The Murals of Belfast
Many years ago I knew a Norther Irishman who had once had contacts in the USA who collected for a Northern Irish Protestant Organisation. He once told me that they never collected for their particular group by name, they always described themselves as 'Irish Freedom Fighters'. The reason for this was because that title covered every para-military group in the land without giving away anything about them, their politics or religion, and many (if not all) Americans would give generously to the cause, sometimes with offerings such as 'Those bloody English!' or 'Here's enough bullets for several English B----s' etc etc. Many had no clue about which sides those bullets were going to. I wrote 'Sides'....... there have been more than two sides over there.
More recently, on a very far right-wing US forum a particularly fanatical member would post up pictures of burning union jacks with the words 'English out of Ireland!' to goad us UK members. I think that particular member was convinced that Boris Johnson is an extreme leftist because the colour of his Conservative Party is Blue, thus being horribly wrong about that as well as the posted photos, because there are no English in Ireland, only Irish. Maybe the odd angler, or tourist, perhaps. Or sometimes English trainers! :)
Many years ago I used to visit Belfast once a year to deliver various training courses to adult learners, and one late afternoon in (about) 2003 I journeyed to The Falls (Catholic) and Shankill Road (Protestant) areas to photograph the Murals there. I had my very first digital camera with me and so the pictures that you will see here are 1MP size, the maximum resolution of that little camera. The JPEGs are marked 2007 but I think that happened when I downloaded them to a memory bank and loaded them later on to a new computer.
I'll post up one picture per post with as much information as I learned from people over there (back then), but times have changed........ times change a lot over there.
My first picture shows just a Red Hand. If you see this red hand anywhere on a mural it means you are looking at a Protestant Royalist British Patriotic Mural, and a Left Hand is supposed to show a different undertone to a Right Hand, although some artists seemed to get this wrong! :)
Red Right Hand:- The Right Hand of God. Speaks for itself.
Red Left Hand:- An Ancient Tradition about a Chieftain racing to place a first hand upon the Irish shore and thus claim it for his people (the Northern Irish) and when he realised that he would just lose the race to another chirftain he severed his left hand with his sword and threw it to the land, first to fall there. Sadly I did not photograph a Red Left Hand.
I'll start pasting up Murals in future posts.
RED HANDS. (Various Protestant Pro-United Kingdom Royalist Patriots)
UFF.pngYCV.png
Many years ago I knew a Norther Irishman who had once had contacts in the USA who collected for a Northern Irish Protestant Organisation. He once told me that they never collected for their particular group by name, they always described themselves as 'Irish Freedom Fighters'. The reason for this was because that title covered every para-military group in the land without giving away anything about them, their politics or religion, and many (if not all) Americans would give generously to the cause, sometimes with offerings such as 'Those bloody English!' or 'Here's enough bullets for several English B----s' etc etc. Many had no clue about which sides those bullets were going to. I wrote 'Sides'....... there have been more than two sides over there.
More recently, on a very far right-wing US forum a particularly fanatical member would post up pictures of burning union jacks with the words 'English out of Ireland!' to goad us UK members. I think that particular member was convinced that Boris Johnson is an extreme leftist because the colour of his Conservative Party is Blue, thus being horribly wrong about that as well as the posted photos, because there are no English in Ireland, only Irish. Maybe the odd angler, or tourist, perhaps. Or sometimes English trainers! :)
Many years ago I used to visit Belfast once a year to deliver various training courses to adult learners, and one late afternoon in (about) 2003 I journeyed to The Falls (Catholic) and Shankill Road (Protestant) areas to photograph the Murals there. I had my very first digital camera with me and so the pictures that you will see here are 1MP size, the maximum resolution of that little camera. The JPEGs are marked 2007 but I think that happened when I downloaded them to a memory bank and loaded them later on to a new computer.
I'll post up one picture per post with as much information as I learned from people over there (back then), but times have changed........ times change a lot over there.
My first picture shows just a Red Hand. If you see this red hand anywhere on a mural it means you are looking at a Protestant Royalist British Patriotic Mural, and a Left Hand is supposed to show a different undertone to a Right Hand, although some artists seemed to get this wrong! :)
Red Right Hand:- The Right Hand of God. Speaks for itself.
Red Left Hand:- An Ancient Tradition about a Chieftain racing to place a first hand upon the Irish shore and thus claim it for his people (the Northern Irish) and when he realised that he would just lose the race to another chirftain he severed his left hand with his sword and threw it to the land, first to fall there. Sadly I did not photograph a Red Left Hand.
I'll start pasting up Murals in future posts.
RED HANDS. (Various Protestant Pro-United Kingdom Royalist Patriots)
UFF.pngYCV.png
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