From 2018. Before the pandemic, the lockdown-induced recession, the BLM protests, the anti-lockdown protests, the 2020 election, and J6.

By Mike Critelli

On Sunday, October 21, I visited Belfast, Northern Ireland, for the first time, in advance of my Board meeting in Dublin, which began two days later.  In many ways, Belfast’s center city area resembles Dublin and other Republic of Ireland cities.

There is no border control between Ireland and Northern Ireland, although there may be one after the Brexit effective date, March 29, 2019.  How the border and governance issues will be addressed is still uncertain.  A fragile two-decade-long peace agreement is at risk, as this article points out.

www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/two-tribes-a-divided-northern-ireland-1.3030921

The legacy of the long conflict between those who want Northern Ireland to be united with the Republic of Ireland, mostly Catholics, and those who want Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom, mostly Protestants, is painfully obvious.  I felt that when I began the Black Cab tour on October 22.  The driver-guide told me that the Europa Hotel, where I had stayed, had been bombed 33 times during its history, making it the “most bombed” hotel in history.

Because we do not regularly read or hear about the violence that dominated the politics of these countries between the late 1960’s, when the conflict between unionists/loyalists (primarily Protestants) and nationalists/republicans ([primarily Catholics) escalated into civil war and 1998, when the Good Friday Agreement caused the violence to wind down, it is easy to assume that everybody “lived happily ever after.”.  This not only is not true, but the peace is particularly fragile with the Brexit deadline looming.

My driver/guide took me through the area at the epicenter of “the Troubles,” as both sides call the violent civil war between the 1960’s and 1998.  Another visitor shared many striking photos from a similar tour, most of which images I saw as well.

wanderthemap.com/2014/01/the-troubles-of-belfast-black-cabs-murals-peace-walls/

Northern Ireland is highly segregated in its residential areas, its schools, its neighborhood shops, its recreation sites and, obviously, its places of worship.  In fact, the saddest comment the driver-guide made to me is that a much higher percentage of the residents want to send their children to integrated schools, but are afraid to do so, because extremists will terrorize their children if that happens.

The loyalists and republicans have visibly differing foreign policy sympathies.  The loyalist/Protestants are strong supporters of Israel and the republican/Catholics support the Palestinians.

Five points stood out from my tour:

• The most striking element of this segregation, as the above-linked article points out, is the presence of large, ugly walls that divide the Protestant and Catholic residential neighborhoods. In Belfast, the Peace Wall, as it is called, is higher than the Berlin Wall was at its peak. As you can see from the photo shown to the right, residents living close to the wall have diagonal cages on the sides of their homes closest to the wall to protect themselves from debris or even gas-fired bombs that could be thrown over the wall.  There are over 100 walls like this in Northern Ireland communities.

• The neighborhoods have sizable volunteer populations with weapons ready for use at any time in a conflict, if one should arise. There are murals on either side of the wall that honor those who have died during “the Troubles,” and, on the Catholic side, there are memorials honoring people who have been killed by the British before the Irish won their independence in the Republic of Ireland.  The photo to the right and below this paragraph honors a leader of the Ulster Defense Force named Stevie “Top Gun” McKeag, who died in 2000 at age 30.

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