By Becka Coryell, DIS Cross Cultural Communications student, spring 2015
There are not a lot of murals in my hometown, and especially not in very public places, and they are not very political. So going to Northern Ireland, which has an abundance of murals, many of which are politically influenced, was very different from what I was used to back home.
As a brief overview, the Troubles is the overarching term for the period in the late twentieth century where Irish Nationalists, who were also known as Republicans and were usually associated with Catholicism, were fighting against the Unionists, who were also known as Loyalists and were typically associated with Protestantism. The Nationalists, which the IRA fought for, supported Irish independence from England, and the Unionists supported England and wanted to stay a part of the English empire.
Clearly, the murals in these areas are very different than the ones that I had experienced in my hometown. The yellow and white murals both have to do with freeing prisoners of war, and the one on the far right tells people to explicitly join the Sinn Féin, a political party typically associated with the Irish Nationalists. Although the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 gave self-governance to Northern Ireland, there is still a lot of tension between the Republicans and the Unionists.
When we were visiting Northern Ireland, we took two tours that focused heavily on viewing murals. One was of Falls Road and Shankill Road, which were two roads that were heavily influenced by sectarian violence during “The Troubles”, which was the time of political and social unrest in Ireland during the later half of the twentieth century.
The second tour that we went on was in (London) Derry. I write it like this because the name is still, to this day, a point of contention. While both of these tours had many similarities, I saw quite a few differences between the two cities.
Belfast
This is one of the many photos that I saw on the streets of Belfast. The man depicted is Bobby Sands, who we were told was a leader of the IRA and died while on a hunger strike in Prison. Around his face, it reads, “Everyone, Republican or otherwise, has their own particular role to play. Our revenge will be the laughter of our children”.
This quote seems, to me at least, to be less about peace and leaving the past behind then it might seem at first glance. This mural is, I would say, glorifying Bobby Sands, whom they call a “revolutionary” and a “volunteer”. However, to the Unionist party, he is a terrorist. Also, the part about “our revenge” seems a hostile, as if it puts blame on the Unionists for the actions of the Republicans.
The Unionist side also has murals that might not be promoting peace through the wording on them. One Unionist mural depicted several bombings that had happened on their street, and referred to the members of the IRA, the group that would have carried out the bombings, as, “so-called freedom fighters”.
This kind of language seems to not really promote conflict rather than peace between the two sides, and I personally believe that, with the fighting now over, the aim of public art should be to promote as much peace as possible.
I can’t remember where I heard it, but I was reminded of this phrase throughout my tours and when I thought back on them later: One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist. I thought that the murals on both sides of the divides seemed to glorify their freedom fighters, who were terrorists to the other party.
(London) Derry
We also visited (London) Derry, which is the location of the infamous Bloody Sunday.
There are twelve murals throughout the city, and they depict the events of Bloody Sunday, which was one of the days in the history of the Troubles with the most bloodshed, and other moments of The Troubles.
Our guide, who was one of the artists, talked about how they, the Bogside Artists, who painted these murals, attempted to make the murals be more about “what actually happened” as opposed to making a political gesture.
To me, these murals seemed to be much more about peace and moving on while remembering the past than the Belfast murals. They had little to no words on them, and they were just pictures. I don’t think they did a perfect job, for instance, the mural on the right depicts four Catholic victims, rather than mixing up Catholic and Protestant victims.
However, the child in the back was killed during an IRA bombing, so they are at least attempting to show fairness. Even though there was room for more representation of both sides, I think that the Bogside murals do a much better job at promoting peace in Northern Ireland.
All in all, I experienced something during these trips that I would never get to experience at home. I am very glad to have gotten so see these murals, but I definitely enjoyed the Bogside murals better.
I think that they promoted peace between the Nationalists and the Loyalists better than the murals in Belfast. I loved seeing how imagery and words posted in public places can have an effect on the people living in and around those spaces, and I think that this form of communication was certainly unifying, whether it unified one group against another or unified two groups for peace.
Learn more about the conflict and the Bogside Artists:
Cross Cultural Communications in Belfast 