Flagging Peace: Struggles over Symbolic Landscape in the New Northern Ireland: Struggles over symbolic landscape in the new Northern Ireland

Half way along the Cave Hill Road in north Belfast is what is locally known as an interface. The junction near the Cave Hill pub demarcates the "loyalist," Protestant, Westlands Road area from the predominantly Catholic, Irish republican area known as Little America.¹ Three lampposts at the junction each display two flags, the Union Jack and the Ulster flag (a red cross of St. George with a six-pointed star and red hand in the center) to demarcate the boundary. The flags were put up in late June at the start of the marching season, a period of Protestant parading that culminates with the Twelfth of July, the annual commemoration of the victory of Protestant King William over Catholic King James at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. The flags are left in place long after this period of commemoration is over. Indeed, in many areas they are never removed and serve to demarcate territory into the winter months when the wind and rain reduce them to tatters.