Quick Succession and Belfast

Ok, so I realize it has been a month since I have updated my blog. I've of course had a lot of things to do, especially writing. Lets start somewhere close to where I left off. Some professors came and visited us here, and that was cool. I met Geoff Proehl and had a drink with him, and he got his fish and chips as well. Um jump ahead a little bit and I can talk about my trip to Belfast with Matt Jackson and then write several short posts to catch up.

First things first, I of course forgot my camera. So I took some pictures with Matt's which i still need to get from him. I took a bus up from Dublin and it took about 3 hours which isn't too bad. The first thing I noticed, is that there is no official border. There are no checkpoints or even a sign that says welcome to Northern Ireland. There are just more little farms that blend into Northern Irish farms without much change. Got off the bus and the first think I needed to do was get some cash, because Northern Ireland is on the Pound sterling while Ireland is on the Euro.

If you don't already know, the politics of Northern Ireland are/have been pretty messed up. I haven't done much research, but the way I understand Northern Ireland today is that it is still a part of the UK just like Wales and Scotland which means it has its own local government but it also is under the power of the Queen/British Parliament in England, there are seats in the British Parliament for people from NI (Northern Ireland) as well as for Scotland and Wales. It took NI longer than these other places to receive local representation. Until the 80's and 90's NI was ruled completely by the powers in London. There is a very convoluted history of Northern Ireland and Britain if you don't know. So anyway NI is on the pound, but the banks there print their own money, the same as in Scotland and Wales.

To give a very brief history of NI I will spend one paragraph on it. The republic of Ireland gained there independence from the thrown shortly after the Easter Uprising of 1916, Britain however gave up all put 6 counties in the North. They called this Ulster, even though the Ulster Provence includes 9 counties. There was a little bit of fighting over it, but not much because in the 1800's and earlier there was a system of called plantation where people who were loyal to the throne could get land in the north for free. This land was often taken away from the native Irish. These people who were loyal to the throne were mostly protestants because that was the national religion of Britain. The Irish there however were mostly Catholics. So there is where the trouble is. In NI we have the Protestants who are loyal to Britain and the Catholics who are loyal to the Republic of Ireland and in the 60's violence really started to erupt and the three letter groups started killing each other, the IRA (Catholic) and the UVF (Protestant) and many other shoot offs of these groups. That was the beginning of the "troubles" which is the term used (especially by the Irish) to refer to the 30 years of violent conflict between the two sides. The first ceasefire was in 1994 I believe and from then on there have been continuous peace talks and more cease fires. Both sides are said to be inactive and to have destroyed their guns, but just a couple weeks ago the police made the biggest arms bust since the beginning of the conflict and the guns were the UVF's. Please ask me about the conflict sometime because entire books have been written about it and it is hard to fit it into here, and I would love to talk your ear off about it.

So as you may know/should know, Matt and I are writing a play about NI and the troubles. I met Matt and we checked into our hostel and then we went for a walk, we walked up the Shankill (Protestant street) and the crossed over to the catholic side through a gate in the peace wall and then walked down the Falls road (Catholic street). We walked around quite a lot and as it was getting dark we ran across a large group of kids around the age of 10 and we talked to them for a while. We talked a lot about pop culture and the Disney channel, and I can see that the conflict doesn't involve them. It was their parents who had to live through the violence, they just know the aftermath, there hasn't been a riot on their street. Some interesting things though are that they apparently can't have block parties because the protestant side could get scared they they will start rioting and violence could break out again. Matt asked one of the kids what was on the other side of the wall. A young guy who is a bit of a class clown said something along the lines of "Protestants, we don't like them!" and as soon as he said that, one of the older girls in the group pointed at him and said "That's sectarianism." and the young man kinda kicked the ground a mumbled. It seems that there isn't any real hatred or dislike, but it is like it is almost expected of them to not like the other side.

We said goodbye to them and we were gonna head back over to the other side of the peace wall, but we learned that they close the gates through the peace wall at night, so we had to make the 45 minute trek around the peace wall which mean going down into the city center. We had no problems, but it was a really long walk. That night we wanted to go to a pub on the Shankill aka a protestant pub. We were walking up the street scoping it out and looking for a good place when these guys standing outside a pub started talking to us. They recognized us as American and were interested, they brought us in and bought us drinks the whole night. We talked to all these men and it was really interesting. They really truly want to remain a part of the UK. One man told me that if the Catholics had power then they would push the rule of the pope onto them, he spoke of religious freedom and he thought that the Catholics didn't want that. We kept talking and we realized that many of these people were and/or are still members of protestant paramilitaries. One man hinted to Matt that the UVF was still stockpiling arms in case the IRA decides to end the cease fire. There was even some real hate toward catholics. One man was talking to me and asked if we have a lot of guns in America. I said that we do, and it was because a lot of people go hunting. The man said "Around here we hung Fenians." If you don't know "Fenian" is a bad word for a Catholic and/or Irishman. A man also said "You aren't a Catholic are you?" At the end of the night, they played the national anthem of Great Britain and then the bar closed so we went home for the night.

The next day we took it fairly easy, we took a black cab tour around Belfast and we asked the cabbie so many questions. A big part of the tour were the murals around Belfast. Both sides have a lot of murals, and for a lot of different reasons. On the protestant side there are a lot of historical mural celebrating great victories and memorials for dead protestants. On the Catholic side there are murals about civil rights mostly, and some that compare the catholic struggle in NI to the struggle for black civil rights in America. And some murals celebrate people, such as the hunger strikers 10 of which died in their attempt to receive POW status. The murals are incredible and really interesting to see.

We walked around some other parts of Belfast for the rest of the day and and found a delicious market. I really want to live somewhere with a good food market. I bought a can opener because i found a cheap one. That night we went to a pub on the catholic side, and we heard some traditional Irish songs played by a guy on a guitar as well as some songs about the hunger strikers and revolution songs. Drinks were more expensive on the catholic side and we didn't have anyone buying us drinks. Matt got some older woman's address. We talked to one man and he told us about how normal the violence and getting a gun pointed at your head can be.

We then walked into the city center but all the bars were closing, but we could see how completely different the city center is. It seems removed from the conflict, there aren't any flags or anything that would suggest one side or the other. That night some drunk British girls tried to get into bed with the lights off and they were being ridiculous and couldn't seem to do it so Matt lent them his key chain light so they could manage.

The next day Matt flew out early, and since he woke me up when he left I caught an early bus back to Dublin. That is basically my trip to Belfast, it was really fun and I am planning on going back.