Uneasy peace in city with history of bloody ‘Troubles’

BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND — A tourist from the U.S. was signing one of the city’s “Peace Walls,” some two dozen, 30-foot barriers between Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods erected by the British Army in the 1970s.

“Give peace a chance,” wrote Sharon Harrier, “USA, 2016.”

Sharon and her husband Roland were on a bus tour that included sites related to the “Troubles,” the deadly, 28-year conflict between Protestants loyal to England and Catholics seeking a united Ireland. Some 3,500 died in what The Economist describes as the bloodiest period of terrorism in the second half of the 20th Century.

The conflict was settled, officially, by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

Yet, almost 20 years later, Sharon’s and Roland’s tour included stops at a Protestant mural recently defaced by Catholics. “Where is the equality?” a Protestant sign asked. “Where is the reconciliation?” Then, in a Catholic neighborhood, they saw a warning that read, “British Army not welcome in this neighborhood.” And when I met them, along this two-miles-long “Peace Wall,” we read together daily grievances by advocates on both sides of the dispute.

Was Sharon surprised? I asked.

“Yes,” she said. By “how current it is.” She thought the sectarian divisions “had gone away.”

Sharon can be forgiven for thinking the Troubles were over. It’s been 18 years since the parties signed the peace deal brokered by President Clinton, and 11 years since the terrorist militias on both sides disarmed.

Officially, Belfast has “moved on,” workers in the visitor centers say. Sites across the city related to the Troubles aren’t an “attraction” they promote. Rather, they promote Belfast as “an internationally respected example of how lasting peace and reconciliation are possible."

But tensions persist and visitors notice.

The day I arrived, The Belfast Telegraph published six stories based on sectarian tensions. The top story was about a Protestant “Orange Orders” march past a Catholic neighborhood that was delayed three years while the two sides negotiated with the city. During the stalemate, Belfast spent $25 million on policing to keep the sides apart, the paper said. Three hundred police officers and two helicopters monitored the 700 who marched.

The day after the march, I drove around Belfast’s Troubles areas with taxi drivers — one Catholic, one Protestant — who are part of a loosely organized group of guides who help tell this story.

The drivers and I focused on two working-class neighborhoods on the west side of Belfast — a Protestant neighborhood referred to as Shankill Road, and a Catholic neighborhood referred to as the Falls Road. They are the best places to see the history of the Troubles and evidence of current sectarian tension.

Colors mark territory, helping to guide the way: Red, white and blue for the Protestants. Green, white and orange for the Catholics. Hundreds of Union Jacks dangle from lines that stretch across Shankill Road. They’re painted on shop walls and displayed in shop windows. Same for the Irish tricolor in the Falls Road. Some residents in Protestant areas paint their curbs with red, white and blue lines. A Catholic activist paints the red Royal Mail boxes green.

I rode first with Joel Mann, who was born in 1969, and raised in Shankill Road, just as the Troubles began. “Violence is a normality for me,” Mann says. “Two uncles are in prison. Three friends were killed.”

Where we stopped first tells much of the story — then and now.

The stop is a memorial to Stevie McKeag, a Troubles-era militia commander with so many kills he earned the nickname “Top Gun.” McKeag grew up in this Shankill Road public housing project and his mother lives here today. A mural-size painting of McKeag, wearing his militia beret, reads “Remember with Pride.”

McKeag was killed 16 years ago, but this memorial is new, dedicated eight days before I arrived.

“Couple hundred attended,” Mann said, “all his comrades.”

Catholic nationalists expressed fury, said the Belfast Telegraph, because the memorial is “glorifying the paramilitaries.”

Fresh evidence of feelings that linger.

Mann said segregated education is the largest barrier to reconciliation. Ninety percent of Belfast children attend Protestant-only or Catholic-only schools.

“We can’t seem to move on from the past,” Mann said. “We can’t seem to teach balance in the schools.”

But Mann is optimistic, too.

“This year has been the quietest,” Mann said. “Been more talking, more openness, trying to find a resolution.”

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Driver Brian Smith, 50, introduces himself with a stack of photographs. One shows him with an AK47, another with a .45 caliber semi-automatic handgun.

Did you ever fire these during the Troubles? I ask.

Smith hesitates. “The .45, not the rifle,” he says, and we’re off to the Falls Road.

We stopped, first, in a Catholic neighborhood called Clonard, which was burned in the earliest years of the Troubles, and today houses its largest memorial. “Out of the burning streets of Clonard,” it’s said, “arose the Irish Republican Army.”

Smith showed me houses in Clonard, close to one of the barricades, that are still enshrouded by heavy wire netting as a protection against rocks and bottles thrown from one side to the other.

Like his fellow taxi driver, Smith grew up with the Troubles and its violence.

“I didn’t know any different,” Smith said. “I was more or less hardened to it.”

Today, Smith said, it’s nice to have peace.

“At least,” Smith said, “we’re not killing each other.”

This story was originally published December 10, 2016 at 4:34 PM with the headline "Uneasy peace in city with history of bloody ‘Troubles’."