Wreaths were laid for Remembrance Sunday at the base of the stone on Maritime Drive in Carrickfergus, “erected in A.D. 1972 as a memorial to those citizens of the borough who gave their lives in two World Wars, 1914-1918, 1939-1945 and in subsequent conflicts.”
Among those laying wreaths were Mid- And East-Antrim Borough Council, UDR Veterans’ Association, RBP 17, PSNI, Woodburn junior LOL 258, Retired Police Officers’ Association, Ulidia Integrated College, DUP, PUP, UUP, ABOD, Royal Arch Purple, and others.
This pair of hand-painted (and stencilled) boards is next to the Mount Inn on North Queen Street. Tiger’s Bay is loyal to the memory of “1690” and the service of the 36th Division in WWI in 1916.
“25 years from home. In proud and loving memory of Inky & Candy. Gone but not forgotten.”
October 2000 was a violent month in Tiger’s Bay, north Belfast, as the UDA and UVF feuded. David “Candy” Annesley (commonly known as David Greer – BelTel) was shot in Mountcollyer Street on October 28th by the UVF. On the 31st, Bertie Rice, veteran UVF member and canvasser for the PUP, was killed by the UDA at his Canning Street house. Later the same day, Tommy “Inky” English – UDA commander in north Belfast who had previously lived in Tiger’s Bay – was shot death by the UVF at his Ballyduff home. Mark Quail of the UVF was shot in Rathcoole on November 1st. (BBC | BBC | WP) There were fears that the feud would end (An Phoblacht) but it was formally ended on December 15th, with a joint statement by both groups (RTÉ).
This twenty-fifth anniversary tarp is on the multi-use pitch on North Queen Street at Upper Canning Street.
Stop The Boats has been painted out below the large “Loyalist Tiger’s Bay” and the entire wall painted in solid blue and book-ended by UDA and UFF boards showing silhouetted gunmen in active poses.
The side-wall, home to painted Orange Order symbols since 2017, has been painted black and a board (above) added to E company from Tiger’s Bay. (It’s possible “North Belfast brigade” and “3rd battalion” are the same thing.)
Here are a pair of ‘booked’ notices for competing loyalist groups – UDA and UVF – on adjacent walls in Queen’s Parade, Glengormley. Above, “Booked UDA” where the panels of The Longest Reign have come down; this wall is next to South East Antrim Remembers – see the wide shot below. And in the last two images, “Booked UVF”, which has been in place since 2015, and is next to How Nobly They Fight And Die.
Two positive messages side-by-side in Castle Street: on the left, “Stop war” by Nathan Bowen (ig | web store) and on the right “Love conquers all” by ThisIsLostBoy (ig).
Here are three more by Bowen in Belfast: one | two | three
The image of the completed work (above) is from October 11th. Here (below) is an in-progress image from October 4th:
Poster around the corner in Queen Street, enquiring about a piece produced in 2024 in Beckenham, south London (the reference to “Oct 10th 2022” is unclear):
“Drop the rents” is an IRSP (web) campaign (pdf) to prevent gentrification by getting landlords to set rents in line with the Local Housing Allowance. (You can see the current rates at NIHE.)
In addition to placards and banners such as the one seen here, there is also a “direct action” dimension of the campaign: in August an empty property in west Belfast being advertised at 900 pounds per month was spray-painted with “Drop the rents” (BelTel), in July a north Belfast rental was graffitied (Xitter), and a signage was pasted on a Derry flat in February (Fb video).
“One world, one struggle – Ireland, Palestine”. Free Derry Corner is flying the Palestinian flag, both in cloth and in paint. As we approach the two-year anniversary of the October 7th attacks by Hamas, in which roughly 1,200 Israelis died, the death toll from the IDF invasion now exceeds 65,000 Palestinians (Al Jazeera). There will be a silent march of protestors dressed in black to the Guildhall on Saturday afternoon, October 4th, (Derry Journal), kicking off a “week of solidarity” from Rise For Palestine (Derry Journal); a programme of Think Left events begins on Friday evening (Derry Daily).
“Free Marwan and all Palestinian political prisoners”. Marwan Barghouti, a leader of the group Fatah, has been in Israeli prison since 2002. He was seen last month in a video showing Israeli’s national security minister taunting the 66-year-old Barghouti in his cell (BBC | Al Jazeera | NPR).
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).
Extramural Activity 