The line “The gates we’ll close against our foes on the 18th of December” comes from the song ‘The Crimson Banner’ (lyrics | youtube).
The panels on either side depict … “Closing the gates against King James’ rebel hordes”, “the Memorial Hall, Londonderry”, Saint Columb’s Cathedral”, “famine and sickness”, “the burning of Lundy” … and … “Colonel John Mitchelburne”, “Walker’s column”, “Colonel Henry Baker”, “the Mountjoy breaks the boom”, “Governor George Walker”, “Roaring Meg”, “Ada Murray – the cry was “No surrender””
Shankill Road at Mountjoy Street, upper Shankill, west Belfast
“1914 West Belfast regiment, Ulster Volunteer Force – 36th (Ulster) division, Royal Irish Rifles.” Men from the West Belfast Ulster Volunteers – which included the Shankill and Woodvale areas – joined the 9th battalion of the Royal Irish Rifles, which became part of the 107th brigade of the 36th division.
The main part of this new gable-sized board places two colourised photographs on top of each other. The first (upper) photo shows shows the first and second battalions of the West Down regiment being presented with their colours in May, 1914 (CyberProd). The second (lower) photo shows the first and second battalions of the West Belfast regiment receiving the Kings colours in May, 1914 (CyberProd).
In the bottom left corner is a poem called “Sons of Ulster” written on a scroll: “Muster round me Sons of Ulster,/And pay heed to what I speak,/Of the war to end all wars,/In the place where hell is deep.//Go and help to save the Empire,/Glorious deeds shall Ulster reap./Go and fight for King and Country,/In the place where hell is deep.//The order goes out – “Fix Bayonets!”/As Zero Hour does creep,/Ulster’s prime stands tall in line,/In the place where hell is deep.//No-Man’s Land hears a whistling band,/From Thiepval Wood they sweep./The crosses grow where the Ancre flows,/In the place where hell is deep.//With bomb and gun they repelled the Hun,/The Redoubt they die to keep./They fought as one did Ulster’s Sons,/In the place where hell is deep.//To the Glory of God on this sacred sod,/Where Ulster’s Blood does seep,/Yours and mine slaughtered like swine,/In the place where hell is deep.//Death patiently waits in this stalemate,/For Ulster’s love will weep,/The poppies grow where the Ancre flows,/In the place where hell is deep.”
In the bottom right, the Ulster Tower is dedicated: “‘Field Marshall Sir Henry Hughes Wilson, 1st Baronet, GCB, DSO, MP, Colonel Commandant, Rifle Brigade, Chief Of The Imperial General Staff. Field Marshall Sir Henry Hughes Wilson of County Longford, was one of the most senior British Staff Officers to serve int he First World War. On 18th November 1921, in the stead of Sir Edward Carson and Sir James Craig, who were both ill at the time, Sir Henry undertook the solemn duty of dedicating the newly constructed Ulster Memorial Tower, on the site of the Somme battlefield. Tragically, on 22nd June 1922, Sir Henry, who also served as a Unionist politician, was assassinated outside his London home.”
Conway Street, Shankill, west Belfast, replacing Ulster Tower.
The United States Of America celebrates the 250th anniversary of its adoption of the Declaration Of Independence today, July 4th, 2026. In the Declaration, delegates from the thirteen (former) colonies set out their reasons for voting to overthrow British rule on July 2nd, noting twenty-seven grievances against the reigning monarch, George III of Great Britain And Ireland. At the time, the American Revolution was ongoing, and the Continental Congress meeting this time in Philadelphia was soon compelled to move to Baltimore, Maryland; the permanent Congress was not established until 1781.
On the left of the board, various symbols of the eventual United States Of America – John Trumbull’s painting ‘Declaration Of Independence’ (image at WP) and a bald eagle upon a Stars And Stripes formed by an outline of the eastern sea-board (which for an unknown reason lists New Castle (not “Newcastle”) alongside Philadelphia), the Liberty Bell, an “America 250 years” pin, the Seal, the Declaration, and a trapper or frontiersman who represents the westward expansion of European Americans – including the Scotch-Irish (Ulster Sails West) – across the continent.
The “liberty and law” emblem, with the red hand against the stars and stripes, surrounded by a garland of thistle and shamrock, is unknown.
The seated gentleman is James Hoban, a Catholic from Co Kilkenny, who studied architecture in Dublin and (after emigrating in 1878) designed the White House – a three-storey model (later reduced to two) is on the desk behind his quill – and (in the framed picture behind him) the Charleston (South Carolina) court-house.
In the centre is a quote attributed to James Buchanan, “My Ulster blood is my most priceless heritage”; for confusion over the quote see James Buchanan. Buchanan is also pictured (next to the word “Donegal”). The Great Seal was designed by Charles Thomson, originally from Maghera. He was also a signatory to the Declaration.
The crown above the red hand is probably the Tudor Crown, destroyed in 1649 (WP). A bed of shamrock supports the title banner.
The Ulster-Scots lineage of seventeen presidents (plus vice-president Andrew Calhoun) is presented along the bottom between the mottos “E pluribus unum” and “In God we trust”. (The Ulster-Scots Agency has a pdf of the Presidents.)
On the right, the poster marked “Eagle’s Wings”, under the Buchanan quote, also appears to come from the Ulster-Scots Agency. It is actually about the Eagle Wing, the ship pictured to the poster’s left (as imagined by water-colour painter Dan Parsons) that undertook the first voyage of Scots-Irish to North America in 1636. The journey was not a success: the roughly 140 dissenters returned to Ireland and some went to Scotland to avoid continued persecution (Presbyterian History.)
The ‘Blue Plaques’ of various notable figures are superimposed upon a period map: John Wallace Crawford, Francis Makemie, James McGregor, Charles Thomson, John Dunlap, Ezekiel Donnell, James Buchanan, Oliver Pollock, Thomas J ‘Stonewall’ Jackson, Robert Adrain, James Holmes. The portraits are of James Buchanan, Teddy Roosevelt (above Andrew Jackson’s ancestral cottage in Carrickfergus), Davey Crockett, and an unknown female figure (comment/get in touch if you can identify her).
The gravestone is to the Rev William Martin, a Reformed Presbyterian (Covenanter) minister, who led a contingent of 1,000 people in five ships in 1772 to Charlestown, South Carolina (Reformation History | History Ireland). The flag is the flag of the Covenanters (WP).
“Celebrating our heritage, inspiring tomorrow.” This year’s Greater Shankill Community Festival began on June 30th with the launch of Ulster’s American Connection and will end with a Siege Of Derry re-enactment on July 11th – the full programme can be found on Fb. One event included in the festival is the “Long Kesh Inside Out” exhibition in the Shankill ACT, which opened on June 1st.
“Open gates. Open borders. Open season. Your sheep. Their feast.” Politicians from Sınn Féın, the SDLP, Alliance, and People Before Profit are shown opening the gates for masked and armed men who are coming from the sea and bidding them to enter a sheepfold of “our constituents”.
The PSNI are investigating the banner as a “hate incident” (rather than a “hate crime” – see A New Evil for the difference) (BelTel). On July first, it was reported that the banner had been removed and replaced with Union Flags and an Ulster Banner (Belfast Media | News Letter). Belfast City Council denied that it was involved in the removal (BelTel) – Loughside Park is council property. And as these pictures show, by July third it had been reinstated and the removal was only “temporary” and “tactical” (BelTel | Fb).
Shore Crescent prepares for Eleventh Night with a bonfire and a large sign explaining the positive impact of the tradition:
“Shore Crescent bonfire – a proud loyalist tradition. Standing firm in our heritage, our loyalty & our values. Faith – loyalty – respect – heritage. [The bonfire …] Celebrates our heritage – honours our history, culture and the sacrifices made by those who went before us; strengthens our community – brings families, friends and neighbours together, building unity, pride and a sense of belonging; affirms our loyalty – a clear and proud expression of our loyalty to the Crown and the United Kingdom; educates & remembers – teaches future generations the importance of our traditions and the true meaning behind them; promotes respect & pride – shows respect for our values and beliefs and promotes pride in being Loyalist; supports local [groups] & raises funds – helps support local groups, charities and initiatives that make a real difference; secures our future – by standing together today, we protect our identity, freedom and way of life for tomorrow. One tradition. One community. One loyal people. Shore Crescent loyal.”
Next to Loughside Playground, Shore Road, north Belfast
A feature of recent (anti-immigration) protests is the presence of Christian flags, not marked with any particular denomination or with Orange Order symbols but appealing to “Jesus”. These are a new addition alongside the other flags and imagery of loyalism – the Union Flag, Ulster Banner, Israeli flag – and the recent anti-immigrant boards and banners.
The image above shows a rally in Sandy Row, south Belfast, (from late November, 2025) in which a flag reading “Jesus – the way, the truth, the life” flies above a St Patrick’s Saltire and in the midst of a number of Flags Of Zion. (For a bizarre conjunction of Nazi and Israeli iconography, see I Never Felt More Like Singing The Blues.)
The second image comes from the large painted board seen in Sorry It Was All For Nothing, where a pair of ‘Jesus is king’ flags fly on either side of the board, in opposition to the “Islamic” flags carried by the cloaked invaders.
The third image – a simple “Jesus is king” on a black background – is from the flats on the Shore Road in north Belfast, which was the site, in late 2024, of flags supporting Donald Trump – see Take America Back and I Never Felt More Like Singing The Blues.
The final pair of images show BCM Rathcoole [the Rathcoole branch of Belfast Christian Ministry] flags flying in Rathcoole, Newtownabbey. As one would expect in Rathcoole, the BCM Fb page is strongly PUL-coded, but is free from anti-immigrant or Islamophobic content. It is possible that either the group’s flags have been mounted by a subset of anti-immigrant members (or outsiders) or that the group is taking advantage of the up-surge of interest in Christianity generated by the anti-Islam protests (and of the practice of flying flags from light-poles) in order to advertise itself. In these two images, the flags fly next to the national flag of the Netherlands (for King Billy/Orangism) and the Ulster Banner.
Text above: “Sir Edward Carson 1854 – 1935 “Uncrowned King of Ulster” Founding member and leader of the Ulster Volunteers. Carson led Ulster Unionist resistance to the British Government’s attempts to introduce Home Rule for the whole of Ireland.”
The epithet “uncrowned King” seems to be generally used of Carson and not attributable to any one source. Here is a September 1912 newspaper article that calls Carson the “uncrowned King of the North” and relays criticisms of a Carson reception in Portadown as “a parody upon a royal reception” and “an insult to the King”. A May 1914 review of (the book) The Reign Of Edward Carson refers to “King Carson”. (Here is a postcard depicting Carson as a king upon a throne – Postcards Ireland. And a cartoon showing “The Ulster King-At-Arms“.)
The phrase is an echo of and response to the phrase “uncrowned king of Ireland”, which was used of both O’Connell and Parnell. Here is an 1847 article describing both O’Connell and the Napoleonic Governor-General of Algeria (WP) as “uncrowned monarch[s]”. According to WP, the epithet was first applied to Parnell in 1880, because he was so popular during a tour of the United States and Canada. At the end of James Joyce’s story ‘Ivy Day In The Committee Room’ a character recites a poem about Parnell, beginning “He is dead. Our uncrowned king is dead” (archive.com).
The wording “the British government’s attempts to introduce Home Rule” is more forthright than we are used to. Typically the resistance is simply to “Home Rule”. This wording makes clear that the Ulster Volunteers were a private militia preparing for the possibility of fighting the regular British Army and Navy. By being so explicit, this wording suggests that we are currently living through a time in which loyalists consider the “British government” to be insufficiently British, just as was the case in 1912.
Text below: “Sir Edward Carson being escorted by members of the Ulster Special Service Force on the Newtownards Road passing the Belvoir Bar in the company of Captain James Craig and the Officer Commanding of the Ulster Volunteer Force Sir George Richardson.”
According to a Regimental Band Fb post, “Sir Edward Carson was speaking at the Reform Club in Royal Avenue. There was an opinion that the British Government were going to try and arrest him so he was escorted to the safety of Craigavon House [shown on the right of the mural]. This photo was taken on the 20th March, 1914.” This October 1913 article, in addition to calling Carson “Ulster’s Uncrowned King”, notes that he travelled with a detective and carried a revolver.
By Dee Craig (Fb), presumably, replacing his hooded gunmen mural The Right To Defend Yourself, on the Newtownards Road at (the former) Bright Street.
Eddie The Trooper makes an appearance as a Coleraine FC (“the pride of Ulster”) supporter, stomping on the grave of rival clubs Cliftonville (left) and Ballymena (right).
The UVF boards at the junction of London and My Lady’s roads in east Belfast have been completely replaced (compared to 2022). The hooded gunmen on the short side have been replaced by “Joy, peace, love” while a tribute to David Ervine now replaces the lettering reading “East Belfast Ulster Volunteer Force”. (For more about Ervine, and the UVF roll of honour, see the parallel entry in the Paddy Duffy Collection.)
The largest panel remains a tribute to the dead of WWI, specifically now the “3rd battalion (Mountpottinger)” of the East Belfast regiment of the Ulster Volunteers who “marched to the old town hall in Victoria Street accompanied by the Duke Of York Pipe Band and around 270 members volunteered”. The long text explains the negotiation between Kitchener and Craig over the formation of the 36th Division, that the East Belfast volunteers joined the 8th Battalion of the Royal Irish Rifles, and that “training took place at Ballykinlar in County Down and the Battalion became known as “Ballymacarret’s Own”.”
The final image shows the trio of photographs of the UVF flute band. The middle photograph has been changed since the launch, as it was of the band marching past the site of the 1992 Sean Graham bookies massacre to which family-members of the victims objected (Crime World) – again, see the parallel entry in the Paddy Duffy Collection. The photograph now in its place is of the band outside the Longfellow bar, which still stands in My Lady’s Road, facing these boards.
The full (and uncorrected) text of the central information board reads as follows: “Recruitment of the East Belfast Volunteers to the 36th (Ulster) Division Association began on Monday 7th September 1914. The 3rd Battalion (Mountpottinger) marched to the old town hall in Victoria Street accompanied by the Duke of York Pipe Band and around 270 members volunteered. By Monday 14th September 1044 men from the East Belfast Volunteers enlisted in the 8th Battalion, Royal Irish Rifles. This number represented slightly over 10% of the East Belfast’s UVF strength. There were reasons why all the East Belfast Volunteers did not enlist in 8 RIR. Many UVF men were Reservists, therefore when war was declared they were called back to their original units. By the 3rd October there was 15 officers and 1065 other ranks. [We] cannot mention the 8th Battalion of the Royal Irish Regiment in 1914 without mentioning th[e East] Belfast Regiment of the Ulster Volunteer Force. The Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) was formed in January 1913 in response to the threat of Home Rule by the government in Westminster. The Unionist leadership at the time of the Home Rule Crises was led by Edward Carson and James Craig and it was they along with others who established the UVF. The East Belfast Regiment consisted of 6 battalions:– Willowfield, Avoniel, Mountpottinger, Victoria, Strandtown & Knock, Newtownbreda and Ballynafeigh. In May 1914 the Regiments strength as 7100 by the Royal Irish Constabulary. The volunteers consisted of mainly working-class men employed in the shipyards and other industries that fed the industrial revolution. On 6th August 1914, Lord Kitchener, issued a blunt request to Colonel T.E. Hickman (President of the British League for the Defence of Ulster and an Inspector General of the UVF): “I want the Ulster Volunteers”. Hickman suggested Kitchener negotiate with James Craig and Edward Carson. Thus began a month of meetings and horse trading between these men, before the Ulster Division was established. Initially Carson wanted guarantees. The Home Rule issue was to be sorted before he committed the volunteers. He insisted if the UVF joined, then they should be kept as a single division and not spread piecemeal throughout the army. He further demanded this division should have the title “Ulster” attached to it. Kitchener initially opposed these requests, believing the UVF should simply enlist. Once he accepted a single division would be created, he tried to prevent the title Ulster being used, noting other locally recruited units did not enjoy this privilege. Meetings continued throughout August, and near the end of the month a deal was struck: the Home Rule Bill would be passed on 18th September, but would be immediately suspended; permission was given to form a division; the Ulster prefix was deemed acceptable; and Hickman and Craig were appointed chief recruiting officers. The 8th Battalion Royal Irish Rifled was formed, mainly but not exclusively from the East Belfast Volunteers. Training took place at Ballykinlar in County Down and the Battalion became know as “Ballymacarrets Own”. It took part in the 36th (Ulster) Division Review which saw thousands of members of the 36th marching past Belfast City Hall in front of tens of thousands of families and friends before departing to England were training would take place before they sailed for France. They moved into the trenches of the Western Front for the first time on 11 October 1915. As they were new to the fron line, each company of the battalion was attached to other serving regiments for instruction. The first casualty was recorded in the trenches at Mailly-Maillet on 15th October 1915. Second Lieutenant RME Pettigrew was shot through the face later sent back to England. Pettigrew was the first officer from the 8th Battalion to be wounded on active service. He never recovered from his wounds and died on 10th June 1916. The Battle of the Somme commenced on the 1st July 1916 and ended on the 18th November 1916. However it was the first two days on the horrendous battle that saw the 36th (Ulster) Division achieve it’s goals but due to the failure on it’s flanks by other Divisions the land gained was lost as the Ulstermen suffered huge casualties and left the frontline on the 2nd July. Some 5000 men from the Division died or where injured on the 1st July. Their contribution drew priase from many including the King and to this day their sacrifice not just at the Somme but in Flanders Fields, Belgium is remembered with pride and dignity throughout the province of Ulster. The fields of the Somme and Flanders contain grave after grave after grave of our forefathers who never came home and lie in foreign fields. Their sacrifice should never be forgotten.”
Seosamh Mac Coille Collection 