Reino Unido de Gran Bretaña -
Irlanda del Norte - Belfast - Shankill Road - Mural unionista
SIMPLE MINDS:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vhhTvcLoRw
BONEY M:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0ODbFM5RLo
***
The Shankill Road (from Irish: Seanchill, meaning "old church") is one of the main roads leading through west Belfast, the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland. It runs through the working-class, predominantly loyalist, area known as the Shankill.
The road stretches westwards for about 2.4 km (1.5 mi) from central Belfast and is lined, to an extent, by shops. The residents live in the many streets which branch off the main road. The area along the Shankill Road forms part of the Court district electoral area.
It is known as Auld Kirk Gate ("Old Church Way") in Ulster-Scots and as "Bóthar na Seanchille" in Irish.
The Shankill has been traditionally unionist and loyalist, albeit with some strength also held by the labour movement. Belfast Shankill, covering the north-west part of the Shankill Road, was established as a constituency of the Parliament of Northern Ireland in 1929 and existed until the body was abolished in 1973. During that time the seat was held by three men, Tommy Henderson (1929–1953), Henry Holmes (1953–1960) and Desmond Boal (1960–1973). Of these only Holmes belonged to the mainstream Ulster Unionist Party for the entirety of his career with Boal a sometime member who also designated as both independent Unionist and Democratic Unionist Party and Henderson always and independent who for a time was part of the Independent Unionist Association. Henderson was a native of Dundee Street on the Shankill. A Belfast Shankill constituency also returned a member to the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1918–1922, with Labour Unionist Samuel McGuffin holding the seat. The areas south of the road were covered by the Belfast Woodvale seat at Westminster and a seat of the same name at Stormont. Robert John Lynn of the Irish Unionist Alliance represented the seat at Westminster for the entirety of its existence (1918–1922). The Stormont seat was held by John William Nixon (independent Unionist) from 1929 to 1950, Ulster Unionists Robert Harcourt (1950–1955) and Neville Martin (1955–1958), Billy Boyd of the Northern Ireland Labour Party until 1965 then finally John McQuade, who was variously Ulster Unionist, independent Unionist and Democratic Unionist until the seat was abolished in 1972.
The Shankill is currently part of the Belfast West constituencies for the Northern Ireland Assembly and Westminster. At the Assembly the Shankill is represented by four Sinn Féin MLAs and one each from the Social Democratic and Labour Party and the People Before Profit Alliance. At Westminster, since 1966, when the seat was lost by the last sitting unionist member Jim Kilfedder, it has also always had a nationalist or republican MP. The abstentionist policy of Sinn Féin MP Gerry Adams, who was West Belfast's MP until his resignation in 2011, led to an attempted legal challenge by local councillor Frank McCoubrey who argued that Shankill residents were being denied their right to representation. The case was not a success.
On Belfast City Council the Greater Shankill area is covered by the Court electoral area. At the 2011 election the five councillors elected were William Humphrey, Naomi Thompson and Brian Kingston of the Democratic Unionist Party, the independent Frank McCoubrey (who is a member of the Ulster Political Research Group) and the Progressive Unionist Party's Hugh Smyth.
Robert McCartney, who led his own UK Unionist Party and represented North Down at Westminster, is also originally from the Shankill.
