The painting's on the wall

Published on Sunday 9 March 2003 00:00

MASKED gunmen greeted my first arrival in Belfast some seven years ago. These intimidating paramilitaries were painted on a gable end in a housing estate, part of the colourful urban landscape of Northern Ireland. My initial curiosity for the mural artwork has led to the development of an online archive of murals and political graffiti with the launch of the Northern Ireland Mural Directory website.

So why did a Scottish paediatrician become captivated with the shadowy world of the political mural? As a child of the 1970s growing up in a quiet town on the east coast, I knew nothing of sectarianism or of life in Northern Ireland. I recall grainy TV footage of the hunger strikes and significant events of IRA campaigns but it all appeared unconnected with my own life.

Later, as an undergraduate at the University of Dundee Medical School, I met students who had grown up against this background of division. One flatmate had worked on a building site where the Nissen hut was raked with bullet holes; another showed me pictures of the centre of his home town reduced to rubble after an IRA bomb. They would crowd round the small portable TV to watch late-night meetings between Albert Reynolds and John Major over the Downing Street Declaration. I began to pay more attention and decided to go and see for myself.

The dust was just then beginning to settle following the riots that erupted in the wake of the Drumcree march in 1996. Driving across Belfast , I entered some of the Loyalist and Nationalist districts and began photographing murals, fascinated by the scale of the artwork and the skill of the artists.

On my return to the hospital where I worked in Aberdeen, I was amazed at the reaction of colleagues to my photographs. Many spoke of the fear and hatred they felt emanating from the more bellicose imagery. Others pronounced the murals a waste of talent.

I began to understand the transient nature of the paintings as some walls hosted mural after mural, changing with political developments. By 1999, I had the opportunity to transfer to the Royal Victoria Hospital in west Belfast. Now able to devote more time to the project, I realised my growing collection of photographs was capturing important snapshots of history, recording the experiences of these communities through the developing peace process.

With the support of Dr Martin Melaugh, project co-ordinator of the University of Ulster’s CAIN project (the Conflict Archive on the Internet), the Northern Ireland Mural Directory was launched, showcasing an unbiased selection of murals from both traditions. A free access academic resource, it details over 1,500 mural locations. It enables an interested citizen in Belfast to view murals from the other tradition, which may be only a few streets away. Other users include tourists, army personnel and paramilitaries themselves.

There is a love-hate relationship between the locals and the murals. For some they are a source of middle-class opprobrium, while for others they are an art form, reflecting social, political and cultural change.

The tradition of mural painting in the Protestant areas stretches back to the early years of the 20th century, when images of King William III would be painted on gable ends around the 12th of July. The unveiling of a new mural was the subject of great celebration, conducted by a local pillar of society such as a Unionist politician. During the first couple of decades of the ‘Troubles’, new murals of the Red Hand of Ulster and the flags of Ulster and the Saltire joined the images of King Billy, proclaiming the loyalty of the region to the state and the union.

Following the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985, Protestant murals reflected a new style of fierce military images of heavily armed, balaclava-clad Loyalists in action. Recent years have seen the creation of media-savvy Loyalist murals, the most impressive of which are found in Belfast’s Lower Shankill area, former stomping ground of Johnny ‘Mad Dog’ Adair. He had personally sanctioned many of the murals in this open-air gallery. They have used a combination of wry humour (such as a balaclava-wearing civil servant blatantly copying secret files inside Stormont following last year’s IRA spy investigation) and direct political point-scoring (the Statue of Liberty thrusting an AK-47 in the air to symbolise the IRA gun-running operation from Florida in 1999) to undermine Republicans.

Republican communities only took up their brushes during the early 1980s to highlight the prison protests. Originally, the imagery of the day included the letter ‘H’ to represent the Maze prison blocks and quasi-religious images of the hunger strikers. Similar to their counterparts in Loyalism, muralists painted scenes of armed, faceless IRA military units, portrayed in action or in heroic posture. Republican activists broadened their range to aid the increasingly successful election campaigns of Sinn Fein, prisoner issues, and to link the Republican campaign with struggles abroad. As this society edges towards a post-conflict situation, mural memorials are becoming more prominent on both sides.

Daubing a slogan on a wall is far cheaper than covering a gable end, and quicker. Permission for graffiti is never sought, and the end result can be more topical than a mural . Examples from the hunger strikes have been elevated to the status of urban legend; remember "Bobby Sands - Slimmer of the Year" ? Graffiti was also used to make threats to Celtic midfielder Neil Lennon in Lisburn in 2001. A stickman body hung from a gallows with the lettering "Neil Lennon RIP".

In meeting some of the people involved in the Troubles, I’ve had the opportunity to encounter the human face behind the balaclava.

I have also met with the painters from both traditions and learnt how the murals evolve from an initial sketch to the creation of the painting that can be several storeys high. Some artists are paid several hundred pounds for a large mural. The admiration of the work of other mural artists often crosses the peace boundaries.

However, photographing in the backyard of the IRA or the UDA is not without its risks. Last year my car was approached after I had photographed some new murals. One man motioned to me to wind down the window, then ripped open the door demanding to know: "Who the f*** are you with?" A second man with paramilitary tattoos joined him, and a third stood guard. I tried to explain calmly about the mural photos and the website. They stared at me, unflinchingly in silence, for 20 or 30 seconds. Then one of them muttered, "Right," and they slammed my door, allowing me to drive away. Four people were shot that day, one of them fatally. Apparently there had been opposition to the murals by a councillor, and the controversy made the local press.

In seven years of touring interface areas that is the closest I’ve come to a confrontation. The murals will last months or even years and if the situation looks dangerous then you can always return another day. In general, many residents will help direct you to certain murals and many of the painters are willing to discuss their work informally.

As the flotsam and jetsam of Johnny Adair’s "C" Company fled Belfast for Scotland, the west Belfast UDA marked the final end of his Lower Shankill stronghold by throwing an arc of red paint across the mural closest to Adair’s house. The ‘Brothers in Arms’ mural had been personally organised by Adair as he fostered closer links to the Loyalist Volunteer Force last summer, a move that helped accelerate his expulsion from the UDA. Murals have frequently been used in power struggles of this nature, and although this current chapter appears to be over, I think they’ll be painting the town for some time to come.

Jonathan McCormick is at Ninewells Hospital, Dundee, where he is clinical lecturer in child health and an honorary specialist registrar in paediatrics. The Northern Ireland Mural Directory can be found at http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/mccormick