The UVF (A company, 1st battalion, platoon 4) mural in Glenwood Street was in the news last week after Jude Whyte of the Victims And Survivors Forum (web) drew attention to it because of its inclusion of some members of the Shankill Butchers (Irish News). The gang-members included in the plaque are given in a previous post – Platoon IV.
Some outlets (e.g. Sunday World) are reporting that the plaque is new but, while a few names of platoon have volunteers been recently added – Nesbitt, Orr, and Black – the plaque, including the names of various members of the gang, has been on the wall since 2017.
The application form for a dual-language street sign is completely agnostic as to which language (in addition to English) should go on the street sign. Based on news reports (including, recently, one home-owners complaint that such a sign would lower property values – BelTel) and our impression from tramping the streets, Irish (Gaeilge) is by far the most commonly requested language, but there are a few that include Ulster Scots; previously we recorded Heichbrea Airt in Castlereagh, and to that can now be added the sign shown above in the Woodvale: “Oregon Gardens” / “Orkan Gairdens”. (Please get in touch if you know of others.)
Ards & North Down council has just approved its own dual-language policy; like the old Belfast policy, one third of householders must sign the initial petition and two-thirds must respond positively to the subsequent survey of the street (News Letter).
A shawlie is a working-class woman wearing a shawl to serve as a coat and hat. In Belfast they are particularly associated with the workers in the linen mills, such as the Brookfield Mill on the Crumlin Road. This statue, designed by Ross Wilson, was inspired by William Conor’s painting of mill workers (and pehaps specifically “Going to the mills, Crumlin Road, 1914” which is included in the info board, below) and installed at the top of Cambrai Street in 2010 (BelTel | BBC).
“The Mill Worker. Belfast was one of the fastest growing urban centres in Europe in the nineteenth-century, with the linen industry a major driver. The city’s status as the world’s biggest linen producer came about partly as a result of the cotton shortages in the 1860s caused by the American Civil War. In 1896, 96,000 people worked in linen in Belfast, making it the city’s biggest employer. The profits enabled other industries to grow, including engineering, shipbuilding, tobacco, whiskey and rope-making. Belfast became a world leader in all of these industries. The recession between the world wars led to a dramatic reduction in the demand for linen, reinforced by changes in fashion, so the industry went into almost terminal decline and nearly disappeared. Today, however, the supreme quality of linen is valued once again – not least on the Milan, Paris and London catwalks.”
“Come one, come all, to the Welcome Hall, and come in your working clothes.” Amy Carmichael was born in Millisle, Co. Down, in 1867. In 1884 the family moved to Belfast, where Amy started Sunday classes in Rosemary Street Presbyterian for “shawlies” who worked in the mills. These were successful enough that a larger venue was required, and so, in 1887, the Welcome Hall, with seating for 500, opened in Cambrai Street (this subsequently became the Welcome Evangelical Church, where the blue plaque shown below is mounted). Carmichael then went to England (Manchester), Japan, Sri Lanka, and India (Bangalore). (Welcome Church | WP)
“Billy was Wright – no Irish Sea border.” Billy Wright broke with the UVF in 1996 over loyalist concessions made during the peace-process that ultimately led to the Agreement in 1998. He soon formed the LVF but was killed in prison in 1997 by members of the INLA, which, like the LVF, had not joined the ceasefire.
These posters are in Cambrai Street and Conway Street; attempts to remove them have proven unsuccessful. The Sunday World reports that a similar banner has appeared in Ballymena (Sunday World) and that the same poster was also spotted in the lower Shankill (Sunday World).
Wright is shown standing in front of a small mural in Old Rectory Park, Portadown – see D01068.
The first “peace” line along Alliance Avenue was a temporary barried constructed by the British Army in 1971 (Heatley at CAIN); parts of it today are nine metrers high (Belfast Interface Project). The central road in Ardoyne, Berwick Road/Paráıd An Ardghleanna was cut off by the line but in the recent redevelopment no house was built in front of the spot where the road ran through. Instead there are now support beams and a small cross in memory of WWI dead.
The final image is of the same spot on the Ardoyne side of the line.
Áras Uí Chonghaile has a “James Connolly Heritage Trail”, with a series of plaques and panels that interested parties can walk as members of a guided tour, or by themselves with the aid of an app (Android | Apple). One of the stops is in Corporation Street, site of the Belfast offices of the ITGWU from 1911-1941.
The nearby ITGWU board gives Connolly’s report from 1911: “The Branch has rented extensive premises at 122 Corporation Street and intend having a smoking and reading room in connection therewith; we are considering the organisation of a band and have in contemplation also the launching of many other schemes for the moral, social, and financial uplifting of the members. The Irish Transpost and General Workers’ Union is in the vanguard of that Irish branch of the Army of Labour, and we are honoured when we carry its banner.”
It then goes on to describe the arrest of Winnie Carney and the raiding of the Corporation Street offices in 1922.
In Raimondi’s Adam And Eve, an engraving from c. 1512, Adam offers Eve two small apples while a human-headed serpent looks on (Met). (The town in the background is from Raimondi, but the car in the middle is Boyd’s.)
In Leo Boyd’s reworking, all the heads have been turned into surveillance cameras – including the snake in the tree, the private parts have been covered by “Fig. 1” and “Fig. 2”, and the forbidden fruit is now a heart emoji, which in this instance has literally been cut out of the print. Our surveillance culture (inlcuding “social” media) perhaps makes emotional connection more difficult and more dangerous than ever – we are ashamed to appear naked.
The paste-up is on the hoarding in Donegall Quay, below a ring of surveillance cameras. Belfast is the 100th-most surveilled city in the world, per capita (CEOWorld).
For information about the production of the piece, and images that include the heart that has been torn out, see Leo Boyd Prints.
