A mural celebrating the success of the film An Irish Goodbye has been painted in Belfast city centre. The film won both the BAFTA and Oscar for best Short Film in 2023. The quartet depicted at the top in their best gear for the Oscar ceremony in March, 2023, are (above) actors James Martin and Seamus O’Hara, and (below) directors Ross White and Tom Berkeley (BBC); in the bottom left is actor Paddy Jenkins as he appears in the film, as the priest, Father O’Shea (BBC). (IMDb | WP)
By Peaball (web) in Winetavern Street, Belfast city centre.
Cloughfern Young Conquerors flute band (Fb – warning: copious use of images of Eddie The Trooper) was founded in 1973, the same year as the UDA began using the name “UFF”. “John” and “Rab” on the arms of the emblem above are John “Grugg” Gregg (also known as ‘The Reaper’) and Rab Carson of the UDA’s Southeast Antrim brigade. The pair were killed together in 2003 by the lower Shankill (West Belfast C company) UDA. (See also Gregg & Carson for another local tribute.)
The gentleman in the panel on the right is “The General”; he celebrated a birthday in July of this year (2024) (Fb) and so is perhaps not (as this board might suggest) another of the “absent friends” held in “glorious memory”.
See also: 50 Years Unbroken and CYC 50th– celebrations from 2023 of the band’s fiftieth anniversary.
This is a smallish board in New Mossley, Newtownabbey:
On the left: “11th/12th Battalion Royal Irish Rifles (South and Central Antrim Volunteers) – The Ulster Memorial Tower, Thiepval, France. The Ulster Memorial Tower was unveiled by Field Marshall Sir Henry Wilson in Thiepval, France, on 19 November 1921, in dedication to the contributions of the 36th (Ulster) Division during The Great War 1914-1918. The tower marks the site of the Schwaben redoubt, against which the (Ulster) Division advanced on the first day of the Battle of the Somme.”
Specifically, the Central Antrim regiment (of the Ulster Volunteers) became the 12th battalion RIR, while the South Antrim regiment (of the Ulster Volunteers) became the 11th battalion RIR; both joined the 108th brigade in the 36th division.
The redoubt is also the site of the Thiepval Memorial.
JP Beadle’s painting “Battle of the Somme: Attack of the Ulster Division” hangs in Belfast City Hall (Royal Irish has a history of its purchase).
On the right: “The Great War 1914-1918. 32,186 killed, wounded, missing, 36th (Ulster) Division. They fought together as brothers in arms, they died together and now they sleep side by side. To them we owe a solemn obligation. They died that we might live.”
The sword-in-cross is a common war memorial but the one pictured is probably the Tyne Cot memorial to the Commonwealth dead of WWI (see Great War 100 Reads).
See also: The same boards (at larger size) next to the memorial garden – South And Central Antrim Volunteers. And from the historical record, True Heroes – which includes two small, painted, 36th Division boards from the street in 2009.
The “Union Bears” are a Rangers FC “ultras” supporters club whose web page currently features the giant tifo – “sign” or “banner” is too small a word, so the Italian word is used – unveiled at various games. This much smaller display (above) is on an electrical box on the Doagh Road next to the Iceland at the eastern edge of the Rathcoole estate.
The beer garden at the Bellevue Arms got a facelift in the summer (of 2024), including new a name-sign in the style of the “Greetings from …” postcards in the US, which would feature local landmarks within the letters of the place-name. (Here is a history from Smithsonian magazine.)
Within the letters of “BELLEVUE” we can see a Delorean, one of the H&W cranes, the Albert Clock, the Rise sculpture (the Balls On The Falls), the Titanic museum, Belfast City Hall, the Big Fish, the Beacon Of Hope sculpture (Nuala With The Hula).
The seating areas have also been decorated with paintings of flowers.
Antrim Road, Glengormley. Perhaps by Visual Waste (web).
“Stop the illegal migrants – we need to protect our children – we stand together”. Rathcoole signs reading “Anyone facilitating the settlement of Muslims or illegals in our areas will be held responsible” (in the same style as the Shankill signs seen in Not A Dumping Ground) were removed by police after complaints from community members (Belfast Media). The style of placard referring only to “illegal immigrants” (shown above) remains.
“Protecting children” might be a reference to the knife attack on a dance studio in Southport, England, in late July, in which three children died and eight more were injured; misinformation on social media (falsely) identified the attack as Muslim and an asylum-seeker (Independent); he is a Cardiff-born teenager of Rwandan parentage (WP). Several days of rioting followed the attack, including in Belfast.
See also: Stop The Boats in north Belfast, in connection with the UK’s plan to send migrants to Rwanda | Protect Our Children sticker in east Belfast from February.
(“One big clean up” is the name of a previous campaign against dog fouling; A&N’s current campaign is called “Dog Watch“.)
The hooded gunman at the New Mossley playground – seen previously in Welcome To New Mossley Play Area – has been upgraded with a golden UVF emblem (shown last, below), and has been joined by two new pieces: the printed board above and the low wall below. The 3rd battalion also includes Rathcoole, Mount Vernon, and Tiger’s Bay.
Van Morrison was born in 1945 at 125 Hyndford Street in east Belfast and recalled the sights and sounds of his early life there in the spoken-word track ‘On Hyndford Street’ from the 1991 album Hymns To The Silence (youtube). (The song also concluded his 70th birthday concert in Cyprus Avenue – youtube).
This painted tribute is by Glen Molloy (Fb) in the alley between Abetta Parade and Hyndford Street, roughly behind 135 Hyndford Street (and close to The Hollow – see Days When The Rains Came).
After a long spring and summer of inaction, a new tribute to UDA assassin Stevie “Top Gun” McKeag has been put in place in the lower Shankill, replacing the flat-capped version of 2016.
In Tolstoy’s War And Peace, the prince Andrei Bolkonsky at one early point remarks, “It is not given to people judge what’s right or wrong. People have eternally been mistaken and will be mistaken, and in nothing more so than in what they consider right and wrong.” But after he is wounded at the Battle Of Austerlitz in 1805 and again in 1812 at the Battle Of Borodino, he loses his admiration for the blood-thirsty Napoleon and for war in general, and comes to think that events are a function of many individual decisions.
Stevie McKeag, hit-man for the UDA’s second battalion (west Belfast) ‘C company’, killed at least a dozen Catholics between 1990 and 1998 (WP). The version presented on the left-hand side-wall (just below) begins, “It is not given to people to judge what’s right or wrong. People have internally been mistaken and will be mistaken …” which seems to be contradictory, and then continues “… and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong” which is difficult to parse so as to give the intended meaning.
The mirrored hooded gunmen on either side of the quote come from an old mural in the estate – see UDU-UFF-UDA.
The smiling McKeag is here shown in the main panel wearing a green beret (as is the anonymous volunteer in the side-wall) and commando jumper (with shoulder patches) as though he were a “military commander” in the Commandos or Royal Marines of the British Army. The UDU, the poppies, and the graveside mourners in the right-hand side-wall are used to put McKeag’s actions in the context of resistance to Home Rule and the British Army’s role in the Great War.
For the composition of the main panel, as well as its use of boards on top of the background, compare with the UDA piece in the Woodvale. The translation into English of the UDA’s, UFF’s, and UYM’s Latin mottos – [Quis separabit] / None shall separate us | Feriens tego / Striking I defend | Terrae Filius / Son Of The Soil – is unusual, as is the bouquet of flowers behind the poppy.
For more, including the mourning soldiers, see the entry at Extramural Activity.
“Land of the free because of the brave”. “Remember with pride”. “Those we love don’t go away/They walk beside us every day”. “Dedicated to our fallen comrade”.
April 25th, 2024: The boards were taken off, revealing an older version that stood 2010-2015.
[In the middle circle there were, over the years, a series of printed portraits of McKeag (and one painted version). For the version from 2014, see M11119; see also the image 2011, which links back to other versions from 2010, 2009, 2008, and 2007).]
May 3rd, 2024: Scaffolding in front of the wall
This layer of paint (and plaster?) was also taken off, to reveal the remains of the original King Rat mural on the wall – see X15041 in the Seosamh Mac Coille collection.
As part of Tunnel Vision paint-jam that added street art along the sides of the underpass at York Street station, a poem by Niamh McNally (ig) – Line Work – was added to the ceiling.
Paddy Duffy Collection 