We often hear that art is in the eye of the beholder. In art museums, visitors stare in awe at an
Andy Warhol Campbell soup can while other viewers scratch their heads. Some of us shake our heads at a painted wall
and say, “Vandalism!” while others call the work, “Murals.” In the historic Northern Ireland cities of
Belfast and Derry, wall paintings that depict the many clashes of a region
deeply divided by religion and cultural identity have taken on a status that
labels the work as historic artifact and, indeed, art.  As to be expected, the wall images in the Catholic and
Protestant ghettos, the Catholic Falls Road and the Protestant Shankill Road,
celebrate different heroes and different themes. The reader may note the use of the present
tense in reference to the murals of Belfast and Derry. Many of the murals which were painted in the
heat of battle, and which presumably would be removed after the Good Friday
Agreement, are now objects of study by sociologists and are destinations for
guided tours of Belfast and Derry. The
murals are as accessible as the works at MOMA and the Louvre. In his book Drawing
Support: Murals in the North of Ireland, Bill Rolston proposes six
categories for Loyalist murals. The
“King Billy” murals, as we know, memorialize the Battle of the Boyne, a battle
with a lore and legend that ranks it with the Rubicon and Thermopolis and other
signature national struggles. The Battle
of Boyne is commemorated each year on the twelfth of July in a march organized
by the Apprentice Boys members of the Orange Lodge. Mr. Rolston writes in his book: “this event
is frequently depicted as merely cultural, a sort of a unionist Mardi Gras, but
it is limited to members of the Orange Order Lodge which Nationalist cannot
join.” Interestingly, another battle, the
Battle of the Somme, appears in murals to honor the Ulster Division which
suffered devastating losses in the bloodletting at the Somme in World War
I. Many Irish born soldiers fought in
the English army on the continent in WWI, the story told movingly in Tom
Phelan’s novel The Canal Bridge. Other historical themes, such as the
founding of the Ulster Volunteer Force and the Orange Order, are commonly seen
in Protestant sections of Belfast and Derry.  Flags of all kinds are a category in Rolston’s book. Popular are the Union Jack, the Scottish
flag, the flag of St. Andrew and the Red Hand.
The Red Hand is an image in the flag of the province of Ulster. It is associated with Hugh O’Neill and even
earlier is found in Gaelic myth. However,
most recently, owing to its place in the Ulster flag, the Red Hand has become a
Loyalist symbol. Oona Woods, in her
book Seeing Is Believing: Murals in Derry,
says about the Red Hand, “The Red Hand is a traditional symbol of both the
nationalists and unionists in the North.
It can be viewed as a hand to say Stop.
This would tie in with the Not an Inch and No Surrender ethos of
loyalist unionism.” Memorials have a place in Loyalist murals, too. Soldiers killed during the Troubles and
admired politicians, like Edward Carson and George Seawright, can be found honored
on Northern Ireland walls. Paramilitary
murals dominated the walls of Derry and Belfast during the Troubles. They depict killings by the Republicans or
repeat the determination of No Surrender or celebrate successful Loyalist
actions against the Republicans. There are non-political cartoons, too, which are humorous or
which celebrate the heroes of the soccer pitch. Republican murals grew directly from the Troubles. The Catholics had no Battle of the Boyne or
King Billy but the era of the ‘70s gave them Bobby Sands and Bernadette Devlin
and images of armed struggle to paint on the walls of the Catholic ghettos. Republican murals started with the “Blanket Protests” which
were provoked by the change in 1976 of the Republican prisoners’ Special
Category Status. The Republican prisoners
refused to wear the clothing given to common criminals. A direct result of the Blanket Protest was
the hunger strikes of 1981 which led to the death  A popular theme among Republican murals is the many
sectarian clashes during the Troubles.
One dramatic protest that is remembered in wall paintings is the Battle
of the Bogside. On August 12-14, 1969 in
Derry the residents of the Bogside, a Catholic area, protested against a Loyalist Apprentice Boys Parade
along the city walls past their area. The protest turned into a riot which the
local Royal Ulster Constabulary could not contain, so the British Army was
called in to restore order. The presence
of the British Army in the North then became a subject of paintings along with
images of armed IRA men, frequently with balaclavas hiding their faces, and a
memorial to the death of eighteen IRA paramilitaries gave the world the image
of Belfast and Derry as cities in the hands of the gunmen. Although direct references to the Troubles are the most
common subjects of the Republican murals in Belfast and Derry, the wall
paintings in the Catholic areas also advertise Sinn Féin candidates for
election, such as Gerry Adams, and remind Catholic residents of their heroes,
like Patrick Pearse and James Connolly, both signers of the Proclamation of
Independence in 1916. Tourists visiting
the murals must be surprised to see images of Che Guevara, Lenin, the Palestine
Liberation Organization and scenes from the Russian Revolution of 1917 on walls
in Northern Ireland. Many in the IRA at
the time of the Troubles identified with revolutionary organizations and their
leaders.  The history of North Ireland is well documented by the murals
of Belfast and Derry. Any consideration
of the use of color and the design of the Belfast and Derry murals suggest a
quality much above graffiti and are really art expressing the unwritten words
of the working class communities that were affected by the violence of the “Troubles.” One can only hope and pray that the agreements
signed by Loyalists and Republicans will last. (Written
by Joseph McCormack)
|