North Belfast News Article on 'Peacelines'

Date: 16th Sept '01

Name: Red Pol

Peacelines - product of the past or the
vision of the future

As the Holy Cross stand-off approaches
its third week with claim and counter
claim the North Belfast News investigates
the history of sectarian divisions between
two communities who are forced to live
cheek by jowl.
North Belfast has long been viewed as
the hot bed of sectarian tensions with
peacelines spattered all over the area
and few people, if any, willing to take the
risk of living outside their own community.
But in the wake of one of the worst
summers of sectarian hatred of the
Troubles Jordanstown professor Pete
Shirlow argues that social and economic
deprivation, coupled with the failure to
deliver the much vaunted peace dividend,
means that North Belfast is likely to see
even more peacelines scarring its eyeline
for the foreseeable future.
Having carried out a major study into the
fears and sense of alienation felt by
nationalists and loyalists living on either
side of the peacelines in the north of the
city, Pete Shirlow is seen by many as one
of only a handful of people who have tried
to break the sectarian code that divides
the two communities.
But the Jordanstown professor argues
that the latest images of screaming
schoolgirls and whistle-blowing
protesters on the Ardoyne Road must be
seen as nothing more than the latest
symptom of a much cancer that has
spread throughout North Belfast.
The peacelines were originally built in
the early 1970s to control the violence that
had flared up at the time.
But the idea was that they would be a
short term measure, they were never
meant to be a long term solution, the
Jordanstown professor explains.
But as the years have gone on and the
walls have not only been kept in place but
have got bigger.
It can be argued that the peacelines have
become part of the problem.
And Pete Shirlow says that even the
symbolism of the peacelines have come
to mean different things to different
communities.
One of the problems is that peacelines
are viewed as different symbols by the
two communities.
A child can ask their parent who lives
behind those walls, but the child may
never know.
To a child the people on the other side of
the wall are menacing, they are a threat.
One community can see a peaceline as
being a defence while the other sees it as
offensive and intimidatory.
And Pete Shirlow says that last years
survey on people living on either side of
North Belfasts seven peacelines
revealed how the communities wanted
completely different things from the
separating walls.
Broadly speaking the unionist
community want the peacelines
strengthened while the nationalists want
them pushed back to make way for
housing.
In essence the calls for the peacelines to
be made higher goes to the very heart of
the Protestant populations strong sense
of belief that it is besieged.
Unionism in itself is a metaphor for the
border and isolationism.
Since the inception of the state unionists
have felt that the state was never secure.
Unionists politics has always presented
itself as being under siege and believe
that any attempt to move peace walls
back is attempt to change the
demography of the population.
Nationalists on the other hand believe
that the refusal to push back the
peacelines is an attempt to keep them
hemmed in.
They feel that the nationalist population
is spilling over and that the natural
remedy is to move the walls back to allow
for housing.
There is a legitimacy in both
perspectives.
But the Jordanstown lecturer says that
while blamed can not easily be pointed at
at any one side for the war peacelines the
fault for the lack of any credible peace
dividend must lay fairly and squarely at
the feet of the government.
Our research has shown that 70% of all
those questioned felt that relationships
have actually since the ceasefire of 1994.
You can look at the city centre today and
see that it has been redeveloped since
the ceasefires.
Millions of pounds has been spent on
the private sector and poured into the
leisure industry.
A new Waterfront Hall or W5 might be
nice for the tourist market and the middle
classes but it is not going to make much
of a difference to someone living below
the breadline in Ardoyne or Glenbryn.
It is the private sector and city centre big
business who have reaped the peace
dividend, not the people in the interface
communities.
In many ways the community sector
which would have helped working class
communities during the Troubles has
been sacrificed to pay for the Waterfronts.
The statistics show that the same
amount of money is spent on one mile of
motorway than has been spent on
community relations here in the last
number of years.
There has been a deliberate attempt by
the British Government to focus on the
positive image of Northern Ireland, a
normal society.
But building another Odyssey is not
going to alleviate the fears of someone
who has to live on the peaceline.
There seems to be a belief that all the
problems will be solved by giving people
jobs, but if youre already traumatised a
jobs not going to make much of a
difference.
And the Jordanstown professor says that
what is needed now is a serious look at
what is needed within interface
communities right across the north of the
city.
What people on interface areas actually
need is something tangible benefits in
their own areas.
People need ownership of the peace
process, that patently has not happened,
otherwise we would not have issues like
Drumcree and Holy Cross cropping up
again and again.
A major part of the Troubles has been
the pattern of viewing the other
community as a threat.
The more you have this type of violence
the more ordinary people on the ground
choose to keep their heads down and not
speak out.

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