Behind The Barricades

Golf Five Zero watchtower (known to the British Army as Borucki Sanger), Crossmaglen Security Force Base, South Armagh. Photographed by Jonathan Olley, 1999
“These structures are like Martian spacecraft, one breaks the terraced main street of what looks like a country town and shows that the irenic structures of ordinary architecture must give way to these armed gods, meshed objects that represent the failure of politics and civic values”. Tom Paulin
It’s been a historic week for Northern Ireland. Past enmities have been buried (we hope) as the power-sharing legislative assembly has finally been reconvened.
The evidence of past conflict is slowly being tidied away. Those famous territory-marking murals are being painted over. The British Army has long since begun to dismantle the physical evidence of its controversial presence. But not everyone wants to forget. Some argue that both the murals and the armoured observation posts that loomed over the province should be preserved as a warning from history.