This pair of murals was launched in September last year (2014).
On the left A. E. Housman’s 1919 poem “Here dead we lie” is featured, together with the poppies that grew on the Western Front in WWI, in a UVF commemorative mural. The 36th (Ulster) Division is not mentioned specifically. “Here dead we lie, because we did not choose,/to live and shame the land, from which we sprung.//Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose,/but young men think it is, and we were young.”
The plaque on the right-hand side (which pre-dates the murals) lists the names of five UVF members killed in the 70s who are depicted in the second mural.
They are (l-r) Thomas Chapman, James McGregor, Robert McIntyre, William Hannah, and Robert Wadsworth, who were killed between 1973 and 1978. The mural is unusual in that it shows bare-faced full figures; loyalist murals sometimes include head-shots (at the top of the mural, in the apex of a gable wall) but only masked men appear as full figures. There is a similarity in composition and style (and perhaps even palette) to existing republican murals such as this one of five B. Coy IRA volunteers in Ballymurphy.
Carnan (or “C. Coy”) Street, west Belfast.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2015 Peter Moloney
[M11729a] M11730 [M11731] [M11732] [M11733] [M11734]
M11735 [M11736] [M11737] [M11738] [M11739] [M11740] [M11741]
M11729 [M11946]
Peter Moloney Collection 