“North Antrim & Londonderry brigade, UFF, Ballymoney 3rd battalion” – hooded men with assault rifles remain on the walls in Alexandra Avenue/The Crescent, Ballymoney.
See also: Fifty Years Of Service.
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Carson, Crawford, and Craig are lionised as resisters of devolvement of Ireland to Dublin in the early twentieth century. Despite calling Home Rule “the most nefarious conspiracy that has ever been hatched against a free people” and vowing to fight it by “all means necessary”, including the Ulster Volunteers armed by Crawford’s “guns for Ulster”, Edward Carson “warned Ulster Unionist leaders not to alienate norther Catholics, as he foresaw this would make Northern Ireland unstable.”
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This selection of images from Leckagh Drive, Magherafelt, focuses on the memorials to the dead of WWI (and WWII in the mural above), with an additional board commemorating the UDR 5th (County Londonderry) battalion); there is also a mural and some plaques commemorating (modern-day) UVF volunteers, which will be in tomorrow’s post.
The board shown in the final image provides a history of the South Londonderry volunteers from towns such as Magherafelt, Castledawson, Moneymore, and Tobermore. Edward Carson reviewed the volunteers in April 1914. Later that same month, arms were received from the weapons landed in Larne. In the Great War, the men from the area served in the 10th battalion of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers in the 109th brigade of the 36th Division.
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“Always remembered by the officers and volunteers of South Londonderry/Randalstown Ulster Volunteer Force.” This memorial mural and plaque in Magherafelt names Charlie Wright, Jonathan Wallace, Ken Wilkinson, and Ian McArthur.
Of these, Wilkinson seems the most well-known, as he served as a PUP representative for the area. He commented on sectarian tensions in Randalstown in 1999 (An Phoblacht) and in Coleraine in 2009 (Irish Examiner), and spoke against sueprgrass trials in 2011 as a member of FAST (Irish Times | see previously FAST and FASTing For Human Rights And Justice); he was accused of intimidation of Catholics in Antrim in 2003 (An Phoblacht). He stood for a number of elected positions (e.g. 2013) but was unsuccessful.
Ostensibly for his stand against drug-sellers, in 2010 a pipe-bomb (BBC), and in 2011 a make-shift car-bomb (BelTel), were placed against his home and he received death threats in 2013 (politics.ie). He died in 2021 (BelTel | News Letter | Irish News).
The plaque in the memorial garden (shown below) reads, “This plaque is dedicated in memory of all of the loyalist people of Ulster who have suffered at the hands of the enemies of our land. Lest we forget.”
The mural in the background can be seen in Leckagh Remembers The Fallen.
Also included is a nearby bench celebrating the platinum jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II.
Leckagh Drive, Magherafelt.
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This UDA board on the eastern side of the Leckagh estate names six men who “gave everything in defence of our civil and religious liberties”: Lindsay Mooney (remembered also in the Fountain and Lincoln Court areas of Londonderry), Benny Redfern (this board replaces a board dedicated to Redfern alone), Cecil McKnight (Waterside), Gary Lynch (Waterside), Ray Smallwoods (Lisburn), William Campbell (Coleraine).
“North Antrim – Londonderry – Tyrone brigade”, “Remembered by all South Londonderry & Tyrone 6th batt.”
For the Ulster Volunteers/UVF memorials in the middle of the estate, see Leckagh Remembers The Fallen and Pause, Reflect, Remember.
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RNU unveiled a new monument in Milltown as part of their Easter Rising commeration on April 9th, 2023. This photo of it is on a new board on the Falls Road, next to the Rook O’Prey board.
For the stone itself, see An Attitude Of Rebellion. There do not appear to be any images of the new monument on the RNU Fb or tw accounts.
“Republican Network For Unity. Erected by the Belfast Commemoration Committe[e]. Miltown cemetery Easter 2023.”
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This is the new Sam Rockett mural in the Woodvale, replacing the mural seen in Murdered By Cowards. The old mural just featured Rockett, who died in August, 2000, in the feud between the UVF and lower Shankill UDA. This new mural also features the “ethnic cleansing” of Torrens in 2004.
Torrens sits between Cliftonville, Ardoyne, and the lower Oldpark, and was one of the many historically mixed areas in north Belfast that, with the Troubles, became increasingly segregated and separated from neighbouring areas by “peace” lines. Jarman (1996) provides eye-witness testimony of the dispute in Torrens in 1996 which saw Catholic families leave the area. Its proximity to Ardoyne (and Cliftonville), however, meant that over the next few years the houses were gradually abandoned by Protestants, culminating in 2004 when ten of the remaining Protestant families moved out of the area, alleging persistent intimidation and employing the term term “ethnic cleansing” – a term the poem to the right of the mural uses three times.
The area was eventually redeveloped from 2008-2012, with the Wyndham Street “peace” line coming down and Elmgrove Street being opened to the Oldpark Road.
The line in the poem “the resistance formed a steady band” is unclear – it might refer to loyalists being bussed into Torrens in 1996 (see the testimonies in Jarman); if it refers to B Company it would make a connection to Rockett. As it is, the connection between the two elements of the mural (if any is intended) seems to be that Rockett was from the lower Oldpark, near Torrens.
Sources:
John Darby, Intimidation In Housing, 1974. At CAIN.
Neil Jarman, On The Edge, 1996, which also covers the exodus from nearby Cliftonpark Avenue. At CAIN.
1996 AP footage on youtube
2004: BelTel | BBC | Guardian | Republican News | An Phoblacht
“In the name of Ireland’s cruel game/Oh, land that once sang freedom’s song/Now marred by ethnic cleansing’s wrong.//Echoes of anguish haunt the Protestants of Torrens,/Ethnically cleansed, a sinister goal,/Their weapon honed, to exact a toll.//Families robbed of essence and space,/fuelled by hated, to erase their trace.//Against the darkness, spirits sincere,/Hand in hand across the land,/the resistance formed a steady band.//Ethnic cleansing’s horrors unveiled at last,/Hearts of courage, unbreakable souls,/Truths unfurled, their power untold,/A captured scene of the evil deeds done.”
The in-progress images are from August 17th and 18th. The mural was completed for the anniversary of Rockett’s death on August 23rd. The source for the central image (of furniture being loaded into a lorry) is unknown.
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A new mural was unveiled yesterday in memory of Jim McCabe, the husband of Norah McCabe who was hit by a plastic bullet in 1981 and died a day later. Jim went on to become a “lifetime campaigner for truth + justice” and a “founder member of Relatives For Justice [web] and United Campaign Against Plastic Bullets [web]”. (For a profile of Jim’s campaigning work, see Belfast Media.) Jim died in January of this (2023) year.
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“Est 1913 Irish Citizen Army / Irish National Liberation Army Est. 1974”. The Irish Citizen Army was founded in Dublin in 1913 to protect striking workers from police violence. After taking part in the Easter Rising of 1916, however, the ICA did not participate in the War Of Independence and the Civil War. In 1974, some founding members considered reviving the “ICA” name to reflect the organisation’s “allegiance to the working class” while Costello (pictured on the right) suggested “National Liberation Army”, which was then amended to include “Irish” (History Ireland | WP | WP). MNI includes an “ICA-INLA” Starry Plough on the stairs into the New Lodge from 1989 (C00105).
The banner raised over the Liberty Hall headquarters of the ICA read “We serve neither king nor kaiser but Ireland” – the famous photograph is included in the post of the same name – but this has been updated. The Belfast version of the board, on Northumberland Street (above) and outside Costello House on the Falls Road (below), reads “nor Nato”.
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“Ulster Special Constabulary 1920-1970. The Ulster Special Constabulary (USC; commonly called the “B-Specials” of “B Men”) was a quasi-military reserve special constable police force in what would later become Northern Ireland. It was set up in October 1920, shortly before the partition of Ireland. It was an armed corps, organised partially on military lines and called out in times of emergency, such as war or insurgency. It performed this role most notably in the early 1920s during the Irish War of Independence and the 1956-1962 IRA Border Campaign.
During its existence, 95 USC members were killed in the line of duty. Most of these (72) were killed in conflict with the IRA in 1921 and 1922. Another 8 died during the Second World War, in air raids or IRA attacks. Of the remainder, most died in accidents but two former officers were killed during the Troubles in the 1980s. [The WP page from which this text is drawn at this point goes on to talk about Catholic mistrust of the Specials.] The Special Constabulary was disbanded in May 1970, after the Hunt Report, which advised re-shaping Northern Ireland’s security forces [to attract more Catholic recruits] and demilitarizing the police. Its functions and membership were largely taken over by the Ulster Defence Regiment and the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
[Accompanying the small photograph:] At the Twelfth demonstration at Finaghy, Sir Edward Carson, the unionist leader, deploring the state of the county, advised the government: ‘If … you are yourself unable to protect us from the machinations of Sinn Fein … we will take the matter into our own hands. We will reorganise [the Ulster Volunteers]’.” [From a NewsLetter article ‘USC Helped Establish Peace In Early Years Of NI’]
Carson’s quote is also used in a Belfast UVF mural. As is noted there, the speech is probably from the 12th of July – Treason Felony | RTÉ – and concerns the reformation of the Ulster Volunteers as a force to protect Protestant interests in the north of Ireland in light of the proposal in the (fourth) Home Rule bill to create separate northern and southern states.
Parkhall Road, Antrim
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Paddy Duffy Collection 