Touring the Troubles

Okay, well—the tour of the Troubles. It was the fastest 90 minutes of my life. So much crammed into that short time.

And here’s the thing: despite the 6.5-mile, gazillion feet-high wall separating the Protestant from the Catholic neighborhoods, with corrugated metal gate openings that are closed essentially at dusk cutting off access, it’s clear to me that life is vastly safer and more congenial since the Good Friday Agreement of 21 years ago. Except for that wall, I almost could not believe they were the same places I’d visited in 1994. And even though the day was crappy weather-wise, the whole place looked vastly brighter and decidedly less grody than the last time I was there.

For one thing, the murals have become much less incendiary—the in-your-face-surrender-or-die stuff has been painted over with images that show community and heritage. Viz:

This portrait of a to-the-core leader of Ulster Defence Association (UDA) paramilitaries (which is on the side of the house where he lived) who was assassinated in October 1981 replaces one that was way more militant:

My guide, Stevie, did not mention that the UDA guy’s son, born in July 1981, was also a Unionist fanatic. He was killed in 2003; two bullets to the head.

These three pictures are of murals that were replaced:

The Maze prison, AKA H Blocks, where convicted paramilitaries from both sides were sent to do their time. (Although they were kept in separate cell blocks.)

The Belfast Mona Lisa, so named because the UDA paramilitary’s gun barrel follows you around. (I don't know whether it's good or bad that this has been defaced.)

This one was a full-wall mural of a UDA leader. You can't really see them, but there are three crosses in the background of the Grim Reaper. The name of an IRA fighter is on each of the crosses. According to Stevie, this was a warning that the UDA was going to get those three guys. Pretty in-your-face to put that up permanently on a wall, letting your enemies know specifically that they're walking targets. (As it happens, the three IRA men survived.)

Most of the murals feature men and their view of the fighting. But here’s a piece commissioned to commemorate the women caught up in the conflict:

Oh—so you know, not all murals are political. This was on a building next to the UDA guy’s house:

On the Catholic side, you mostly see things like this mural of Bobby Sands, who died while on a hunger strike in the Maze.

It’s painted on the side of the building that houses Sínn Fein, the Republican political party.

Something that I found extraordinary was that Gerry Adams, the Sínn Fein leader, was elected to (British) Parliament in 1983, from West Belfast. West Belfast is the district that encompasses both the Shankill and Falls Road enclaves of Protestants and Catholics.

The thing everyone remembers from Belfast (aside, these days, from Titanic and Game of Thrones) is the Peace Wall, which runs between the sectarian neighborhoods.

Belfast has commissioned local artists to create murals along it.

For perspective, those are two-story houses, on the Catholic side, behind the wall.

One section also has ribbons of quotations:

From Khahil Gibran

From a Belfast children’s song.

And a quote from Bill Clinton, who visited the wall while in office. (I didn’t shoot it.)

There are some segments that are also open to the public for comment:

Stevie offered me a marking pen, so my contribution was from Robert Frost: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.”

What’s interesting is that in front of the wall on the Protestant side, there’s a street and space. From the Catholic side, however, the wall cuts right through people’s back yards. And some of them have had to build small-mesh fencing (similar to the fortified police stations) around their entire gardens to defend against Molotov cocktails and the like being launched over that wall.

Imagine growing up with that. It's really very similar to the Berlin Wall.

At the end of a street bisected by the wall, local (Catholic) residents planted trees to hide it:

They must have been fast-growing trees.

And here’s a set of gates next two another installation of murals in the Catholic neighborhood. Notice both vehicular and pedestrian gates, with a kind of no-man’s-land between them:

These murals are more about hope:

Much of the Republican strategy was modeled on the African American civil rights struggle, and this one pays tribute to the likes of Mandela, Ali, King and Douglass.

This one may not be entirely hopeful, but it does depict the blindingly obvious.

And this one—well, I just dunno.

But, see what I mean about a lot to process?

One of the hopeful things about this all is that taxi tours of the sectarian areas are a booming business. I mean—fleets of them beetling about with tourists and passing on the history. I’m pretty sure Stevie comes from the Catholic area; he didn’t exactly call the UDA crowd rat bastards, but his choice of verbs and modifiers leaned against the Loyalists.

However, I imagine there are Protestant drivers who give the same tour with different applications of verbs and modifiers.

Also, while we were at the wall, Stevie said that there are walking tours of both areas, led by former fighters in the neighborhoods they know best. If you started on the Falls side, your guide hands you off to an ex-UDF guy at the wall; if vice versa, your guide hands you off to an ex-IRA guy. They all form a confraternity of oral history—Stevie recognized one of the guides coming in from Shankill—and they all work together.

I am not a little concerned, however, that the idiocy that is Brexit, in which Britain is happy to violate the Good Friday Agreement WRT the border between the Republic and Ulster if that's what gets May her "deal", may deal a major blow to this hard-won progress. But for the time being, things are pretty good here.

Peace out from Belfast, then.