Journal - Falls Walking Tour

In the interests of getting a different perspective of communities in West Belfast and of putting a beautiful partly sunny Saturday to good use, we got a larger group of international students together to tour the Catholic Falls Road area of Belfast. Our impression was probably influenced greatly by it being a nice Saturday and during the Spring Festival (Feile an Earraigh), but there were many people about along the commercial streets and children playing in the side residential areas, compared with the empty Shankill of last Sunday.

We started our self-guided tour at Divis Tower, a hotspot of The Troubles, where the British Army used the top floors as an observation point for the surrounding Nationalist neighborhood starting in the 1970s. The 20-story tower stands in stark contrast to the surrounding two-story area, but today looks like any other 1960s highrise apartment complex. A block away was an interesting set of murals locally known as the "International Mural Wall" for its inclusion of various international topics, from the liberation of Palestine and the libation of George W. Bush.

Continuing on Divis Street, we passed a memorial garden before coming to an old mill complex, Conway Mill, now home to a radio station and the newly-opened Irish Republican History Museum. Tucked away around a corner on the other side of a car park, this one-room museum provided a dramatic and startling view on the Irish Republican cause and the Troubles. One half of the museum consisted of examples of weapons used; another half was dedicated to handcrafts (from harps to clothes) created by imprisoned Republicans. A third half (I know this is mathematically impossible, but it sounds better than "a third third") made clear the associations Republicans in Ulster made between the "republican struggle for Irish freedom" and other fights for liberation around the world: the American Civil Rights Movement, Basque independence, Palestine, and Nelson Mandela in South Africa.

The most lasting impression of the entire day was when we watched a 20-minute video on an overview of recent history in Northern Ireland, focusing mostly on the Troubles, and told (obviously) from a Republican perspective. Revealing it was, with a good coverage of the important events (Irish Civil War, Civil Rights Movement, various battles during the Troubles, the Hunger Strikers, the Good Friday Agreement), yet was stuck with me most was the language used to describe the events. I have to commend the museum for sticking to it's mission statement: "To educate, so that our youth may understand why Republicans fought, died, and spent many years in prison for their beliefs." But as I am writing a review of the film, I will also remark that as an outsider, their efforts towards this end were slightly but noticeably indoctrinating. The description of discrimination faced by Catholics in Belfast's shipyards and in housing before WWII was certainly bad, but I think "ethnic cleansing" is too harsh a term to apply in this case. Furthermore, the video gave the impression that the peaceful Civil Rights movement was a naive approach, and that republicans were "forced" to take up arms in defense of their community from the "mobs and militia." It was interesting to me that the filmmakers indicated that the I.R.A. focussed its opposition on "British" forces rather than use the terms "unionist" or "loyalist." The ending was the most chilling aspect of the entire video: after talking about how the Good Friday Agreement contained many imposed conditions (agreements usually require some concessions on both sides!), such as the decommissioning of weapons, the narrator implied that republicans are prepared to fight again for their ultimate goal of a united Ireland, all while a home video from 2002 showing sectarian fighting played in the background. That's only five years ago! Our viewing of this was quite timely, considering that the Police Service of Northern Ireland released an alert this past week of a serious threat of economic attacks by "dissident republicans" of the Real IRA, the highest level of warning seen in several years.

Sorry for exaggerating the doom and gloom there a bit. I hope that makes it a bit clearer what my feeling was while inside the museum; not scared but rather astonished. Moving outside into the warm sun, we kept these thoughts in our minds, but in the very far back; there's really less threat to us here in Belfast than there is in most other large cities, despite the PSNI warning.

We continued on our tour, passing the Falls Road Carnegie Library next to a Bobby Sands mural, and stopping inside the beautiful Clonard Monestary, interestingly surrounded with what look to be blocks and blocks of nice new (1990s) housing. This is just a couple of blocks from the Peace Wall we visited last Sunday. Continuing southwest along the Falls Road, we passed the Royal Victoria Hospital, a cultural centre, a suicide awareness support group building, and several murals before taking a short wrong turn through a quiet neighborhood of ball-playing children.

Eventually we ended up at the City Cemetery, a huge tract of land filled with the dead bodies of and gravestones inscribed to many of the city's famous (read: wealthiest) residents since the 1860s. I later heard that as part of the Spring Festival, 3-pound 3-hour tours were offered through the Cemetery, but we had already walked a ways and needed to get back in time for the France vs. Ireland rugby match, so we only stayed for a short while before heading back home.

I would like to go back to visit the City Cemetery with a more substantial guide, and also to visit the Milltown Cemetery across the road, where numerous Irish Republicans are buried, including the ten hunger strikers from 1981. The Milltown Cemetery became more than a burial ground for the dead during events in March 1988. On 6 March, three IRA members were killed by the British Special Air Service (SAS) in Gibraltar, over something having to do with a large bomb. (I'm trying to be objective in this description, to be fair to both sides, and because I don't know all the details and am paraphrasing from several websites, so pardon the vagueness.) A funeral for the three was being held in Milltown Cemetery on 16 March when a Loyalist, Michael Stone, opened fire on the mourners, killing three and wounding dozens. Then, on 19 March, at the funeral for Kevin Brady, one of the three killed only three days before, two British Army corporals (in civilian clothes) inexplicably drove into the mourning crowd and were attacked and shot dead. What makes all this worse is that both killings in Milltown Cemetery were captured by television news cameras.

I hope these journal entries are interesting and not too disturbing. When you are actually there, it doesn't feel disturbing at all; it's only when putting this in a historical context without being there spatially, that the sense of "awe" appears. Anyway, there should be fewer serious posts like this in the future, or at least ones that deal with so serious an issue.