As I planned out my blog posts about Ireland, I have to admit I was already somewhat dreading the entry where I’d have to talk about the messy politics of Northern Ireland. Reams and reams have already been written about the Troubles – political diatribes, military analyses, biographies, eyewitness accounts – what more could an outsider who’s expended just a few days of sustained mental energy on the subject possibly add?
But the same could be said for all the topics I’ve prattled on about on this blog, and the convoluted ins and outs of the Irish situation are likely to fade further and further into the backwoods of my brain over time, so I need to give it my best shot for my own benefit. So here goes.
As I’ve already intimated in earlier posts, Ireland and Britain haven’t been the cosiest of neighbours over the centuries. English monarchs had one eye on the Emerald Isle as early as the 12th century, and were more than happy to help when Dermot MacMurrough, the deposed king of the southeastern Irish province of Leinster, swore allegiance to the English crown in return for military assistance in defeating his usurper. The decade was barely out before he regretted that decision. Only five years later, Henry II came back to Ireland to unceremoniously dump MacMurrough from the very throne he had reinstalled him on, and claim his own sovereignty over Leinster. So ironically, it was an Irish chieftain who set in motion 750 years of often brutal British occupation.
Town by town, through several hundred patient years of military campaigns, the English gradually expanded their control of Ireland, taking control of Dublin, then the entire west coast, and finally the stubborn northern province of Ulster in 1601. Once all the remaining local strongmen had fled for their lives from Ireland, Britain was right there to step into the total power vacuum. Here were the beginnings of the British empire.
Once basic military control had been established, the next step was to Anglicise Ireland and turn it into a peaceful and productive colony. Initially this was done by “plantation” – the confiscation of fertile agricultural land from the local population for redistribution to English colonists. This left the Irish poor and dependent on their rulers, forced to work as tenants on the land that they formerly owned.
The second major control mechanism the British used in Ireland were the Penal Laws. This was a series of legislative measures put in place to marginalise Catholics - why? Because the Roman Catholic Church was the only institution in Ireland powerful enough to challenge British authority. Under the Penal Laws, Irish Catholics could not vote, own land, hold political office, serve in the army or attend university. This incentive program to renounce Catholicism worked especially well on those who were already educated, wielded some power and influence and therefore had a lot to lose by remaining Catholic. Naturally, many wealthy Irish families converted to Protestantism and by the late 18th century, only 5% of the land in Ireland was in Catholic hands.
Imperialism really is a bitch. Ireland was treated as little more than an proxy battlefield and a food factory for many years. Sectarian hostility between rival British monarchs spilled over repeatedly onto Irish territory, and livestock and grain were exported to England even as literally a million people were dying of starvation during the famine. It was only a matter of time before the nationalist spirit took root in Ireland, kindled by the example of the French Revolution and America’s War of Independence.
Resistance waxed and waned until the IRA finally steered Britain to the negotiating table in 1921 after several years of guerilla warfare. Irish Catholics understandably wanted to get as far out from under the imperial thumb as possible, but there was always going to be the thorny issue of Ulster, Ireland’s northern province, which had a Protestant majority that supported continued union with the Empire. The final Anglo-Irish agreement gave the six Protestant-dominated counties of Ulster the chance to opt out of the new independent state and remain part of Britain, which they immediately did. So Ireland was partitioned, just like India was a quarter of a century later as a condition of their independence from the British.
In the new Free State of Ireland (it only became a republic in a referendum several decades later), Catholics formed the overwhelming majority. So after independence, the new nationalist government had a strong mandate to follow through with its aims. In the North it was another story. Protestants are the dominant community in Northern Ireland, but only just. Over 40% of the North’s population is still Catholic. And understandably, many of them were not happy at all with the partition of Ireland. Meanwhile, Protestants feared that the ascendant nationalism further south would incite Catholics in the north to turn against the country in which they lived.
"Ulster Unionists, fearful of being isolated on the island, built a solid house, but it was a cold house for Catholics. And northern nationalists, although they had a roof over their heads, seemed to us as if they meant to burn the house down" – David Trimble, Northern Irish Parliamentarian and Nobel Peace Prize laureate
It quickly became clear that Northern Ireland’s post-partition, pro-unionist government was determined to keep power concentrated in Protestant hands, through gerrymandering, the abolition of proportional representation, and discriminatory hiring practices in the civil service. One of the worst examples of this was in Derry, where municipal borders were redrawn to ensure a Protestant council would be elected, despite two-thirds of the city’s population being Catholic.
Derry was our first stop in Northern Ireland. Its history is particularly divisive. Built by Protestant plantation settlers, the walled city was surrounded by a Catholic army in 1689 during one of the many bloody sectarian wars fought on Irish soil. The citizens of Derry held out against the besieging army for several months and almost a quarter of their population died before the siege was broken.
The whole Protestant-Catholic thing feels very theoretical until you actually come to a place like Derry. As we walked the city walls and looked out over the neighbourhoods on each side, it was clear that hundreds of years later, the siege is still Derry’s defining historical event - that is, if you ask a hardcore unionist.
RIght next to one side of the walls is a working-class Protestant neighbourhood, where the catch cry of the siege, “No Surrender”, still seems to resonate loudly. Even the kerbs here are painted in the colours of the Union Jack, screaming “We’re British, not Irish!”
You may have noticed that in the mural above, the city is referred to as Londonderry, not Derry. The city’s official name is Londonderry, but from day-to-day most people, Catholic and Protestant, refer to it as Derry, and the governing body is called “Derry City Council”. This ambiguity has become something of a political football. On road signs, the city is named Derry when you’re in the Republic, and magically changes to Londonderry when you cross the border. This is pretty much the only way you can tell you’ve entered the UK – the stringent border checks during the Troubles are a thing of the past.
We also saw several signs that had been vandalised by nationalists to erase the "London-" part. We didn't manage to get a picture of our own, but here’s an example from Wikipedia.
From the other side of Derry’s walls, you can look out over the Bogside, the neighbourhood that twenty years ago was Derry’s infamous Catholic slum. Here, predictably, you’ll see republican flags flying and lamp posts painted in tricolours.
The Catholics of Derry began marching for their civil rights in the late 1960’s. These street protests started peacefully, but were infiltrated by the Provisional IRA, whose mission was to reunite the North with the rest of Ireland by violent means if necessary. The marches became a magnet for hotheads of all stripes, and violence escalated. In an attempt to contain the unrest, the British government started to intern hundreds of Catholics, many of whom were civil rights activists with no ties to the IRA. In response, residents of the Catholic Bogside barricaded their neighbourhood against the police and army and declared it as an autonomous area, “Free Derry”.
Free Derry became a safe haven for peaceful Catholics, but also for the IRA and other violent nationalist groups. Finally, in 1972, on the day that became known as Bloody Sunday (yup, the one made famous by U2), the British Army went in to take control of the Bogside. The events that followed have long been (and perhaps will forever be) the subject of ferocious debate. It took until June this year – almost thirty years later - for the findings of a public inquiry into the events to be published. What has become clear is that in their attempts to regain the Bogside, British soldiers shot and killed innocent civilians without provocation, and then lied under oath to cover up what happened.
Northern Ireland’s sectarian woes had already well and truly begun by this point, but 1972 became the bloodiest year of the Troubles, with over a thousand IRA bombings, and the inevitable backlash from loyalist paramilitaries. Violent assaults, political assassinations, and forced homogenisation of neighbourhoods became commonplace. In short, life became miserable and scary for pretty much everyone. There seemed no end to the they-started-it, eye-for-an-eye spiral of violence.
The Troubles provided rich subject matter for many artists and musicians. In what was once Free Derry, you can today walk around “the People’s Gallery”, a series of murals painted on the sides of apartment blocks by a group called the Bogside Artists.
On a musical front, one of the songs I fell in love with on our trip was this one by the Northern Irish musician Phil Coulter. It’s about his humble but happy childhood in Derry, and the shock of returning as an adult and finding his city shattered by the Troubles. For every hardliner on either side of the fight, there were many ordinary people who didn’t care about history or nationalism and just wanted to get on with their lives.
It took 30 years for the leaders of the warring sides to finally commit to a peace process, which established power sharing between nationalists and unionists in Northern Irish parliament. Of course, there are still splinter groups (like the “Real IRA”) who disagree with the concessions made, and continue to engage in paramilitary activities. But by and large things have calmed down since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement.
From Derry we headed north to the cliffs and waves of the Causeway Coast. Coastal Northern Ireland is sprinkled with quaint little golfing towns, rural bed-and-breakfasts, and needless to say, gorgeous scenery. Our visit to Derry had been intense to say the least, so this was a nice change of mood.
I was particularly excited about this part of our trip, because we would be fulfilling my childhood dream of visiting the Giant’s Causeway. This is a formation of interlocking hexagonal stone columns that starts from the cliff face and slopes down into the sea. Local legend goes that the Causeway is a bridge built by the Irish giant Finn MacCool to get to Scotland and kick some sissy kilt-wearing giant’s ass. (There’s actually a matching set of columns on the other side of the sea in Scotland.) That’s the exciting version of the story - the boring geological explanation is that the columns were created by the cracks formed by cooling volcanic lava.
We spent some time just wandering up and down the Causeway, admiring Finn MacCool’s mad construction sk1llz0rZ, basking in the late evening sun, and listening to the waves crash against the columns. Then we followed the path that leads away from the Causeway along the cliff line to the turn back point (it’s actually 24km long, but closed in many parts due to rock falls). We were back in time to claim a nice bench to watch the sun set over the Causeway.
At this point, something super cool happened. Sean got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. Since he’s kinda sorta awesome, and probably the one person who will be able to withstand my peculiar blend of neuroses, hyperactivity and nerdiness for life, I said yes. That was pretty great.
(For those who actually survived through my history essay, there’s your reward - you got a paragraph of blog-schmoopy.)
We spent a night in Bushmills, the nearest town to the Causeway, and did a little more coastal road trippin’ before arriving in Belfast, Northern Ireland’s capital city. In the bad old days, Belfast was nicknamed one of the “four B’s” – along with Baghdad, Belgrade and Beirut. Arriving in central Belfast today it’s hard to imagine – it feels like a mini-London, with its black saloon cabs, British chain stores, and majestic baroque city hall, whose lawns are the hangout of choice for teenage scenesters of all stripes. Belfast’s nightlife these days is apparently the envy of Europe, which I would fully believe considering the number of raucous stag and hen parties that seemed to be based at our hotel.
We visited the fabulous Crown Liquor Saloon, Belfast’s most famous watering hole, and one of the most beautiful I’ve ever had the pleasure of a beer in. Everything from the inlaid ceilings to the leadlight windows to the brass beer taps was exquisite, and yet the atmosphere was as casual and fun as your local corner pub. One of the unique things about the Crown is that a large portion of the drinking area is cordoned off into little square booths each with their own door. Perfect for hatching that nefarious scheme that’s been knocking around your skull.
On our second day in Belfast we took a black taxi tour. What started off as the odd visitor taking a spin past the political murals of troubled West Belfast is now a well-established part of the tourist trade here. It’s sardonically referred to by locals as the “bombs and bullets” tour, and it was undoubtedly a little weird to be gawking at not-so-ancient history so openly, but I would still consider this to be one of the best things we did on our trip.
We were picked up by our cabbie, George, from the front steps of our hotel (it is a taxi, after all). On the way to West Belfast, a hotbed of violence during the Troubles, he gave a quick overview of Northern Ireland’s history. He also explained the impact of the Troubles on the city’s landscape – most notably, the construction of “peace lines” – long, high fences that were built in the 70’s to create a physical barrier between hardline Protestant and Catholic neighbourhoods.
There are still twenty of these peace lines in the city of Belfast, some over a kilometre long and forty feet high. The one in West Belfast is punctuated by a few gates that are kept open only during daylight hours on weekdays. At night and on weekends, the gates are closed, so that anyone who wants to make trouble in hostile territory would have to go all the way into the inner city to get back to the safety of their own neighbourhood.
Apparently the government considered taking the peace lines down a few years ago, but bowed to public opinion polls which suggested that 60% of residents in surrounding areas were still fearful enough to oppose their removal. The scars are going to take a little more time to heal, it seems.
George said that most people in Belfast couldn’t give two hoots about Protestant, Catholic, nationalist, loyalist, or any of that stuff. He’d grown up in a mixed neighbourhood himself, attended a mixed school and was as shocked as anybody when his home town became one of the four B’s. (In fact, we were never really sure whether he was Catholic or Protestant himself.) “If all schools were mixed,” he sighed, “We could kick this thing in one generation.”
These days the paramilitary groups on both sides seem like little more than rival street gangs who engage in tit-for-tat violence and make money through extortion and protection rackets. A lot of the more violent murals around town just look like a regional variation on gangsta culture.
Our first stop in West Belfast was the loyalist neighbourhood of Shankill Road. When you’ve just spent a week or so in the Republic of Ireland hearing the Catholic side of the story, it’s kind of a shock to come and see the loyalist murals here. For example, there was one paying tribute to Oliver Cromwell, the man who is seen as a racist genocidal puritan in Ireland but credited in England as an important political reformer. (Both are probably true.)
Shankill Road had a bizarre mix of very twee murals (children smiling and holding hands) on the one hand, and very aggressive and violent imagery (rifle-wielding paramilitary soldiers in balaclavas) on the other. The most provocative ones were painted during the height of the Troubles, and are slowly being painted over with friendlier motifs.
From Shankill Road we headed through an open gate in the peace wall to the Catholic neighbourhood of Falls Road. With all the goings-on you’d expect it to be like a different planet, but honestly, if you didn’t have to drive through a forty-foot high wall to get there and there wasn’t so much banner-waving everywhere, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the two areas. They’re both working class communities, each street a neat row of terraced houses with low brick walls and wrought iron gates. It hits home that the people most caught up in the violence in reality probably have much more in common with the other side than what divides them.
Our first stop on the Catholic side was Bombay Street. This street was burned down by loyalists in 1969 after civil rights marches turned violent. After this, the first peace lines started to go up in Belfast. There’s a small cemetery here honouring IRA martyrs. It’s kind of hardcore.
Further on we saw the Sinn Fein headquarters, and a string of nationalist murals. Some of the murals express the IRA’s solidarity with with other separatist struggles around the world, such as the campaign for Basque independence from Spain.
I spent a lot of time writing this blog post, trying to figure out what my “opinion” on this whole situation is. I mean, obviously enough awful things have happened that it’s now a big messy cloud of grey, but I at least wanted to understand why everyone involved thinks what they think. The nationalist viewpoint is quite easily understood, I think – hundreds of years of injustice and oppression are going to leave a mark. Is violence in return the answer? Probably not. The unionist viewpoint was less immediately understandable to me, but in the end I think it comes down to fear and protective instincts. The same thing happened in America after 9/11. When someone kills the people you care about in cold blood, I don’t think there are many people who wouldn’t be incredibly angry and want to fight back. Is violence in return the answer? Probably not.
As Martin Luther King Jr said, a riot is the language of the unheard. People turn to violence when they don’t think there’s any other way. Every questionable act committed by one side is justified by a not nice thing done by the other side, and thus the cycle of misery continues. In the end, considering that neither side is completely blameless, all you can do is hope that more and more people ask themselves, do we want another generation to be fucked over by this? Children aren’t born with hate, they learn it. You have to just hope that society will take a big deep breath and somehow move on. I know that’s easy for me to say from out here.
And now I supplement my corny but heartfelt heal-the-world plea with a symbolic photo of Stormont, Northern Ireland’s parliament, where one hopes that the pollies are getting along and finding real solutions to the problems that make ordinary people think the answer is to turn against each other.
Fin.
Links
- British occupation of Ireland
- The Troubles
- The Bogside Artists
- A very nice photo slide show showing life in Belfast during the Troubles from the soldiers’ perspective.
