David McKittrick: At last, Belfast dares to imagine life after the 30ft 'peace wall'
[David McKittrick is Ireland correspondent for the Independent.]
Belfast's "Berlin wall", the mother of all the city's peacelines, exhibits no physical cracks as it stretches for hundreds of yards, keeping apart the Protestant Shankill and the Catholic Falls.
It has stood for 40 years as a monument to division, a forceful declaration that Northern Ireland's conflicting nationalities cannot be trusted to live together. A mixture of concrete, metal and wire mesh, it looms 30ft tall. Yet now some in the city have finally begun to think the previously unthinkable and to wonder how it might one day be taken down. This will not happen easily or quickly: it is in fact a project as formidable as the wall itself.
Belfast does not yet know perfect peace but things have improved so much that it is not an impossible dream to think this fixture might eventually be dismantled. A start is being made on planning how and when it might come down.
Everyone knows it cannot happen quickly, and that getting rid of the scores of such walls will be a long, arduous and tricky task. According to nationalist community activist Liam Maskey: "We've got to get them down. A new society has to be about relationships, people meeting and mixing. Peacelines hem people in, perpetuate the constant feeling of us and them."
This month marks the 40th anniversary of the construction of the giant wall dividing Catholic Bombay Street from Protestant Cupar Way. Over the years it has got longer and higher; it looks permanent...
Read entire article at Independent (UK)
Belfast's "Berlin wall", the mother of all the city's peacelines, exhibits no physical cracks as it stretches for hundreds of yards, keeping apart the Protestant Shankill and the Catholic Falls.
It has stood for 40 years as a monument to division, a forceful declaration that Northern Ireland's conflicting nationalities cannot be trusted to live together. A mixture of concrete, metal and wire mesh, it looms 30ft tall. Yet now some in the city have finally begun to think the previously unthinkable and to wonder how it might one day be taken down. This will not happen easily or quickly: it is in fact a project as formidable as the wall itself.
Belfast does not yet know perfect peace but things have improved so much that it is not an impossible dream to think this fixture might eventually be dismantled. A start is being made on planning how and when it might come down.
Everyone knows it cannot happen quickly, and that getting rid of the scores of such walls will be a long, arduous and tricky task. According to nationalist community activist Liam Maskey: "We've got to get them down. A new society has to be about relationships, people meeting and mixing. Peacelines hem people in, perpetuate the constant feeling of us and them."
This month marks the 40th anniversary of the construction of the giant wall dividing Catholic Bombay Street from Protestant Cupar Way. Over the years it has got longer and higher; it looks permanent...