The New Lodge mural that celebrates a unionist

This photograph of a wall mural appeared recently in a local Belfast newspaper.  

The mural is in the Nationalist New Lodge Road area of north Belfast and depicts Dr William Drennan (1754-1820), a Belfast-born Presbyterian who was the founder of the Society of United Irishmen.

Most of the murals in that area depict Irish republicans so it is nice to see that they also have a mural of a former United Irishman who became reconciled to the Act of Union.

Indeed in the Belfast Monthly Magazine on 31 December 1811 he urged his readers to:

Be Britons with all your souls - and forget that your father called himself an Irishman.

Now the mural, as we see it in the photograph is not in great shape.  It clearly needs repainted.  So perhaps when someone gets round to refreshing the mural of William Drennan they might consider a new quotation, such as one above.

Those words would look well on a wall in the New Lodge - 'Be Britons with all your souls - and forget that your father called himself an Irishman.'