Murals (Northern Ireland)

Political murals played a significant role in the bitter conflict, which erupted again from 1969 onward between nationalists and loyalists and between locals and the British armed forces in Northern Ireland. However, Northern Ireland boasts a continuous mural painting tradition older than that in México.

The first mural was painted in Belfast in 1908 and depicted King William III on his white horse at the Battle of the Boyne. The Dutch Prince William challenged his father-in-law King James II for the English throne and was successful after several decisive battles in Ireland, including that at the Boyne in 1690. James was a Catholic and William a Protestant, so his victory entrenched the Protestant domination of land, wealth, politics, and culture in Ireland.

With the formation of the Northern Ireland state in the early 1920s, the image of William came to stand for Protestant solidarity. Protestants of all classes and backgrounds came together on July 12, the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne, to celebrate what they shared in common: their religion and their commitment to the United Kingdom of Britain and Northern Ireland. Given his iconic status as the representative of this ethnic identity, William was the dominant figure in unionist murals over the next six decades. Although not initiated directly by the one-party unionist state in Northern Ireland, the painting of murals became in effect a civic duty—as did the huge marches on July 12th, and the annual erecting of arches, flying of bunting, and painting of curbstones in British national colors.

Nationalists in Northern Ireland, corralled into a partitioned state against their will, were excluded from such celebrations. But more fundamentally, the sectarian nature of the state ensured that they did not have the same access to cultural expression that unionists had. Their culture went on in church halls, sports grounds, and private places out of sight of unionist sensitivities. They could not have easily painted political murals even if they had wanted to.

That changed in 1981. The escalation of violent political conflict over the previous decade led to high rates of imprisonment of political activists.

[Page 345]Initially, they had special recognition as political prisoners; in particular, they did not have to wear a prison uniform. The removal of that status in 1976 triggered a prolonged period of resistance, which culminated in 10 republican prisoners starving themselves to death. In support of their demands, nationalists and republicans marched, demonstrated, and for the first time, began to paint murals.

The first republican murals focused on the hunger strikers and their demands, as well as on the armed struggle of the groups from which they had emerged, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the Irish National Liberation Army. Thus, throughout the 1980s, depictions of armed and masked activists were not uncommon. But republicans had a wider range of themes on which to draw, including Irish history and mythology. Key events in Irish history—such as the famine of the mid-19th century or the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916—were represented, as was the mythical Irish warrior Cuchulainn, who took on the might of an invading army single-handedly. There were frequently murals on contemporary themes as well, whether current political struggles, election murals, or the condemnation of state repression, such as the use of rubber and plastic bullets that killed 14 people, 9 of them children. Finally, from the start, republicans also painted murals on international themes; identifying as they did with the struggles of people elsewhere against imperialism, colonialism, and state repression, they drew parallels with South Africa, Palestine, and Cuba.

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