Graffiti of Belfast. Monument to the recently ended war

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

In one of the most prosperous countries in the world, in Great Britain, until 1998 there was a real civil war. V Northern Ireland because of the conflict between Catholics and Protestants, tens and even hundreds of people died every year, both military and militants, and civilians. Now these passions have subsided. And only numerous political and social graffiti all over the city.

The active phase of the conflict in Northern Ireland began in the late 1960s, when a protest movement intensified throughout the region aimed at ensuring equality of the Irish Catholics living there with the English and Scots of the Protestant faith, who had full power and did not admit to it indigenous population of the island.

Attempts by the British government to extinguish this activity by armed methods led to the militarization of the Irish population of the region, the emergence of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), and then, in response to the terror on its part, and armed detachments of loyalists - supporters of Great Britain.

The war of all against all (and often even groups of the same orientation fought with each other) lasted for about thirty years, until 1998, when a peace agreement was signed, Northern Ireland received maximum autonomy and its own Parliament, and militants on both sides laid down their arms and began to look for way out of the crisis in the political field.

Evidence of the storm that raged in this region can be found in the numerous graffiti painted by anonymous artists throughout Northern Ireland, but mainly in Belfast. In total, there are more than 2,200 such images in this region.

Their main theme is political. Graffiti tells about the history of the region, about the war that ended not so long ago, about the victims on both sides, the atrocities of opponents and not always adequate actions of the British authorities.

Irish Catholics in their graffiti tell about their own heroes - IRA warriors, participants in the civil rights movement, political prisoners and the bloody events of which civilians became victims. Particularly popular are the 1981 Hunger Strike, in which ten political prisoners died in Mays Prison, and Bloody Sunday 1972 - the shooting of a peaceful demonstration in the city of Derry by British paratroopers.

The Protestants, in turn, call themselves victims of the conflict, their civilians, who perished from the terror of the IRA, and nominate members of their own paramilitary units as heroes.

However, not only politics is limited to the theme of graffiti in Belfast. The capital of Northern Ireland also has a huge number of street drawings dedicated to sports, social life and even the famous Titanic liner, which was built at the shipyard in this city.

Graffiti in Northern Ireland has become an original cultural phenomenon unparalleled anywhere else in the world. Moreover, parodies of them began to appear, for example, of a football nature.