Tag: Belfast

Politics on the Streets of Belfast

Belfast is a fantastic city for street art and murals, which feature heavily in the city’s finely-balanced political situation (Photo: Hannah Awcock).

My summer holiday this year was a road trip around Ireland with my sister. Our first stop was Belfast, which was I very excited about. I love street art, and I love the history of rebellion and resistance, so it felt like the perfect city for me. Although Irish history is not really taught in English schools, I was aware of the euphemistically named ‘Troubles’ in a vague sense that was heavily influenced by my parents’ perceptions of it; Mum in particular was a little bit nervous about us going to Northern Ireland, even 25 years after the Good Friday Agreement. We both made an effort to get to know the history a little bit better before going (I highly recommend the BBC documentary series Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland for a clear and concise account of the Troubles from start to ‘finish’). This is definitely one of those situations, however, where visiting a place gives you an insight that it is impossible to get from a book or a documentary.

I took my car over to Belfast from Scotland on the ferry, so we used a website to rent someone’s driveway whilst we were in the city (it’s a bit like AirBnB but for cars). When we arrived in the neighbourhood, we were taken aback by the loyalist flags and murals that adorned walls and lampposts. It is one thing to expect to find a lot of political murals in a city, it is quite another to turn a corner into a street an immediately be able to tell the political allegiances of it’s residents. Politics in Belfast is highly visible in public spaces of residential areas.

This mural greeted us as we arrived in the neighbourhood where we left the car whilst in Belfast. The UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force) is a loyalist paramilitary group founded in the mid-1960s (Photo: Hannah Awcock).

If I am asked about my national identity, I will say that I am British. But I wear my nationality loosely; I think nationalism causes a lot more problems than it solves, and it just isn’t that important to me. Walking around the loyalist areas of Belfast, I was confronted with an expression of British nationalism that felt quite alien to me, mainly in terms of how fierce it was. There were Union flags EVERYWHERE, alongside flags of Northern Ireland. There were murals dedication to Queen Elizabeth and King Charles, and other commemorated the losses of various parts of the British Army. I understand it; when a group feels threatened it is not uncommon to cling to that shared identity more tightly, but it is a very different Britishness to the one I am used too.

A mural celebrating King Charles III on the Shankill Road, one of the most well-known loyalist areas in Belfast. The Britishness expressed in these areas was one that felt quite distance to me, even as person who normally describes myself as British (Photo: Hannah Awcock).

The Republican areas of Belfast express an Irish identity just as fiercely as the loyalist areas express a British identity. It is generally more outward-looking, expressing solidarity with international groups and campaigns such as Palestine and Black Lives Matter. There are not many things that Republicans and loyalists agree on (for example, loyalists tend to support Israel for a range of reasons, a significant one being that Republicans tend to support Palestine), so it is interesting that both groups are so prolific in their use of street art and murals. I would love to know more about the history of murals in Northern Ireland to gain a better understanding of how this situation developed (so if anyone knows of any good sources on this, please let me know!)

A mural on the Falls Road commemorating the 1916 Easter Rising, during which republicans in Dublin attempted to win Independence for Ireland by force (Photo: Hannah Awcock).
A mural in the Falls Road area expressing solidarity with Prisoners of War. One of the clasped arms is wearing the Irish flag, the other wears the Palestinian flag (Photo: Hannah Awcock).

Separating many of the loyalist and Republican areas of Belfast are so-called Peace Walls. First built as temporary structures in 1969 at the beginning of the Troubles, many people in Northern Ireland still need them to feel safe in their neighbourhoods. I clearly remember the moment I first found out about them, at a conference during my PhD. I was shocked both that such structures exist in modern Britain, and that I didn’t know about them before; it is striking that they are not more widely known in the UK. Despite a commitment by the Northern Ireland Executive in 2013 to remove all Peace Walls by 2023, there are more today than there where when the Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998. Cynics suggest that they are still in place because they are a popular tourist attraction in their own right. I would guess that the tensions caused by Brexit and the Northern Ireland Protocol have also slowed down their removal.

The Peace Walls have become a tourist attraction in their own right- there are two ‘black taxi tours’ (taxi drivers drive tourists around key sites and tell them about the Troubles) in this photo. Tourists sign this wall, which separates the famous Shankill Road and Falls Road areas (Photo: Hannah Awcock).

Given my interest in street art and political history, there wasn’t really any doubt that I would find Belfast a fascinating place. The city’s recent history and politics is inscribed into the urban fabric in a way that I have never seen anywhere else. What I was less prepared for was how much it would make me reflect on my own identity, and the gaps in my knowledge of the history of my own country.

Understanding Conflict: Protest and Political Violence

Provide tea and biscuits, and you're sure to get a good turnout!
Provide tea and biscuits, and you’re sure to get a good turnout! (Photo: Hannah Awcock)

This Monday, I attended the annual symposium of the University of Brighton’s conflict research group (or to give it it’s full name, Understanding Conflict: Forms and Legacies of Violence Research Cluster). With members from disciplines across the arts and humanities, the group seeks to understand violent conflict and its legacies. The annual symposium was organised by postgraduates from the research cluster, and featured a range of presentations by staff and students on themes that ranged from Belfast’s ‘peace walls’ to the aesthetics of AK-47s.

The first question asked by Professor Bob Brecher during his introduction to the symposium was ‘what is political violence?’ It may be a question that the research cluster never fully answers to their satisfaction, but I wonder if protest will be included in any definition that they do come up with. Certainly some members of the research group are working on protest or protest-related topics; Tim Huzar presented at the symposium on the topic of ‘Black Lives Matter and the Question of Non-Violence’, and Zeina Maasri talked about the aesthetics of the AK-47 rifle, and its symbolic role for anti-imperialist struggles during the Cold War. I have often thought about the role of violence in protest movements, and I was hoping that attending this symposium might crystallise some of my ideas.

At the very least, I was about to draw lots of connections between the papers presented at the symposium and my own work on the historical geographies of protest in London. One interesting idea that came out of a lively discussion about drone warfare was the idea of the threat of violence as a controlling force. Drones, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and the intense surveillance they enable can give the appearance of God-like omnipotence. The threat of a drone strike can have as much as an impact on people, if not more, than a strike itself. In a similar way, the threat of violent and excessive policing can be used to alter the behaviour of protesters and potential protesters. The threat of being arrested, kettled, or manhandled by police can prevent people protesting; I know it has factored into decisions I have made about whether or not to attend protests.

A recurring theme during the symposium was the ways in which violence is remembered and memorialised. Ian Cantoni presented a paper about the new memorial museum at Camp Joffre in southern France, used as an internment camp for much of the 20th Century. Dr. Eugene Michael talked about the use of the Holocaust metaphor to interpret the conflicts in former Yugoslavia during the 1990s. Just like conflicts, protests can often have difficult and contested legacies. I am currently working on the Battle Cable Street, which is memorialised in the mural shown below. It is a contentious site, and has been vandalised several times since the project began in 1976. As the name suggests, the Battle of Cable Street was a violent protest, and there are multiple conflicting narratives that surround it. The legacies of violent pasts are difficult to process, yet we continue to try, whether that violence took the form of a protest, a riot, or a war.

The Battle of Cable Street memorial in Cable Street, in Tower Hamlets in East London.
The Battle of Cable Street memorial in Cable Street, in Tower Hamlets in East London (Photo: Hannah Awcock).

There is clearly a lot of overlap between conflict and protest, especially violent protest. Protest has an uneasy relationship with violence; violence is a frequent part of unrest, but many activists reject it, for a whole variety of reasons. Nevertheless, I think that any study of protest (even those about deliberately non-violent protest) would be improved by at least a passing consideration of the causes, characteristics, and impacts of political violence.

Thank you to the Conflict research cluster at the University of Brighton for organising such an interesting day and giving me so much to think about!