Northern Ireland loyalists anxious as 'stalwart' queen passes

FILE PHOTO: People stand next to flowers left in tribute, following the passing of Britain's Queen Elizabeth, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, September 10, 2022. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne

BELFAST (Reuters) - Loyalists laid flowers by a huge mural of a young Queen Elizabeth in a fiercely British corner of west Belfast, looking back at what they saw as a glorious past, and forward to what they feared was an uncertain future.

A few hundred metres away, across steel and concrete "peace walls", many Irish nationalists reacted to the death of a woman they once saw as a symbol of British oppression with indifference or, at most, polite sympathy.