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ABSTRACT POLITICS and PAINT: MURALS, MEMORY, and ARCHIVES in NORTHERN IRELAND, 1968-1998 by William H. London a Unique Artistic

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ABSTRACT POLITICS and PAINT: MURALS, MEMORY, and ARCHIVES in NORTHERN IRELAND, 1968-1998 by William H. London a Unique Artistic ABSTRACT POLITICS AND PAINT: MURALS, MEMORY, AND ARCHIVES IN NORTHERN IRELAND, 1968-1998 by William H. London A unique artistic development that arose out of the ethno-political conflict that afflicted Northern Ireland from 1968 to 1998, known as “the Troubles”, was the production of political wall murals. These murals, painted on walls, gable ends, and other conspicuous spaces in communities functioned as much more than graffiti. Rather, they engaged with communal conceptions of past, present, and future in Northern Ireland to create narratives of history that were relative to the experiences and points of view of the communities in which they were painted. In this way, current experiences from both sides of the conflict could be archived visually and placed in a continuum with other defining historical events of the community. Through the examination of these murals using methodologies developed for the interpretation of visual sources, this papers seeks to explore these narratives and the connections to the past that they rely on to convey their messages. By exploring the social, economic, and political backgrounds to these images, the reader will explore the deeper meanings behind the murals and their connections to the surrounding communities. POLITICS AND PAINT: MURALS, MEMORY, AND ARCHIVES IN NORTHERN IRELAND, 1968-1998 Submitted to the Faculty of Miami University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts by William Howard London Miami University Oxford, Ohio Advisor: Dr. Stephen Norris Reader: Dr. Brendan Gillis Reader: Dr. Deborah Saleeby-Mulligan © 2016 William Howard London POLITICS AND PAINT: MURALS, MEMORY, AND ARCHIVES IN NORTHERN IRELAND, 1968-1998 by William Howard London has been approved for publication by The College of Arts and Sciences and Department of History ____________________________________________________ Dr. Stephen Norris ______________________________________________________ Dr. Brendan Gillis _______________________________________________________ Dr. Deborah Saleeby-Mulligan Table of Contents Chapter I: Introduction Sectarian History of Ireland 1 The Troubles, 1969-2000 4 History of the Murals 7 Eyewitnessing and the Period Eye 12 Northern Ireland’s Period Eye 15 Signs and Symbols in the Murals of Northern Ireland 24 Shades of Nationalism and National Identity 27 Chapter II: Signs and Symbols in the Unionist Murals 28 Chapter III: Signs and Symbols in the Nationalist Murals 45 Comparisons 66 Conclusions 78 Bibliography 71 iii List of Figures Figure 1. Memorial to Trevor King 29 Figure 2. Memorial to All Unionist Dead 31 Figure 3. Memorial to Those Awarded the Victoria Cross 32 Figure 4. Example of a “King Billy” Mural 34 Figure 5. “King Michael Stone” Mural 35 Figure 6. Dancing Red Hand 40 Figure 7. Loyalist CúChulainn 43 Figure 8. Memorial to Patsy O’Hara 46 Figure 9. Memorial to Mickey Devine 48 Figure 10. Memorial to Children Killed by Plastic Bullets - Twinbrook 51 Figure 11. James Connolly and Patrick Pearse at the GPO 53 Figure 12. International Revolutionaries 57 Figure 13. Revolutionary Armed Women 59 Figure 14. CúChulainn and a United Ireland 63 iv Dedication This work is dedicated to the teachers, professors, and other educators who supported my love of history. To Dr. Steven Norris, Dr. Amy Livingstone, Dr. Darlene Brooks-Hedstrom, Dr. Christian Raffensperger, and Dr. Tina Kominsky. v Acknowledgements Special thanks to my family, Mark, Mimi, and Joe London for their unending support throughout this process. Also my dear friends who let me complain to them almost constantly, Blaise Jones, Eric Franer, Zach McHenry, C.J. Spaulding, and last but not least, Mike Niemi. All of you have put up with far more of me than anyone should ever have to. “Then came the Great War. Every institution, almost, in the world was strained. Great empires had been overturned. The whole map of Europe had changed...The modes of thought of men, the whole outlook on affairs, the grouping of parties, all have encountered violent and tremendous change in the deluge of the world. But as the deluge subsides and the waters fall short we see the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone emerging once again. The integrity of their quarrel is one of the few institutions that have been unaltered in the cataclysm which has swept the world.” - Winston Churchill, House of Commons, 16 February 1922 “Where would the Irish be without someone to be Irish at?” - Elizabeth Bowen, The House in Paris, 1935 vi In 1969, the idea of open war in a major city would have conjured images of conflict going on around the world. The Unites States was embroiled in a proxy war in Vietnam, communist and anti-communist insurgencies were taking place across Africa and South America, and the global Cold War had pitted two nuclear armed world powers against each other in the shape of the Soviet Union and the United States. Yet in this contentious period in world history another war front broke out, although outside the scope of Cold War tensions. Car bombs, assassinations, and the imposition of military order were invoked not in some distant, civil war ravaged country, but in cities that were part of a first world industrial democracy. The seeming oddity of the Irish conflict that came to be known as the Troubles was just that, a low-level military conflagration taking place in the United Kingdom. The product of this conflict that most people are familiar with were the news images of mangled cars, bodies, and buildings in cities spread across Britain and Ireland; however, those images were not the only product. Unique within the chronology of the Troubles was the production of murals painted on buildings across the whole of Northern Ireland which spoke directly and explicitly about the nature of the conflict. Both Irish nationalist/republicans and Unionist engaged in what appeared to be a proxy war of paint, sprawling the image of the goals, heroes, and actions across the gable walls of Belfast and Derry. But from where did these murals come and what did they mean? The question this project seeks to answer is thus: what role did the murals play in the way the combatants saw themselves and their loyalties? The answer to this question is intricate and subtle, reflecting the myriad of ethnic and political loyalties which overlapped and continue to overlap in Northern Ireland. Necessary to understanding the murals, however, is an understanding of the economic, social, and political contexts that gave rise to the conflict that produced them. Sectarian History of Ireland Northern Ireland’s population immediately prior to the beginning of the Troubles reflected Ireland’s long history as a subject nation to the colonial enterprises of successive English and British governments. Ireland’s nature as a bastion of Celtic culture and Roman Catholicism in an otherwise heavily Germanic and Protestant North Sea region made the island and its people the frequent target of colonial enterprises. These enterprises ranged in goals and level of success but from the arrival of the first Anglo-Norman lords in the early years of the twelfth-century to the modern day, there have been concerted efforts at shaping the landscape and people of Ireland to suite the tastes and ideals of their continental or British neighbors The primarily Catholic nature of the Irish people’s religion remained a relative non-issue as long as the Roman Catholic Church remained the universal source of salvation within Europe. The arrival of the Protestant reformation on the shores of Britain in the early decades of the sixteenth-century caused deep conflict with the Irish people’s staunch loyalty to the Catholic Church and retention of Celtic culture. The most significant effort made to undermine the twin Celtic and Catholic identities of the population of Ireland came during the opening years of the seventeenth-century when James I, king of England and Scotland, and his ministers launched a colonial effort to displace the natives with citizens of England and Scotland. This scheme, termed the “Plantation of Ulster” was an organized, concerted effort to effect ethnic and social change within Ireland through the transplantation of population. Through processes of surveying and redistribution combined with anti-Catholic and anti-Irish policies, the plantation was intended to first alter the ruling class of Ireland and then ethnic and religious makeup of the population. The goal was thus at first the removal of the hard-to-control nobility of Ireland in 1 favor of rulers more likely to cooperate with long term goals aimed at the conversion or replacement of the island’s population. It was during and immediately after the anarchic period of the English Civil Wars and the Commonwealth that the efforts to import protestant settlers to Ireland on a mass scale were laid down and executed by Parliament and Cromwell.1 The resultant influx of Protestant Scotch- English settlers who actively bought and developed land permanently changed the dynamic of land ownership across Ireland, but most heavily in the north of the country.2 The first serious challenge to this order came in the wake of the Glorious Revolution, a movement by Parliament which replaced the now officially Catholic King James II with his protestant son in law, the future William III. In response, James II and those loyal to him fled to Ireland where, with the help of his mentor Louis XIV, he succeeded in raising an army of Catholics and others unhappy with the previous centuries of English rule. The Williamite Wars which followed pitted the ranging armies of James II and William III against one another across the rolling landscape of Ireland. The pivotal battle of this conflict came in July of 1690 where William’s army of Dutch and English protestant veterans smashed the main force of James’ army at the River Boyne.
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