“Celebrating our heritage, inspiring tomorrow.” This year’s Greater Shankill Community Festival began on June 30th with the launch of Ulster’s American Connection and will end with a Siege Of Derry re-enactment on July 11th – the full programme can be found on Fb.
Shankill Road at Iceland, replacing the Stewart’s Yard sign.
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“Open gates. Open borders. Open season. Your sheep. Their feast.” Politicians from Sınn Féın, the SDLP, Alliance, and People Before Profit are shown opening the gates for masked and armed men who are coming from the sea and bidding them to enter a sheepfold of “our constituents”.
The PSNI are investigating the banner as a “hate incident” (rather than a “hate crime” – see A New Evil for the difference) (BelTel). On July first, it was reported that the banner had been removed and replaced with Union Flags and an Ulster Banner (Belfast Media | News Letter). Belfast City Council denied that it was involved in the removal (BelTel) – Loughside Park is council property. And as these pictures show, by July third it had been reinstated and the removal was only “temporary” and “tactical” (BelTel | Fb).
Shore Road, north Belfast
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Shore Crescent prepares for Eleventh Night with a bonfire and a large sign explaining the positive impact of the tradition:
“Shore Crescent bonfire – a proud loyalist tradition. Standing firm in our heritage, our loyalty & our values. Faith – loyalty – respect – heritage. [The bonfire …] Celebrates our heritage – honours our history, culture and the sacrifices made by those who went before us; strengthens our community – brings families, friends and neighbours together, building unity, pride and a sense of belonging; affirms our loyalty – a clear and proud expression of our loyalty to the Crown and the United Kingdom; educates & remembers – teaches future generations the importance of our traditions and the true meaning behind them; promotes respect & pride – shows respect for our values and beliefs and promotes pride in being Loyalist; supports local [groups] & raises funds – helps support local groups, charities and initiatives that make a real difference; secures our future – by standing together today, we protect our identity, freedom and way of life for tomorrow. One tradition. One community. One loyal people. Shore Crescent loyal.”
Next to Loughside Playground, Shore Road, north Belfast
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Eddie The Trooper makes an appearance as a Coleraine FC (“the pride of Ulster”) supporter, stomping on the grave of rival clubs Cliftonville (left) and Ballymena (right).
The sticker is in Dee Street, east Belfast
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Text above: “Sir Edward Carson 1854 – 1935 “Uncrowned King of Ulster” Founding member and leader of the Ulster Volunteers. Carson led Ulster Unionist resistance to the British Government’s attempts to introduce Home Rule for the whole of Ireland.”
The epithet “uncrowned King” seems to be generally used of Carson and not attributable to any one source. Here is a September 1912 newspaper article that calls Carson the “uncrowned King of the North” and relays criticisms of a Carson reception in Portadown as “a parody upon a royal reception” and “an insult to the King”. A May 1914 review of (the book) The Reign Of Edward Carson refers to “King Carson”. (Here is a postcard depicting Carson as a king upon a throne – Postcards Ireland. And a cartoon showing “The Ulster King-At-Arms“.)
The phrase is an echo of and response to the phrase “uncrowned king of Ireland”, which was used of both O’Connell and Parnell. Here is an 1847 article describing both O’Connell and the Napoleonic Governor-General of Algeria (WP) as “uncrowned monarch[s]”. According to WP, the epithet was first applied to Parnell in 1880, because he was so popular during a tour of the United States and Canada. At the end of James Joyce’s story ‘Ivy Day In The Committee Room’ a character recites a poem about Parnell, beginning “He is dead. Our uncrowned king is dead” (archive.com).
The wording “the British government’s attempts to introduce Home Rule” is more forthright than we are used to. Typically the resistance is simply to “Home Rule”. This wording makes clear that the Ulster Volunteers were a private militia preparing for the possibility of fighting the regular British Army and Navy. By being so explicit, this wording suggests that we are currently living through a time in which loyalists consider the “British government” to be insufficiently British, just as was the case in 1912.
Text below: “Sir Edward Carson being escorted by members of the Ulster Special Service Force on the Newtownards Road passing the Belvoir Bar in the company of Captain James Craig and the Officer Commanding of the Ulster Volunteer Force Sir George Richardson.”
According to a Regimental Band Fb post, “Sir Edward Carson was speaking at the Reform Club in Royal Avenue. There was an opinion that the British Government were going to try and arrest him so he was escorted to the safety of Craigavon House [shown on the right of the mural]. This photo was taken on the 20th March, 1914.” This October 1913 article, in addition to calling Carson “Ulster’s Uncrowned King”, notes that he travelled with a detective and carried a revolver.
By Dee Craig (Fb), presumably, replacing his hooded gunmen mural The Right To Defend Yourself, on the Newtownards Road at (the former) Bright Street.
The other two murals (visible in the wide shot) are We Are The Pilgrims and Nearer My God To Thee. The “UVF on parade” board next to the taxi office was previously across the street. For the banner above the Mace, see Henry Nowak.
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Bonfires will be lit across Northern Ireland on “Eleventh Night” (July 11th) and builders will be working until then in order to build the pyres high. The one shown here is in the Ravenhill Road area of east Belfast, constructed out of shipping palettes (see Commonwealth Handling Equipment). As an alternative, Belfast City Council will fund the construction of much smaller beacons. (The programme was previously called the “Bonfire Management” programme and is now the “Bonfire And Cultural Expression” programme.) The Ravenhill builders, both this year and last, consider this a sell-out. (See previously, Culture Before Cash (2014) | Real Loyalists Will Never Be Bought).
The flag on the bonfire shows a hooded volunteer with an RPG (taken from an old mural in the Shankill), with the lettering “RYL” (“Ravenhill Young Loyalists”) and “CRT” (“Clonduff Rocket Team”).
Lismore Road, east Belfast. See previously: Dump Wood – No Shite.
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A memorial service was held at the Times Bar on Friday June 5th (News Letter) to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the attack on the Times Bar in 1976, in which Edward McMurray and Robert Groves were killed by a republican bomb. (An image of the bombed bar can be found on Xitter.)
Three plaques were added to the memorial garden where the service took place, to William Haddock, James Smyth, and William Flynn. (Compare to 2019.)
As the images from May 10th in the Paddy Duffy Collection show, a painted mural was originally planned for the spot.
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At its peak, the Harland & Wolff shipyard employed 35,000 people (IndustriAll) and the flat-capped worker became a symbol of east Belfast, along – much later – with Samson and Goliath, the two gantry cranes at the shipyard that were raised in 1974 and 1969 (WP) and which have become the symbol of Belfast.
The title of this entry is the first line of Martin Mooney’s poem ‘Launching The Whaler Juan Peron‘.
The silhouetted workers and cranes are on a mobile office in Fraser Pass, Newtownards Road, Belfast, at the end of the Pitt Stop next to the Belfast Bikes racks.
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“In memory of the lost, 15 April, 1912.” The majority lifeboats on the RMS (not “SS”) Titanic were made of wood, constructed at Harland & Wolff at the same time that Titanic was built. Of the 2,209 people on board the ship at the time of her collision with an iceberg late in the evening of April 14th, 706 people survived in lifeboats that could have carried 1,178 people. (WP)
This tribute to those who died in on a short section of pedestrian railings on the Cupar Way “peace” line (Visual History). In the background are the specially designated spots for tourists to sign the wall (see Collecting Signatures in the Paddy Duffy Collection).
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“”Islam is heathen, Islam is satanic”, “Islam is a doctrine spawned in hell”, “A new evil has arisen”. Churchill was right in 1899, Enoch Powell was right in 1968, Pastor McConnell was right in 2014.”
The quotations above the AI-generated image come from a sermon by Pastor James McConnell in May, 2014, at the Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle on the Shore Road. The sermon was alleged to be “grossly offensive” and McConnell was charged. The key portion of the sermon read, “Today we see powerful evidence that more and more Moslems are putting the Koran’s hatred of Christians and Jews alike into practice. Now, people say there are good Moslems in Britain; that may be so but I don’t trust them, Enoch Powell was right and he lost his career because of it; Enoch Powell was a prophet and he told us that blood would flow in the streets and it has happened. … Islam’s ideas about God about humanity, about salvation, are vastly different from the teaching of the Holy Scriptures. Islam is heathen, Islam is satanic, Islam is a doctrine spawned in hell.”
In the penultimate paragraph of the ruling (pdf), Judge McNally concluded, “Having considered all these matters and the particular facts of this case I have come to the conclusion that the words upon which the charges are based, whilst offensive, do not reach the high threshold required of being “grossly offensive”. I find myself in agreement with Lord Justice Laws in the “Chambers” case when he said that the courts need to be very careful not to criminalise speech which, however contemptible, is no more than offensive. It is not the task of the criminal law to censor offensive utterances. Accordingly I find Pastor McConnell not guilty of both charges.” (In the ultimate paragraph, the judge cited the poet Rumi: “Silence is the language of God; all else is poor translation”.) A small board on the fence below presents this judgment.
The reference to “Churchill in 1899” is probably to volume 2 of The River War, in which Churchill wrote, “Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen – all know how to die – but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.
The reference to “Powell in 1968” is to Powell’s infamous “Rivers of blood” speech (pdf) against immigration to the UK from the Commonwealth. As McConnell notes, Powell was dismissed from Ted Heath’s shadow cabinet the following day.
The PSNI is investigating the display as a “hate incident” rather than a “hate crime”, as there is no underlying crime if the home-owner agrees to the board being mounted. The relevant statute deems it a crime “to use, or to display in writing, words that are threatening, abusive or insulting, where the intention or likely effect is to stir up hatred or arouse fear”. (Slugger)
The piece is at the highly-visible junction of O’Neill Road and Knocknenagh Avenue, Rathfern, Newtownabbey, and part of the fence has been cut away in order to afford a better view.
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Extramural Activity 