Here’s a house in Kilburn Street, south Belfast, bedecked in loyalist flags: a Union flag in the door, a 36th (Ulster) Division centenary flag upstairs, a Lord Carson Memorial (Sandy Row, LOL 1050 | tw) flag, and a stand of small flags in the downstairs window.
Here is another in an occasional series of “RIP” graffiti to local people, this time in south Belfast’s Village neighbourhood: “RIP Grandpa – love from John”. Previously: Jamie and Kev | Caomhan, Punk, and Butt.
Here are five more small boards from the Village. Above is a one to the memory of soldiers from the 36th (Ulster) Division lost in WWI; the remainder refer to the modern UVF, though all of them include poppies, suggesting that they are memorial in intent and so less menacing than yesterday’s hooded gunman in Welcome To The Village.
Internment (imprisonment without trial) was introduced on August 9th, 1971 by NI Prime Minister Brian Faulkner, with 342 people arrested on the first day. The Bogside was “hysterical with hated”, according to Eamonn McCann (History Ireland) and of Belfast Kevin Myers wrote “Insanity seized the city.” Two dozen people would die in the rioting and gun-battles that followed, leading to the suspension of Stormont rule (WP). In the Markets area, OC Joe McCann and other (Official) IRA volunteers took over the Inglis bakery and reportedly prevented 600 British troops from entering the area – the image to the left of the board above is a Ciaran Donnelly photograph showing McCann during the battle, kneeling beneath a Starry Plough and holding an M1.
For information on his death the following year, see Joe McCann.
Small boards (the same size as the Poppy Trail individual commemorative boards, as in XXXVI) have been erected at most of the street corners along Broadway in the Village area of south Belfast. Many are UVF emblems but this one of a hooded gunman aiming at the viewer is a remarkable return to openly paramilitary imagery in the neighbourhood.
The UVF mural in the Village area of south Belfast has been freshened up. The design of the mural remains the same as before, with hooded gunmen on either side of the UVF emblem aiming directly at the viewer (see the second image). For the previous version, see 2013’s The Village People. There is a new side-wall to the left, which will be the subject of tomorrow’s post.
The Young Citizen Volunteers (YCV) is the youth division of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and its emblem, shared with the YCV of 1912, is the red hand on green shamrock, as shown in black-and-white (above and below) in a new side-wall added to the recently repainted UVF mural in Tavanagh Street, for which see the wide shot (third image) and Taking Aim.
From Ordinary People, Extraordinary Roles, here are the three individual plaques to Trevor King, Frenchie Marchant, and Davy Hamilton, three UVF volunteers killed at or near the junction of Spier’s Place and the Shankill Road. The poetic verse (in the wide shot) is from Siegfried Sassoon’s Suicide In The Trenches.
“This plaque is dedicated to the memory of Lieutenant Colonel Trevor King, died 9th July 1994, Major William (Frenchie) Marchant, died 28th April 1987, Volunteer David Hamilton, Died 17th June 1994. These brave men died near this spot [the corner of Spier’s Place and Shankill Road, west Belfast] by the enemies of Ulster. No sacrifice is too great for one’s country. They paid the ultimate sacrifice. ‘They shall grow not old/as we that are left grow old/Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn/At the going down of the sun and in the morning/We will remember them.’” King and Hamilton (along with Colin Craig, an RUC informer and not included on the plaque) were shot by the INLA and died of their wounds three weeks and one day later. Frenchie Marchant (in the middle of the image above) was shot by the IRA outside The Eagle chip shop.