The peace process has significantly changed the iconography of the North's political murals in both communities, writes Bill Rolston
In Ballymoney's Glebeside estate, there is a loyalist mural which depicts Davy Crockett, in his buckskin coat, posing with a musket. "They were the first to proclaim freedom in these United States," says the accompanying slogan.
To those used to the standard loyalist mural - hooded UDA or UVF man posing with automatic weapons - this is an incongruous sight. The contemporary armed man may be the more common image still, nine years after the 1994 ceasefires, but the historical figure hints at some hope of change within loyalist iconography and perhaps loyalism overall. Davy Crockett's family came from south Derry, reason enough for the Ulster Scots Heritage Council to sponsor the painting of his image in Ballymoney.
There are other such heroes on offer. The parents of US president James Buchanan, portrayed on the Shankill Road, emigrated from Donegal, part of historic Ulster. George Washington, immortalised in a mural in Derry's Waterside, had many Ulster Scots in his Continental Army and Teddy Roosevelt, author of a definitive history of the Ulster Scots in America, looks down from a wall in Derry's Fountain area.
The appearance of these murals is a relief in a situation of otherwise stifling uniformity. If anything, the quantity of paramilitary murals and the starkness of their militarism increased in the second half of the 1990s.
This was partly a way for loyalists, mobilised around the notion of "No Surrender", to proclaim that a ceasefire was not a surrender. It was also a way to warn their political representatives to remember their origins and not to sign up to anything in negotiations that would not be delivered.
Above all, it was a warning: first to republicans and nationalists andincreasingly to other loyalists. As feuds intensified - UDA versus UVF, UVF versus LVF - the militant murals proclaimed who was top loyalist dog in an area.
But for all that they are threatening, the loyalist murals also speak of a deep inferiority complex, a defensiveness and a fear that the writing is literally on the wall for loyalists. There are many deep problems facing them.
How, having got rid of "King Rat" Wright and "Mad Dog" Adair, can the UVF and UDA respectively prevent the rise of their clones? How does loyalism relate to the peace process? How can politics be put in the lead, something which the UVF has had more success with than the UDA, whose political inarticulacy is legendary, and how can loyalism relate to an agreed Northern Ireland, even more, an agreed island? More, can it contribute positively to bringing that agreement about?
Difficult questions, but ones which serve to corral loyalist muralists. No muralist acts independently of the movement for which they paint andin the loyalist case the control is intense. Murals are commissioned, mainly by paramilitary groups and the blueprint is frequently handed to the muralist to, in effect, copy on to the wall. The lack of artistic freedom speaks volumes of the way in which the muralists are political circumscribed.
The effect is that loyalist murals thus rarely do little to advance political development, but often represent the worst of loyalism - violence and sectarianism.
The Ulster Scots murals, for that reason, are a breath of fresh air, but only time will if they will ever seriously challenge, never mind replace, the paramilitary murals.
Even a cursory look will reveal that republican murals are very different. Paramilitary imagery was never as dominant as in the loyalist murals, but it disappeared, practically overnight, with the ceasefire. With the exception of memorials to dead IRA personnel and some historical themes, the guns are absent from republican murals and are unlikely to reappear.
But republicans have, since they started seriously painting murals in 1981, had a range of themes on which to draw - from their own internal vision to international struggles against repression, imperialism and racism. Thus, alongside their own heroes - like Bobby Sands and Countess Marcievicz, portrayed on the Falls Road - they can paint Martin Luther King in the New Lodge area and Malcolm X in Ardoyne.
There are murals about Palestine, the Basque country, East Timor, Turkey and South Africa. For republicans, there is a level of resonance in other conflicts which does not exist for the more isolated loyalists. Beyond that, they can paint of Irish history and mythology, as well as making timely comments on progress - or the lack of it - in the peace process, something which loyalist muralists seem to be unable to do.
But perhaps the greatest difference between the two sets of painters is that the republicans paint for a movement rather than a paramilitary group. That gives them not only greater scope, but also greater freedom. That freedom may be relative, but it is no less real. They would probably not be able to paint anti-Belfast Agreement murals, but the fact that they would not want to - that they are "on message" in that sense - means they are trusted to get on with painting.
The colour and exuberance of republican murals clearly indicates this greater artistic freedom and with it goes greater political space than loyalist painters have.
Thus, at their best, republican murals contain messages which encourage political development. For example, voting for Sinn Féin to take seats in an Assembly at the dreaded symbolic building of Stormont was a difficult step for some republicans in 1998; in this situation murals played a key role in political education.
Bill Rolston is a lecturer in the University of Ulster and author of the forthcoming Drawing Support 3: Murals and Transition in the North of Ireland (Beyond the Pale Publications £11.99, www.btpale.com)