Tiger’s Bay Loyal

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.

Also included below is the nearby “We will remember them” piece, seen previously in North Belfast Friends Of The Somme.

Greenmount Street, Tiger’s Bay, north Belfast

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2025 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X15804 X15803 X15805

Inky & Candy

“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.

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2025 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X15799 X15801 X15802 X15800

Feriens Tego

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.)

For the KCIII board above, see I Here Present Unto You Your Undoubted King.

Limestone Road and North Queen Street, Tiger’s Bay, north Belfast

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2025 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X15796
X15858 X15859 X15797 [X15860] X15861
X15798 X15857 X15856

Booked

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.

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2025 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X15793 X15792 X15791
X15795 X15794

Pledge For Positivity

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):

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2025 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X15784
X15781 [X15782] [X15783]
X15780

Drop The Rents

“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).

See previously: “Drop the rents” graffiti in Belfast in 2023.

In the background is The Petrol Bomber.

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2025 Andy McDonagh/Eclipso Pictures (ig | Fb)
X15774 X15773

One World, One Struggle

“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).

In the background (above) is The Petrol Bomber and (below) the Bernadette mural, both part of The People’s Gallery.

Commissioned by the Bloody Sunday Trust (web).

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2025 Andy McDonagh/Eclipso Pictures (ig | Fb)
X15772 X15771

Free Marwan

“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).

Barghouti and 1,000 other prisoners went on hunger-strike in 2017 in order to win family visits for prisoners; see “Free Marwan Barghouti” in Belfast and in Derry and Barghouti’s quote “Our Chains Will Be Broken Before We Are” in a north Belfast stencil.

The photograph reproduced in this mural, of Barghouti giving the “V” for victory symbol while in handcuffs, can be seen at New Arab.

Divis Street, west Belfast, on the International Wall, where Barghouti’s son Aarab spoke at the launch (youtube).

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2025 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X15767 X15766 X15768

Please Wake Up

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).

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2025 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X15762 X15763

The Dividing Wall Between Us

Work on the “New Life” (New Life City church – Fb) concrete relief on the Cupar Way “peace” line (war wall) at the North Howard Street gates has been completed – with brightly coloured paints and a pair of plaques below the cross that read “The first 3D cement peace fresco on a Belfast dividing wall. Created by local artist Debbie Hutchings ‘Irish Angel’. The for the amazing help of ECC Builders. Created on behalf of New Life City Church. Dedicated by Pastor Johnny McKee with young people & others from New Life City Church from both sides of the wall. Thursday 14th August 2025. ‘He is our peace who has destroyed the dividing wall between us’ Eph. 2.14.”

The creator is Debbie Hutchings, a member of the New Life City church (Fb) (Belfast Media); the piece is on top of the ‘repent’ version of the New Life mural, and it contains scriptural quotations from John 3:16: “For God so loved the world He gave His only begotton [begotten] son so that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” and John 3:8: “The wind blows as it chooses, you can hear it’s [its] sound but you do not know where it came from or where it is going; so it is with the hearts of those born of the spirit”. There is video of Hutchings at work in this Irish News video on Fb and at the BelTel.

Work began at the beginning of April; there are in-progress images below from July 1st and May 1st.

For the board to the left, see Hope Unlocking Friendships.

July 1st:

May 1st:

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2025 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X15750c X15751 X15752 X15753 X15754 X15755 X15756 X15757 X15758
[X15650] X15651
X15391 [X15392] X15393