Behind the Wire

The soldier asked my name and did I come here very often
Well I thought that he was asking me to dance
In my holy coat and hat and him in his red bonnet
We'd have made a lovely couple but we never had the chance

Belfast, Northern Ireland (1986).

I visited Belfast, Northern Ireland for the first time in October, 1986.  As part of a group of twenty-five American students living and studying for the semester in Dublin, we were on our obligatory fact-finding field trip up to the North.

Having been bombarded over the years by extensive American media of coverage of marches, protests, killings, terrorist bombings and government corruption, I didn't know what to expect.  

It was clear the British wanted to extricate themselves from the mess, but didn't want to abandon the Protestant Loyalists who wanted to remain part of the United Kingdom, and I think more importantly, they didn't want to appear to capitulate to the Irish Republican Army (IRA) - the paramilitary group fighting the British for the reunification of all of Ireland.

The political situation in Northern Ireland was a quagmire.  A deadly snake pit that only a large, arrogant colonial power like Britain could conceive.  Complicating matters even worse, Americans - generally one of Britain's closest political allies - wanted the Brits out of Northern Ireland nearly as much as the IRA did.  It was unseemly on the world stage.  Worse yet, it was bad for business.

Speaking volumes to the priority with which the British government viewed the situation (which had only merited a few hours discussion a year in the British Parliament in prior decades) the British, in a moment of literary understatement, dubbed the stalemate in  Northern Ireland The Troubles.

Belfast was only 100 miles from Dublin on the M1 motorway, but millions of miles away in terms of public safety and political and financial stability.

I had read that when flights from the U.K. arrived in Belfast, many flight attendants would begin their arrival announcements with the opening line:

"Welcome to Belfast.  Please set your watch back 500 years."

My group left Dublin by bus after school on a Friday afternoon.  With the short Fall days in the North of Europe, it was dark by the time we arrived in Belfast's City Centre (downtown) at five o'clock.

Private vehicles were not permitted in Belfast's City Centre in those days - only taxis, buses, and commercial and government vehicles.  You could only enter the city through one of four gated, guarded entryways on all four sides of the city.

Our bus slowly rolled up to the security checkpoint as British soldiers surrounded the vehicle and commanded the driver to stop.  The plan was to take a quick driving tour around the city before we stopped for the night at our living quarters at a nearby university.

A British soldier carrying a rifle (all the more remarkable because most police, or garda, in Ireland didn't even carry handguns) stood at the checkpoint and spoke with our driver while another soldier boarded our bus and walked up and down the aisle, sizing us all up.

A third soldier walked along side of the bus holding a small mirror, attached to a metre long steel pole, under the bottom of our bus - checking for hidden explosives in the undercarriage of the bus.  A fourth soldier slowly walked around our bus with a German shepherd - sniffing for explosives.

The soldiers were very thorough and professional, but we all sensed there was little patience for chit-chat or humour.  These guys meant business.  We weren't welcome here.  We were definitely not in Dublin or the Republic of Ireland any longer.

The wall that separates the Catholic Falls and Protestant Shankill sections of Belfast.

We drove around the city and you couldn't help but notice that many of the buildings were abandoned or burned out or boarded up.  Every building that seemed to be occupied was covered with iron bars.

Most public buildings we saw had large concrete posts spaced out every few metres around the entrance - preventing a car bomb from being driven into a public lobby.

Royal Mail boxes around the city had a large metal plate covering the normal mail slot with a sliver of an opening - so thin that only a letter, not a letter bomb - could be dropped through the slot.

The next day I walked into a neighborhood grocery store; well, as far as one COULD walk into a Belfast grocery store.

You walked in the store and immediately found yourself enclosed in a little holding pen near the door by a couple of waist-high counters.  Shoppers weren't permitted to walk through the aisles of the store and place your items in a shopping cart yourself, as you would in America or Dublin.

When it was your turn, you handed your shopping list to a store clerk who walked through the aisles of the store - which you could see just behind the counters like in a normal supermarket - and grabbed your items on your list for you.  They would then ring them up at the register up front.

All this was done to prevent someone from walking into a store and leaving a small, explosive device behind a box of cereal or a can of soup.

The entire city had been engineered for the sole purpose of deterring someone from hiding an explosive device in a public place.

A fire burns in an abandoned lot in the Catholic Falls neighborhood of Belfast.

Life went on in Belfast despite the "Troubles" - adults went to work and children went to school - but the whole place appeared to an American as a war zone.  

The advantage of going there with a group - and under the cover of academic freedom - was we had terrific access to players on all sides.  We were welcomed by militant and political groups on both sides of the divide.  They knew Americans had a role to play in this drama, and they were eager to make a case for their positions to the visiting Yanks.

Yes, we did encounter some men who I'm sure were active in the infamous IRA.  They had such a cold, detached stare in their eyes that only someone who had been fighting an unwinnable war for decades could possess.  But the Loyalist paramilitary groups, the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR), were just as frightening.  The IRA seemed to relish the give and take of political debate while the UDA and UDR just wanted to state their position and get you the hell out of there.

I was appreciative of the opportunity to meet representatives of all sides and try to come to my own conclusions (which wasn't easy).

Although there's much work to be done, I am pleased to report that life in Belfast and Northern Ireland is much more peaceful, stable and prosperous twenty-five years later.

Senator George Mitchell - appointed as special envoy to Northern Ireland by President Clinton - was incredibly patient and effective in getting the sides together to reach some peace accords (the Good Friday Agreement) in 1998 and convince them to continue their fight in Parliament rather than in the streets.

Well it was a powerful day and there were black crows in the road
And I kept my strong opinions to my chest
I suppose I should have told them that I was on fire for you
When the bus burst into flames outside some place, 'The Poet's Rest'

And now you say that you've got to go
Well if you must you must
I suppose that you need the sleep of the just

 -from Sleep of the Just by Elvis Costello 

All photos in this post are ©1986, 2011 V.W. Cleary.  All rights reserved.