August 1969. A group of militiamen from Shankill, a Protestant district, hoisted a British flag on a lamppost. Across the street, residents of Falls Road, predominantly Catholic, assemble barricades made of old tires and paving stones torn from the street. Even the walls are at war: “God save our queen” (“God protect our queen”), hastily drawn on a loyalist wall, responds to the Republican “this is free Belfast” (“This is free Belfast”), on a facade which demarcates the border between the two camps.
The following nights were torn apart by the throwing of stones and Molotov cocktails. From their windows, frightened residents watch halos of light pierce the night: nearly 600 houses are burned down in three days. Others are awakened by the hammering of metal which signals the imminence of an attack: the women of the neighborhood sound the alarm by banging the lids of their trash cans. “To call what happened riots, as the press and radio did, is an absurd euphemism. It was war”observes the English historian Desmond Greaves, present on site during the first clashes.
Called in for reinforcements on August 15, 1969, the British army set up barricades to separate rival factions and prevent the most sensitive neighborhoods from falling into chaos. The “peace walls” (peace walls in English), as they were called then, were supposed to stay up for six months, until tensions eased; fifty-five years later, they are still there.
Thirty kilometers of walls
In Belfast, the first peace line (“peace line”) of the Northern Irish capital consists of a simple line of barbed wire 900 meters long, stretched on September 10, 1969 between Shankill, a Protestant and unionist stronghold, and Falls Road, of republican and nationalist allegiance. “This will be a very, very temporary measurethen judge Ian Freeland, lieutenant-general of the British army. We’re not going to have a Berlin Wall or anything like that in this city.” However, the corrugated iron barricades have given way to partitions of concrete, steel and barbed wire, some portions of which reach 14 meters in height, four times that of the Berlin Wall.
Far from easing, tensions have only worsened, particularly after the Bloody Sunday of January 30, 1972. After this date, bomb threats become daily and it is not uncommon to discover, upon awakening, a pile of smoking rubble on the site where a church or a school was located the previous night.
In order to defuse altercations between communities, the walls are scarring into the flesh of the Northern Irish capital. “The city center was cordoned off by metal barriers guarded by soldiersrecalls a resident, at the time a student at Belfast University. We had to pass a check every time we entered the mall. Women’s handbags were searched for possible incendiary devices and men were checked to make sure they were not carrying weapons.
Nadiah, a former resident now based in Montpellier, remembers how Belfast’s districts were fractured by religious beliefs. Even though she practiced Islam, that didn’t stop her from having to choose sides. “When I said that I was Muslim, people asked me: yes, but a Catholic Muslim or a Protestant Muslim?”she remembers today.
“There are several barriers located along the community borders in Belfast and we have made significant progress over recent years to extend opening hours.”
Nowadays, in Belfast we no longer find hooded paramilitaries patrolling in the shadows of the walls or snipers in ambush perched on the heights. Now covered in paint and graffiti, crossing uneventful little gardens, the peace walls wind for more than 30 kilometers through the city and tourist circuits offer foreign visitors the opportunity to sign their names with a permanent marker.
In fact, even if neighborhood associations advocate reconciliation between the two communities, a simple glance is enough to determine the allegiance of this or that residential zone. On the Catholic side, frescoes glorify the members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) who fell as heroes and the hunger strikers of 1981. While in the Protestant area, the Red Hand and the Union Jacks remind of loyalty to the British Crown. The “interfaces”, these no man’s land which separate rival confessions, are in some way the physical representation of the white of the Irish flag, caught between the Catholic green and the Protestant orange.
A difficult reconciliation
As a result, crossing points between rival neighborhoods remain closely monitored. Some are even locked every evening, around 10:30 p.m., by the Northern Irish police, who open them again around 6 a.m. the next morning. “There are several barriers located along community borders in Belfast and we have managed to make significant progress over recent years to extend the opening hours of these barriers by working with residents, elected officials and community representatives and obtaining their consentconfides a spokesperson for the Northern Irish Department of Justice, whom we interviewed. Unfortunately, the conditions are not met to extend opening hours in certain areas.”
Since the end of a civil war which left around 3,700 dead, a third of them in Belfast, the project to tear down the barriers has made headway. In May 2013, the Northern Irish government launched an initiative aimed at removing all of the country’s “peace walls” by 2023. The project is now at a standstill, discredited by residents who fear new episodes of violence. In 2020, a Northern Ireland Department of Justice poll found that 42% of residents supported retaining the walls.
Unfortunately, despite the security they provide, these separations cultivate a memory of faction and demarcate perimeters which discourage mixing. “The “peace walls” (…) are visual and material proof of the persistent lack of reconciliation following the peace process initiated in Northern Irelandestimates James O’Leary, who has archived thousands of testimonies and documents relating to peace walls. They act as magnets for clashes and riots in times of unrest, completely mask any visual connection with “other” communities and close off a network of natural road connections, which accentuates and reinforces division.
Indeed, Catholic children still go to Catholic schools, interfaith marriages are rare and political allegiances are marked by religious affiliations: Catholics have their card in Sinn Féin (the main republican party in Northern Ireland), Protestants campaign in unionist parties…
“The final miracle will occur when the walls, both physical and personal, begin to fall between the two divided communities”predicted a Daily Express journalist the day after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement (Good Friday Agreement), on April 10, 1998. Today, the population seems further away from this objective than ever. From thirty “peace walls” in 1998, there are now nearly a hundred, the latest border having been built in 2013.
