Northern Ireland
Trip Start
May 01, 2007
1
7
45
Trip End
Apr 29, 2008
Belfast,
United Kingdom
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Belfast is a fortified town - there is barbed wire and nastier stuff lining walls all over the place. We came across a police station that looked like it belonged in Iraq - thick concrete armour, tiny windows and mirrors all over the place, with CCTVs everywhere. It seems that the IRA really gave the British and the Unionists a bit of a tough time.
Terri and I met up with a couple of fellow Canadians - another Matt, and Carolyn (hey guys), who had just been to Morocco and Spain
01 Belfast City Hall
. We decided to see the sights, and spring for a "Black Taxi" tour together. Before I go on, the Black Taxis are advertised only by word of mouth, so here goes. BOOK A BLACK TAXI RIDE IF YOU EVER GO TO BELFAST. You'll be able to do so through your hotel or hostel. The trip was fantastic. Our driver had a picture of himself with Vince Vaughn, who had apparently filmed a documentary about the Black Taxis in Belfast with him, which should be hitting theaters sometime soon. The tour itself was a drive through town and a history lesson, with an emphasis on the troubles between the Catholics and Protestants. We drove through both sides of town - what a difference. The Protestant sides are predominately middle to upper class, with Union Jacks and red, white and blue paint all over the place for the British, while the Catholic sides were mostly working class and poor, with IRA graffiti everywhere. We learned about tit for tat murders between the UDF/UDA (Ulster Defence Force & Association) and the IRA - innocents being murdered on each side - basically just targets of opportunity. We learned about entire blocks of Catholic homes being burnt to the ground while the mostly Protestant police force looked on and did nothing. Protestant houses were burnt in response. Our guide talked about the police misusing their rubber bullets, which were supposed to be fired at the ground to bounce up into the legs of Catholic rioters, who were instead just shot in the face and killed with them
02 Belfast Protestant Mural
. We were driven around and shown several murals painted by both sides on buildings, and given primers on each one. He took us down to one of the Peace Walls, which were erected between Catholic and Protestant neighbourhoods. They were 40 feet high, and have electronic gates that still swing shut at night to divide the people. He brought crayons along for the ride, for us to write messages of peace on the wall (there were thousands.)Free Derry
After Belfast, Terri and I caught another bus to the town of Derry, just east of the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland. Derry (aka Free Derry, or Londonderry if you're a Unionist) was the site of the infamous Bloody Sunday Massacre, in which a British Paratrooper unit murdered 13 innocent, unarmed protesters and injured several others. This was apparently the genesis of the armed uprising by the IRA, which started out as a peaceful protest in order to gain equal rights with the Protestant elite.
We took a "Bogside" (the Catholic area of town, called this because it was built on an old bog) walking tour hosted by a gentleman that spent his entire life there. He had been subjected to searches every day of his life entering and leaving the military controlled area of the Bogside, and had been arrested "something like 35 times." He told us about watching one of his best friends get shot in the head and killed with a rubber bullet by a British soldier
03 Belfast Protestant Mural
. He told us about the beginnings of the civil rights movement, and the situation that started it, to the massacre of Bloody Sunday.Through the use of gerrymandering and rigged election requirements that allowed just the owner of a house to vote (or, if one owned several houses and businesses, one could vote multiple times), the Catholic majority were always under-represented in government. They started using peaceful civil disobedience tactics in order to win the same rights as Protestants, and fair hiring practices. The Unionist elite were unfortunately able to convince the Protestant laymen that giving anything to the Catholics would be taking the same away from themselves, so even poor Protestants were against reforms that would have helped everyone. The unionist government (supported by England) became increasingly hard-line against the republicans, and Bloody Sunday was the result. There was a public inquiry launched shortly after the massacre, in which a British lord or some such thing refused to interview a Catholic priest who witnessed everything, and dismissed several eye-witness reports stating that none of the protesters had been armed, and that "evidence" of nail bombs and such in the murdered protesters pockets had in fact been planted by the army post-mortem, and concluded that the army had acted admirably. Several of the soldiers were decorated, and the man leading the attack is now the British commander in Iraq
04 Belfast Protestant Mural
. The inquiry was largely dismissed as whitewash. There has since been a new inquiry called, and it is currently in session, due to report this year. I'm very much looking forward to the results.OK the political rant is over. Yes I realize that that was a very biased account of what happened, however that was the information as presented to me. Wikipedia certainly doesn't present a much rosier picture of what happened, leading me to believe that what I heard was probably pretty close to the truth.
Derry itself was a great little town. The city proper is entirely walled, and we were able to walk the length of the four walls, giving us some pretty nice views of the surrounding town that built up over several hundred years. There were well over a dozen original cannon on display, that had been in the city since the early 1600s, and actually used in battle. The Bogside has apparently been cleaned up remarkably well in the past few years, transforming it from a slum complete with burned out cars to a nice little neighbourhood.
Overall, we enjoyed Northern Ireland a good deal more than we did Dublin, but then again, we sprang for some guided tours. It's always nice to learn about the place you're traveling.
Next stop: London.
Comments
Hello from Dundas
Sounds like you are having a great(not to mention educational) timme. Have a Guiness for me.
Rex Meade