“This mural is a memorial to the volunteers of A Coy 1st Batt who served the Shankill community so bravely during the years of conflict. Gone but not forgotten.” The flags being held on either side are of the Shankill Protestant Boys (1st battalion, Ulster Volunteers) and the USSF.
Canmore Street, Shankill, west Belfast. Paddy Duffy’s British Telecom van is parked on the Shankill, to the right of the image.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 1996 Paddy Duffy
T00223
An extra-wide UFF mural showing a red right hand raising a rifle.
Stroud Street, Sandy Row, south Belfast
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 1996 Paddy Duffy
T00222
“In proud and loving memory of our comrades who have sacrificed their lives. They gave their all so that we may live in freedom.” The Woodvale Defence Association (“WDA” along the bottom) was the largest of the local associations which merged together in 1971 to form the Ulster Defence Association (UDA/UFF) and the WDA became B company of 2nd battalion (WP).
Ohio Street, Woodvale, west Belfast
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 1996 Paddy Duffy
T00233 T00221
“Present peace now stills our hand/Death no longer stalks our land./Our weapons are silent and shall remain/But if needed, we shall rise again.” UDA volunteers in fatigues hold on to their weapons while the peace process continues. On the right: “In memory of the officers and volunteers of A Coy UDA UFF who unselfishly dedicated their lives in defence of their country. Quis separabit. Feriens tego.”
Above is printed board with a silhouetted POW in front of a watch-tower. “LPOW – you are not forgotten”
On the community centre in the middle of High Green, Highfield, west Belfast
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 1996 Paddy Duffy
T00220 [T00226]
“It is not for glory we fight, nor riches, nor honours – but for freedom alone, which no good man loses but with his life.” (from the Declaration Of Arbroath). A UDA/UFF gunman from A battalion, South Belfast brigade, is ready to fire.
Similar in style to the pair of murals in Snugville Street.
Roden Street, south Belfast
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 1996 Paddy Duffy
T00219
This is a pair of murals in Snugville Street as it was being redeveloped in the mid-1990s. Above, “UFF rocket team on tour, west Belfast ’94”. Johnny Adair’s C company, acquired an RPG-7 rocket launcher and used it in attacks on Connolly House and the Rock Bar in early 1994 (BelTel | UPI). Below, two hooded gunmen with assault rifles: “Ulster Freedom Fighters will resist any Eire involvement in our country”.
Adair went to prison in 1995 and when he came out in 1999, had a large number of murals painted in the lower Shankill estate.
Side-by-side in Snugville Street, west Belfast
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 1996 Paddy Duffy
T00216 T00231
The third mural by the Bogside Artists (after The Petrol Bomber and Bernadette – Visual History) is “Bloody Sunday” (painted with Sean Loughrey), painted for the 25th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. It reproduces a Fulvio Grimaldi photograph of local priest Edward Daly waving a blood-stained handkerchief in advance of four men carrying the body of Jackie Duddy. The left-most figure has been changed into a British paratrooper, and he is trampling on a “civil rights” banner similar to the one later used to cover a body. In the background is an image from earlier in the day, of the civil rights march from Creggan to the Bogside.
Lecky Road/Rossville Street, Bogside, Derry
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 1996 Paddy Duffy
T00192 [T00202]
“Saoırse – Askatasuna!” Lines from Joxean Artze’s poem Txoria Txori appear in three languages – Basque, Irish, and English – in this Clonard mural:
“Hegoak ebaki banizkion neria izango zen. Ez zuen alde egingo bainan, honela. Ez zen gehiago txoria izango … eta nik txoria nuen maite.”
“Dá ngearfaınn a eıteogaí, bheadh sé agam. Ní éalódh sé, ach ní bheadh sé ına éan níos mó … agus thug mé grá don éan sın.”
“If I cut its wings it would be mine, it wouldn’t escape, but that way it wouldn’t be a bird no more … and I loved the bird.”
The bird for Irish prisoners is the lark, which can be seen through the prison bars. The green ribbon above the central image is a symbol of the campaign to release political prisoners as part of any agreement that might come out of the peace process.
For Basque prisoners the bird is the “arrano beltza” [black eagle] which appears at the bottom of the mural.
The symbols on the left and right are the Irish shamrock and the Basque “lauburu” (four heads).
Painted by the Askapena Basque Internationalist Brigade in Cawnpore Street, Clonard, west Belfast, August 1995. To the right are two small murals in support of the ETA (“Independentzia!!”, “ETA” with the snake-and-axe (politics and armed struggle) and “bietan jarrai“, “Jo ta ke!” [push on!] and the IRA (a blazing pistol above a balaclava’d volunteer with pistol, “Freedom awaits”).
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 1996 Paddy Duffy
T00169
The mask of “revisionism” covers the face of “truth” reading the book of “Irish history”. Originally painted in 1996 by Ciaran McKeirnan, Brian O’Loan, and Donal Daly, son of IRSP leader Miriam Daly, who was killed by the UDA in 1980, and to whom the title quote is attributed.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 1996 Paddy Duffy
T00189 T00179 [T00203]
“Volunteer Tom Williams, executed 2.9.42 age 19. A lad who still lied within a prison wall.” Williams was the leader of a unit from C company, 2nd battalion, Belfast IRA, that killed RUC Constable Patrick Murphy. Williams took sole responsibility, hoping that it would save the lives of the other seven (including two women) who had taken part in the ambush. The six men were jointly convicted of the killing but only Williams was ultimately hanged, after appeals from Ireland (not yet officially ‘The Republic Of’), the Vatican, and the US State Department (RN). He was buried on the grounds of Crumlin Road gaol (and his coffin would eventually be exhumed and reburied in Milltown in 2000).
This is the second Tom Williams mural at this spot; the first was painted in 1992; both were painted by Gerard “Mo Chara” Kelly. There is a plaque to Williams above his front door in Bombay Street.
Kashmir Road, west Belfast
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 1996 Paddy Duffy
T00178 T00168
Paddy Duffy Collection 