Belfast’s murals honor history’s peacemakers
In a quiet cul-de-sac, I stand in front of modest brick houses while a woman pushes a stroller and two workmen fix a garden gate. The serenity makes it easy to overlook that I am standing on the front lines of what, just two decades ago, was one of the most dangerous cities in the world. If I look closer, the signs are there — as are indicators of a more peaceable present.
I am in Belfast, just off Falls Road, which for roughly 30 years was a flashpoint in a violent conflict known as the Troubles — during which Irish nationalists who were mostly Catholic battled British loyalists who were mostly Protestant over issues of civil rights and political control.
To get a local perspective, I sign up for a guided tour at the Belfast Welcome Center.
A London-style black cab driven by Kevin arives and we head away from the Victorian pubs, office towers and construction cranes of the city center into a working-class section of Belfast.
Here, and in a patchwork pattern across the city, neighborhoods are divided into nationalist or loyalist strongholds. The nationalists and more hard-line republicans have sought to be united with Ireland, while loyalists or unionists have favored being a part of Britain. Longsimmering tensions between the two sides erupted into the Troubles in the late 1960s, which claimed nearly 4,000 lives, more than half of them civilians.
At our first stop, the cul-desac, Kevin points out some of the hidden-in-plain-sight factors of daily life here. At the end of the street, just behind the houses and blending in with the gray sky are peace lines, as local barrier walls are called — barbed wire and high metal fences to block projectiles thrown over from the neighborhood on the other side.
Back on Falls Road, Kevin parks and we head into the drizzle for a better look at a long, mural-covered wall in front of a flour factory. “The murals speak for us, see,” Kevin says, meaning Irish Catholics. “Under English rule, the Irish didn’t have any rights, didn’t have any voice, so we turned to the murals to express ourselves.”
Behind us is a working-class Irish Catholic neighborhood with houses flying green, white and orange Irish flags, and murals of local heroes and causes — boxers, released political prisoners, martyrs from the Troubles. Ahead of us, the wall acts as a barrier for the Protestant neighborhood across Falls Road, which was at the center of bloody street battles dating to 1969, when the British sent in troops to suppress a curfew protest. A few decades ago, this area was filled with the sound of locals banging trash bin lids and blowing whistles to warn of approaching British soldiers, but on this wet afternoon, the only noise is of cars and red doubledecker buses driving past. “Now, just imagine you were in America but had to have a North Korean passport,” Kevin says.
On the wall across the road, known as the “International Wall,” one painting shows female combatants, another a soldier waving the tricolor Irish flag above a harp and other Celtic symbols, and next to him a soldier firing a pistol beside men in street clothes with rifles. For good reason, this is known as the “bombs and bullets” tour of Belfast.
Back in the car, we drive past a section of small businesses and Kevin turns onto a side street, parks the cab and reminds me again to consider how life would be if North Korea took over America.
I cross the street to inspect a mural advocating for the Gaelic language and another depicting global freedom fighters. Images of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Geronimo, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Bob Marley, Nelson Mandela and others stare defiantly from the wall alongside quotes on freedom and liberty. As I later discover at an exhibit on the Troubles at the Ulster Museum across town, such scenes are in keeping with the themes of the Irish nationalist murals, which focus on Irish identity and individuals fighting for freedom from oppression — especially American civil rights leaders. The loyalist murals typically spotlight historical events, paramilitary groups and local heroes. By unspoken agreement, both sides refrain from defacing the other’s murals. In the past decade, newer artwork has bypassed the hard-edge partisan messages and instead advocates for tolerance and inclusion.