers.

Mountpottinger Road, Short Strand, east Belfast

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Copyright © 2000 Paddy Duffy
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