There are nine gable walls along Clanmorris Avenue, Whitehill (Bangor) which – more importantly – can be seen from the South Circular Road approaching the Bloomfield shopping centre. On many of these walls “UVF reserved” has now appeared, even on the one that recently acquired a UDA board (see third image, below). Above: a small “UVF pilgrims” board; bottom: “RIP GFA“; in between: “The media is the virus”.
In Eddie The Trooper murals, the reaper typically follows behind to collect the bodies. But lately he has been stepping into the limelight by himself, accompanied by a poem of terror (similar to the poem in The Reaper Come To Call): “The Provo’s fear the reaper/From the UFF he comes/The loyalist executioner/He brings death with his gun/He strikes when no one expects him to/From behind his hood cold eyes/The reaper brings stiff justice/As another Provo dies/He brought revenge for Teebane/In the Ormeau bookies five/And for the Shankill bombing/Greysteel was his reply/Sometimes his lust is chilling/As he goes about his task/The Provo’s fear the reaper/There’s death behind the mask”
The mural above commemorates the 30th anniversary of the death of Gary ‘Lofty’ Lynch on August 9th, 1991. Lynch was an election worker for the Ulster Democratic Party, whose Ken Kerr held a seat on Derry City Council from 1989 to 1993, representing the Waterside (WP). Lynch was shot and killed by the IRA outside Foyle Meats where he worked, only a few months after UDA commander and UDP party leader Cecil McKnight was killed (UPI).
The UDP was founded as the UDLP (“L” for “loyalist’) in 1981 and was dissolved in 2001 when the UDA rejected the Belfast Agreement (Guardian | Irish Times). It proposed an independent Northern Ireland within the Commonwealth and Europe.
“The Parachute Regiment betrayed by the government to satisfy IRA Army Council demands.” The charges of murder and attempted murder against Soldier F were originally lodged (CNN) and pursued in 2019 (Guardian) but in 2021 the PPS decided to drop the charges. Five months ago that decision was quashed (BelTel | Guardian). The charges against Soldier F concerned two specific victims, William McKinney and James Wray, though witness testimony involves F in at least four of the deaths (Irish Central | Village). In response to the original charges, the Movilla UDA added the framed tarp shown here to their ‘hooded gunmen’ board in Georges Street, Newtownards.
For a long time (at least 2016-2018) there was an unfinished mural on this wall along Drumhirk Drive in Kilcooley, Bangor. It has been replaced by this UDA North Down Battalion board.
Here are dozen South East Antrim UDA boards along Shanlea Drive in Ballycraigy (Larne). The first four commemorate the massive bonfire built each year (see Commonwealth Handling Equipment) – “We lead, others follow”.
The middle are the most violent, showing volunteers wearing balaclavas and carrying assault rifles, with a poem about killing “Provos” which here seems to mean simply Catholics, as no IRA members were killed in either Ormeau or Greysteel. “The Provo’s fear the reaper/From the UFF he comes/The loyalist executioner/He brings judgment with his gun//He strikes when no one expects him too/From behind his hood cold eyes/The reaper brings stiff justice/As another Provo dies//He brought revenge for the Bann/ In Ormeau bookies five/And for the Shankill bombing/Greysteel was his reply//Sometimes his lust is chilling/As he goes about his task/The Provo’s fear the reaper/There’s death behind his mask.” There was a poem with the same sentiment in south Belfast (see The Reaper Come To Call) next to a mural of Eddie The Trooper.
Of the final four (the right-hand side) the historical photograph was the basis for a mural in south Belfast.
Robert Dougan was commander of the UDA South Belfast Brigade and lived Oranmore Drive (BelTel). He was killed by the IRA on February 10th, 1998 while sitting in a car outside Balmoral Textiles in Dunmurry, which led to a month-long expulsion of Sinn Féin from the peace talks taking place at the time (L.A. Times); two months later the Good Friday Agreement was signed. There had been attempts on his life in 1993 and 1994 (Irish Times).
The plaques, from left to right, are to Rodney McBride (1996), Alec Legge (2007), Jim Bradshaw (2008), Robert Dougan (1998), Greg Bradshaw (2014), David Pollock (2015). Harry Haggan (2010), William Stevenson (2008).
Tildarg Avenue. There is a mural to Dougan on Sandy Row – see Everyone’s Friend.
Perhaps because of the Covid pandemic, this mural of UDA volunteers on parade reflected in the sunglasses of one of their comrades took months to complete (it was started in late 2020 and was still unfinished last summer). It replaces the previous “UFF Formed 1973” mural – see Northern Island.
The photograph reproduced is from the 1974 Ulster Workers’ Strike; it appeared on the cover of Don Anderson’s Fourteen May Days (CAIN).
The house in Bond’s Place that had been home to an Eddie mural for many years was torn down last summer (see final image for the hoarding around the site of the absent gable); it had been used since at least 1982 for images of the Commonwealth, King Billy, and, since 1996, Eddie The Trooper. The final Eddie board that was on the wall has been moved one neighbourhood over, into Lincoln Court. It was the first to include the words “Spirit Of ’93” – presumably a reference to the Greysteel Massacre in which eight people in the Rising Sun bar were killed in reprisal for the Shankill Bombing (BelTel). The “raid” was planned in – and both gunmen rented rooms at – the UDP office on Bond’s Place, just across Bonds Street (NI Judiciary).
“South Belfast – time for truth – exposing collusion – Ormeau Road – ‘Bullets do not only travel distance but also through time'” [Based on a quote by James Kennedy’s father: “The bullets that killed James didn’t just travel in distance, they travelled in time. Some of those bullets never stop travelling.” (Irish Times)]
Police Ombudsman Marie Andersons’s report into various murders and attempted murders in south Belfast was released yesterday (February 7th, 2022) and presented a list of “collusive behaviours” between the RUC and loyalist paramilitaries. Among the incidents investigated was the killing of five people “murdered for their faith” at the Sean Graham bookies’ office on the Ormeau Road in February 5th, 1992; the report found that one of the two UDA gunmen was a Special Branch informant and that a Browning pistol used in the attack had been supplied by the RUC (as had previously been revealed in the 2010 HET Inquiry report) and that records relating to the weapon had been withheld from investigators (Irish Times | Belfast Live). For the 30th anniversary, relatives of the five men killed and of five more who were injured displayed their portraits next to the small memorial garden, which itself was updated to mark the third decade since their deaths: “1992-2022” (Belfast Live).
The plaque on the far left is to Charles Jospeh McGrillen, shot by the UDA/UFF in 1988 at his work in Dunne’s on the Annadale embankment (Sutton). Next to the bookies’ parlour is a plaque to Fian Jim Templeton.
Extramural Activity 