printed board/placard

Time To Decide!

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Here is a selection of anti-Protocol placards from the Caw, Londonderry and Newbuildings. Above: a PSNI officer with a Sinn Féin badge – “PSNI – destroying the loyalist community since 4th Nov. 2001. In the pocket of Sinn Féin.” (November 4th, 2001 is the date the PSNI was created.) For the farmer’s wife protecting the farm, see Deserted, well I can stand alone. Below: “Newbuildings says No to Irish Sea border”, “Loyalist Newbuildings will never accept a border in the Irish Sea”, “The Belfast Agreement has been broken – the deal’s off”, and “Our forefathers fought for our freedom and rights/No border in the sea or we continue the fight”.

For similar placards in Moygashel, see Belfast Agreement Null And Void.

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From The Shipyard To The Somme

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The 36th (Ulster) Division Memorial Association (Fb) put on a play called From The Shipyard To The Somme (Fb | watch on youtube) in Connswater Community Centre in 2013. It follows a group of men from east Belfast who joined the Ulster Volunteers in Belfast but are now training at Abercorn barracks in Ballykinlar (later an internment camp) as members of the 36th Division, before going to the Battle Of The Somme in France.

Belfast – with one tenth of the population – provided about a third of the Irish soldier to participate in WWI. In the shipyards, Harland & Wolff responded to the slow-down in production not by putting everyone on short time but by letting go of employees, particularly unskilled employees, for whom the wages of soldiering were competitive (particularly if married), while skilled men were reclassified as “munitions workers” needed to fulfill war contracts (History Ireland | Long Kesh Inside Out).

The Somme board, which dates to about 2015, is above Connswater Commemorates and The Glorious Dead.

The plaques are to John Cochrane of the Mersey Street Area Residents Association and Margaret Proctor ?of the Connswater Community Centre?

The industrial mural on the side perhaps features the Ballymacarrett rail crash of 1945, described previously in Step Back In Time.

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The Six Counties

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Of some interest in this Mersey Street NI Centenary board is the use of St Patrick’s saltire (in the background). The saltire is an anglo symbol of Ireland and was included in the Union Flag when the union was between Britain and Ireland and thus – like the word “Ulster” – has been reduced to meaning Northern Ireland after partition.

There is also an anti-Irish Sea border board on the next house along – see An Act Of Betrayal. This features the Union Flag together with flags representing the “home countries”: the Welsh dragon, the English St George’s Cross, the Scots St Andrew’s Saltire, and the Northern Irish Ulster Banner.

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Just Don’t

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“Do not vax” and “Don’t join the PSNI”. “Do not vax” is a coronavirus conspiracy theory, related to What We Want You To Think, We Want A Free Future and also 5G Kills You and A Tale Of Two Protests.

The Lasaır Dhearg board takes the “poster officer” from the 2021 recruitment campaign and puts them against a backdrop of riot officers firing plastic bullets. “17 people have been killed by plastic bullets, including 8 children.” “It is believed that the PSNI retain a stockpile of over 50,000 deadly plastic bullets.” The British state does not use plastic bullets anywhere but occupied Ireland.” “The PSNI is not a normal police force.” Here is the 2021 Amnesty report on the use of water cannon and “Attenuating Energy Projectiles” in the north. In November, relatives of Carol Ann Kelly went to Stormont to call for an end to the use of plastic bullets (BelTel).

The Sınn Féın board appears to involve stock photography, as we have noted before in Will This Work For You?

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Lest We Forget

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This is the third commemoration to Village UVF volunteer Stevie McCrea and the second to Sammy Mehaffy – see Stephen Desmond McCrea and Battalion Of The Dead, which also includes John Hanna, who has a solo board in Prince Edward Pk.

As is often now the case, the modern UVF (McCrea died 1989-02-18 from wounds sustained in the IPLO attack on the Orange Cross, and Mehaffy on 1991-11-13, shot by the IRA in nearby Lecale Street) is mixed in with the 1912 anti-Home Rule Ulster Volunteers and Young Citizen Volunteers, which are themselves blended together with WWI and the 36th (Ulster) Division of 1914-1918.

Replaced 2nd Batt B Coy and next to Taking Aim in Tavanagh St.

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Four F*cks Given

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Derry’s Bogside is at odds with everyone, it seems: above, the English Queen and her platinum jubilee, below, NATO, and … Creggan!

Lasair Dhearg’s take on the jubilee is entitled 70 Years A Parasite.

The anti-NATO placard has a small hammer-and-sickle at the bottom.

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The Famous

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Sons Of Kai flute band (ig) re-formed in 2006 (youtube | Coin Talk) but here claims as its origin date “1972”. IWM gives the founding year as 1970, and quotes one of the founders, Bo Kerr, saying that the band was named after Danish soccer player Kai Johansen (WP), who played for Rangers from 1965-1970, and that the “tartan” gang (History Ireland) ‘Rathcoole KAI’ subsequently took its named from the band. Then (BelTel) and now (Irish News | Slugger) “KAI” is understood to stand for “Kill All Irish”. A 1982 image of the Rathcoole KAI “red devils” mural can be seen in the Ciaran McGowan collection at IWM.

[2024 update: the band’s foundation story is told in more detail in Kai Johansen’s Bar.]

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Remember Your Neighbourhood

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“A scramble for the window seat/Steam curls as the whistle blows/Clickety clack train on track.//Remember your neighbourhood in the late afternoon sun/The district was a different place then/All you owned was a box full of toys and a smile on your face.”

The York Road railway station was a few minutes’ walk below Ritchie Street – site of this mural and community garden – until it closed in 1992. The original line was to Ballymena and then Coleraine and London-/Derry, with service to Carrick and Larne added later. It was badly damaged in WWII and its final demise came with the opening of Belfast Central in 1976 (WP). It was replaced with Yorkgate in 1992 which no longer serves as a terminus (WP), but the line still runs along behind the end of the streets along York Road and the Grove area of the Shore Road.

Ritchie Street, Belfast

Previously in Ritchie St: Union Flag

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On The Occasion Of Her Platinum Jubilee

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“The people of Rathcoole send their sincere and heartfelt congratulations to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on the historic occasion of Her Platinum Jubilee.” The Monday at the end of May is usually a bank holiday in the UK, but this year it is being postponed until the end of the week and combined with an additional one to create a four-day weekend beginning this Thursday in celebration of the 70th (“platinum”) anniversary of the accession of Elizabeth on February 6th, 1952 (the coronation was on June 2nd, 1953).

The mural centrally shows an official portrait from 1992, wearing the orders of George VI and George V; the four medallions show Elizabeth at her birth, her coronation, “trooping the colour” on her birthday, and 70th wedding anniversary in 2017.

With support from RATH (Rathcoole Achieving, Transforming, Helping each other) and Dalaradia (web). For another Dalaradia board in Rathcoole, see Kingdom Of The Pretani ; for a Cú Chulainn version of the Dalaradia board, see Defending Ulster From Gaelic Attacks.

See previously: Rathcoole UDA celebrate the golden jubilee.

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The Red Hand And The Winning Hand

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Three images of Home Rule vintage are resurrected on Village lamp-posts to fit the situation of the current moment:

“The red hand and the winning hand” is an anti-Home Rule postcard (NMNI) featuring Craig, Bonar Law, Wallace, and Carson as the four aces, in addition to the red hand itself as joker or wild card. Carson and Craig need no introduction; Andrew Bonar Law was the leader of the (opposition) Conservative Party at the time of the third Home Rule bill (WP), while Colonel Robert Hugh Wallace was grand master of the Belfast Orange Order and as such the main organiser of protests against the bill (DIB).

“It’s our flag – fight for it, work for it” is an Australian recruitment poster from WWI (NMNI).

“Against home rule – hand up!” shows a nine-county Ulster, including Donegal, Cavan, Monaghan (and “Derry”) with the red hand emanating from Tyrone, the Red Hand County, symbol of the O’Neills (WP).

For the Northern Ireland coat of arms, see The Lion And The Elk and (on a much earlier mural in the Shankill) Quis Separabit.

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