Residents in the loyalist Mount Vernon estate do not want a controversial UVF mural blown away by Storm Darragh to be rebuilt.
The infamous Prepared For Peace Ready For War mural has stood guard over the entrance to estate for more than two decades – until Darragh arrived at the start of December.
Residents woke to find that the top of the wall had been blown down in the gale-force winds.
The loyalist mural in north Belfast was badly damaged as Storm Darragh hit Northern Ireland earlier this month.
What remained of the mural has now been taken down amid fears damage caused by the storm had rendered it unsafe.
Now all that remains are piles of rubble, with sections of the paintings depicting masked and armed men still visible.
There has been speculation as to whether it would be restored elsewhere in the estate or be replaced with a different mural.
The Sunday Worldunderstands residents are dead set against its return because of the way it portrays their estate.
How it looked
The UVF controlled the estate and Mount Vernon was home to a notorious paramilitary unit which waged a sectarian murder campaign.
Members of the leadership and many others were working for British state forces, mostly for the RUC’s Special Branch.
Under the leadership of police agent Mark Haddock they carried out more than a dozen murders with the full knowledge of their police handlers.
The murderous collusion between police and UVF was uncovered by then Police Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan in her 2007 report, Operation Ballast.
The estate has laboured under that connection ever since and while other areas have seen paramilitary murals replaced with less confrontational and threatening wall art, Mount Vernon has been continually branded because Prepared For Peace Ready For War dominates the entrance to the area and is seen by thousands of commuters every day.
Sources have said there was opposition to the mural when it first went up.
“People thought it was time to move away from that stuff, the UVF had called a ceasefire and supposedly decommissioned, yet here they were saying they were ready to go back to war.
“Who were they going to war with? We’ve been saddled with it ever since, maybe Darragh has done us a favour and we can break away from the past.”