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Talking with my da about this cover yesterday. One of the Shankill Butchers, Robert ‘Basher’ Bates, is in there. The guy in denim is Roy Stewart, UVF, murdered in a feud of sorts. The lad is Tony O’Shaugnessy, became a postman. It’s Cranbrook Gardens in Ardoyne. https://twitter.com/tim_burgess/status/1254045807571017729
That’s Bates on the left. He was later murdered on release in retaliation for another internal Loyalist murder in the 70s. The two other kids are O’Shaugnessy’s brothers. I think they all didn’t get murdered.
Great story about when the album came out and there was a life-size cardboard promo of O’Shaugnessy. Some lads nicked it from outside a Belfast record store and brought it into his shift in the post office.
Here’s an interview with the main focus of the cover, Tony O’Shaugnessy. It might seem to confuse the specific context, which is: internment, August “71, is one of those Troubles milestones. Protestants in the mainly Catholic Ardoyne starting fleeing. Some burnt their 1/2
houses as they left. O’Shaugnessy’s family were one of the Catholic families caught up in it. The lorry is to help fleeing Protestants. The image is very much “a moment” in all that. https://www.expressandstar.com/news/2010/07/20/story-behind-dexys-midnight-runners-young-soul-rebel-album-cover/
