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”.
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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McMaster and Lendrick streets – part of a conservation site of Victorian terraced houses (Dept For Communities) – were the epicentre of last week’s anti-immigration riots, with cars and houses in the street set ablaze and families evacuated to safety by the security forces (BBC video). The image below shows the boarded-up windows of number 11 McMaster Street, with a melted satellite dish above the door, while the Union Flag and Ulster Banner in the window of number 9 are unscathed.
Also in the street: An Act Of Betrayal (about the Sea Border) and (before that, c. 2010) Young Newtown UDA.
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The German Luftwaffe blitzed Belfast on four occasions in April and May of 1941, targeting especially the industrial yards of east Belfast, including H&W shipbuilding and Short Brothers. Nearby streets were hit in the attacks (see Belfast Blitz), and some suffered very heavy damage, including Thistle, Tower, and Westbourne streets. This new memorial (City Council planning application) is in the grounds of Westbourne Presbyterian church, which was built in 1877 (Stone Database), was hit during the war, but survived.
See also: Desano’s.
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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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On the anniversary of David Ervine’s death, January 8th, a new board was launched in his memory, with images of Ervine “yearning for peace” in the cages of Long Kesh, where he met Gusty Spence (the pair can be seen together in the middle of the first column of photographs).
After his release, Ervine turned to politics, running unsuccessfully as a PUP candidate for Pottinger in the Belfast City Council elections of 1985 (WP); he would eventually be successful in 1997. In 1998 he was returned by Belfast East in the Assembly election (ARK). He helped bring about the loyalist ceasefire in 1994 – which was read aloud by Spence (youtube) – and was pro-Agreement in 1998 (DIB | Guardian | Slugger).
The information about the Memory Chair sculpture makes mention of Ervine’s boots but it seems they have not survived the mothballing of the sculpture which was last seen on site – boots included – in 2014.
Montrose Street South, replacing the various pieces seen in late 2024’s Today, Everyday, And Always.
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This is a new tarp on Dee Street, east Belfast, in which a child asks a sleeping lion to “wake up”. Both are wrapped in the Union Flag. The (probable) context for the image is the idea that foreigners – and in particular, non-white, non-Christian, foreigners – have been moving to the UK and that over time their numbers have increased, without much notice, to such a level that English (or more broadly, the UK) people need to rouse themselves in order to notice and counter this.
We have a working principle that the level of investment in a piece’s production is an indicator of the extent to which the producer(s) believes it will be accepted (or at least countenanced) by the community in which it appears. This printed tarp is, as far as we know, the most sophisticated expression of anti-immigrant feeling so far (or at least, the most expensive to produce). Prior to this, there have been placards (One Big Clean-Up | Not A Dumping Ground | If Necessary We Must Shed Blood), a simple stencil (I Was A Stranger), a short-lived printed paste-up (Multiculturalism Is Genocide), and various appearances of “locals only” graffiti (2025 | 2024 | 2014 | 2014). According to a 2023 study from KCL, 32% of UK residents think the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory is “definitely” or “probably” true, while 22% of Irish people (in 2024) think so (Gript/Electoral Commission).
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At the heart of this east Belfast homage to the healing power of soccer are German and British soldiers shaking hands over a ball in ‘no man’s land’ on the Western Front, on Christmas Day, 1914. The image is not from a contemporary photograph but a modern one of a 2014 sculpture depicting such an even by Andy Edwards (TruceStatue) (who also did the Pat Jennings sculpture in Newry – seen in Pat Jennings). For more images of the WWI soccer statue, see WWI Cemeteries.
It’s not clear that matches between opposing forces – rather than simple fraternisation – were actually played; see Wikipedia for a review of the evidence.
Dee Street, east Belfast.
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“With voice, pen or hand we will defend our land.” David (Davy) Patterson (12-10-1955 – 03-01-2019) was a member of the 1st East Belfast Rangers Supporters Club (Fb) and Albertbridge Glentoran Supporters Club (Funeral Times).
This memorial board is the side-wall to the Somme Society mural (see Their Name Liveth Forevermore) and the Red Hand Commando memorial garden in Hunt Street, east Belfast.
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Extramural Activity 