Writing's on the wall for old Belfast Murals

DAVID Stitt rolls up his trousers and plants his leg on a table, then he turns it slightly so we can see his calf muscle. He points to a prominent reddish scar a couple of inches long and says in a thick Belfast accent: "That's where I was shot. And that one there was caused by a hand grenade exploding."

We are in east Belfast a few days before the 12 July parades in Northern Ireland, an annual event held by the Orange Order to mark King William of Orange's 1690 Battle of the Boyne victory over King James II. Stitt, a lean 39-year-old who wears a Rangers Football Club jersey, lifts his leg off the table and sits back down in his chair before taking a call on his mobile. Stitt is an Ulster Loyalist, and a staunch one at that. So much so, in fact, that as a young man he was prepared to kill for his beliefs. He is a former member of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), a Loyalist paramilitary group that took up arms in 1971 to counter the Irish Republican paramilitaries. The UDA's armed campaign during The Troubles lasted for more than 25 years until an official ceasefire was announced in November, 2007. During that time the organisation and its military wing, the Ulster Freedom Fighters, were responsible for the deaths of at least 259 people, the majority of whom were Catholics.

Stitt is candid about his role with the UDA. At the age of 21, he was sentenced to eight years in prison for conspiracy to murder and possession of a firearm. To some people he was a terrorist, to others a legitimate defender of his people, the type of man venerated by the hundreds of murals adorning gable ends of the terraces of red brick houses across the Province.

Offering a certain standpoint on a dark period, these striking artworks mark territories and tell the story of The Troubles from those affected. They have become part of the fabric of many communities across Northern Ireland, offering snapshots of both the past and the present. Today, they have become tourist attractions in their own right. But a decade or so on from the signing of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, there is clamour to have some of the more contentious images removed.

An initiative launched in 2006 by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland — the Re-imaging Communities Programme — has proved massively successful, with 105 murals being changed or toned down. Such was the success of the initial 3.3m pilot scheme that a further 500,000 of funding was made available in October 2008, to deal with a raft of new inquiries. But, despite there being 49 projects to be finished and another 85 proposals, money is running out.

STITT, like many former paramilitaries, has been pivotal to moving the peace process forward. Now a social science student, he turned his back on violence in 1997 and took part in the decommissioning talks as a representative of the UDA. He also works with a post-conflict peace body called Charter for Northern Ireland and is a member of the Belfast Conflict Resolution Consortium. Once a man with a gun, Stitt now vies for peace.

"I have three girls aged 21, 16 and one and a half years old, and I don't want them to suffer the way we did growing up. I didn't have a childhood. I had friends shot and killed so that's why I got involved with the UDA. I was only 15 years old but I wanted to do something about it. The peace has been good and we don't want to go backwards," he says.

Originally from Bangor, Stitt has been involved in changing murals in both his home town and in inner east Belfast, where he lives now. He takes us to recently redesigned mural on the corner of Lendrick Street which shows St Patrick's Church and Stormont Castle alongside the words "War" and "Peace", as striking as any of the paramilitary acronyms we've just seen. Painted at the top are the words "Remember the Fallen" alongside a dozen red poppies added in tribute to men killed during the First and Second World Wars. A historical theme, Stitt explains, has been pre-eminent for Protestant communities wishing to change murals.

"People in Bangor and east Belfast said they wanted to move away from militaristic murals, but also retain their British identities through new ones," he adds.

The ill-fated Titanic is synonymous with Belfast and in June an enormous art piece was unveiled at the Short Strand/Newtonards Road interface to honour the ship while at the same time replacing a contentious Loyalist painting. Designed by Irish artist Ross Wilson and entitled Ship of Dreams, it celebrates Belfast's shipbuilding and replaces a memorial mural to victims of Republican paramilitaries. The painting was controversial as it was close to a Catholic church and portrayed a priest clutching a bomb.

ACROSS the city in Ardyone, north Belfast, Republican murals are being changed to reflect the new mood. Eilish McKenna works with a body called the Ardoyne Association. Her office is an area that became notorious in 2001 when sectarian tensions erupted and young children — in the face of Loyalist picketing — had to be escorted by riot police to the all-girl Holy Cross Primary School. The television pictures of a baying mob hurling insults and objects at petrified children is one of the many iconic images that emerged from the era.

McKenna takes us for a tour of Ardoyne and we drive up to Holy Cross School, passing Loyalist homes on the way. Houses closest to the interface are splattered with paint and windows are protected by wire. There's still tension and a massive bonfire built in preparation for the Twelfth has a banner with the words "Loyalist Ardoyne" alongside a Union Flag and the Flag of Ulster. It's a red rag to a bull but McKenna says relations have improved though the communities remain divided.

"The violence used to be off the scale. There might be trouble on occasions but compared to The Troubles, it is absolutely nothing," she says.

Ardoyne was awarded 30,520 from the Re-Imaging Communities Programme and artists Danny Devenney and Michael Doherty worked with ceramicist Clare McComish to replace four political murals. It was agreed the new murals should reflect the changing times and that children should be involved.

Still, there is a tiny minority of people in Northern Ireland who hark back to The Troubles — dissidents on both sides — and they are intent on inflaming sectarian tensions at every opportunity. Four days after our visit, on the Twelfth, Nationalist Ardoyne erupted into violence when youths rioted and attacked police for four nights in a row in protest at a contentious Orange Order parade. It was an unwelcome throwback and more than 80 officers were injured. It would be a mistake, though, to assume Belfast was returning to the bad old days as the disorder was not widespread and mainly confined to an area of about one square mile. Indeed, hundreds of locals in Ardoyne gathered to protest against the troublemakers a few days later. These people echoed the sentiments of those we met in Drumbeg and Parkmore and former Loyalist gunmen, Stitt and Wilson. The latter — once espousing violence — wrote a poem for another mural in east Belfast, just yards from Ship of Dreams. It was designed by artist David Craig and shows a boy wearing blue, shaking hands with a girl in green. The boy is Wilson's grandson, Dylan, and the girl, Dearbhla Ward, the granddaughter of Short Strand Sinn Fein councillor Joe O'Donnell.

Wilson's poem starts with the line: "No more bombing, no more murder," and ends with: "No more hatred from our children, No more, no more, no more!"

His message to dissidents is this: "Where are you going? It's a phoney war, so get real. Society has moved on and my community doesn't want violence and neither do the Republicans. It's time for change."

• This article was first published in Scotland on Sunday, August 1, 2010