'Trying to reach the future through the past': Murals and memory in Northern Ireland

Ireland is sometimes said to be cursed with a surfeit of history; memory is seen as one of the principal causes of an endless cycle of violence. In contrast, this article focuses on collective memory and examines the way in which this was drawn on as a resource by republican and loyalist communities in terms of identity and endurance during almost four decades of conflict. These identities were displayed in various commemorations and symbols, including wall murals. During the peace process these murals have been judged officially to be anachronistic, leading to a recent government-funded scheme to remove them, the Reimaging Communities Programme. This article questions the political motivation of this programme. It considers the attempts by people in republican and loyalist areas to come to terms with the peace process by emphasizing traditional symbols of identity, while at the same time reinterpreting them for a new era. Symbols can be the bridge between the past and the future which makes the present tolerable.