“Even Protestants love Marxism/Leninism – just ask Wolfe Tone.” Tone, an Anglican, was an Irish republican and famously thought that the “men of no property” would play a part in the revolution, but what he thought their role would be in the new Ireland is much less clear. The graffiti is in loyalist east Belfast.
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Copyright © 2019 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X06564 London Rd
More pieces are added to the ‘Eastside Urban Gallery’ in east Belfast (see previously Linenopolis | Winter’s End), with two new pieces by Irony (ig) and Artista (ig) along the Comber Greenway (in Tamar Street). Both artists are from London. Sponsored by the Eastside Urban Partnership and Seedhead Arts.
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Copyright © 2019 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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The Bunch Of Grapes in east Belfast was an infamous UDA bar known in particular for the
torture and killing of Georgie Legge in 2001 (Irish Times). The east Belfast Resolve NI (Fb | tw) office – formerly a DUP advice centre – sits across from it at the junction of Beersbridge and Castlereagh roads. The pub has been derelict for 5 years or more and an apartment building is to be developed on the site (BelTel). Demolition would also remove Friz’s Hope, Life.
For a short time (2006-2008?) the pub was called the Ibrox Bar and, when this proved controversial with Rangers FC, the Eye-Brox Bar.
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Copyright © 2018 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X06327 [X03626] Castle Inn
By the end of today counting in the local council elections should be completed. Candidates in Belfast are vying for one of 60 seats on the city council, including former TUV but now independent candidate Jolene Bunting in the Court district. Will voters identify with her message of conservative values and feelings of persecution? This is the second selection of Bunting’s posters – see previously Not Politically Correct. (For ‘Soldier F’ see Stop The Witch-Hunt; for ‘IRA terrorists’ on the council, see Vote All Unionist.)
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Copyright © 2019 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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Ending The Harm is a Department Of Justice (Tackling Paramilitarism Programme) campaign of posters, radio ads, and hard-hitting videos (YouTube) aimed at combatting paramilitary-style violence. This hoarding is on Newtownards Road, in competition with the UVF mural in the Iceland car-park (see Please Pay Here).
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Copyright © 2019 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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After almost fourteen years the long-standing Rising Sons Flute Band mural off Newtownards Road (at the old Bright Street) has been replaced with a mural to the (modern) YCV, the youth division of the UVF. The vine of flowers in yellow includes the shamrock, thistle, and Tudor rose (but not the daffodil of Wales, which is named along with Scotland, England, and the YCV battalions of east Belfast extending to Newtownards and Bangor) .
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Copyright © 2019 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X06460
The 8th battalion of the RIR was drawn from east Belfast’s Ulster Volunteers in 1914. The board shown above, on the practice hall of Rising Sons Flute Band (Fb), shows the Thiepval Memorial to the missing of the Somme – the heroes that in whose footsteps the band claim to march.
The board replaces the tarp saying “Loyalists welcome“.
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Copyright © 2018 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X06398 [X05378]
The Union Flag/UVF side-wall is a new addition to the Ulster Volunteers/UVF memorial in London Road, east Belfast. The main panel shows WWI soldiers going over the top (see Between The Crosses) while the four portraits to its right are of deceased UVF volunteers of the 70s and 80s – Seymour, Long, Cordner, and Bennett – (see Ulster’s Brave).
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Copyright © 2018 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X06316
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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Copyright © 2018 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X06354 Isthmus Street
Three of the UDA/UYM/LPA murals in Kenbaan Street (see We Forget Them Not and Tomorrow Belongs To Us) have been replaced by the spray-painted boards shown here and the wall of the memorial garden repainted. The red colour-scheme matches the Tim Collins board to the left.
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Copyright © 2018 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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Extramural Activity 