Editorial»
Nightclubs are packed, where terror reigned
JAN 07 - One evening last month people wanting a night out had a choice of a performance of Beethoven’s Third Symphony, a concert by the 1970’s rock star Meat Loaf, and a presentation of the pantomime “Dick Whittington,” a British holiday tradition heavy on slapstick and cross-dressing. These special performances were in addition to the conversation and music available at bars that dot the city.
Belfast, a city of 277,000 best known for bombings and other acts of terror in the 1970’s and 80’s, now has a thriving nightlife. During the day the city resounds with work on new buildings and renovations of derelict warehouses. This activity is the result of the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement, which restored confidence in the future of the city. “We want to punch above our weight,” said Eddie Jackson, head of the Belfast Local Strategy Partnership, using a boxing term to describe the comeback of the city.
Jackson is one of many planners and development specialists working to further the revival of Belfast. The partnership is distributing $70 million in grants from the European Union. Their efforts are impressive, but the lingering effects of the old days of violence keep holding the city back.
A half-mile from the Grand Opera House, where “Dick Whittington,” was playing, the first section of the walled “Peace Line” looms over two neighborhoods in West Belfast. The Peace Line is intended to keep Catholics on the Falls Road from fighting with their neighbors on the Shankill. Farther north, Union Jacks and Irish tricolors proclaim the different allegiances that split the Ardoyne neighborhood and led Protestants to harass Catholic girls as they walked to Holy Cross School.
The Holy Cross protests ended a couple of years ago, but in East Belfast last summer the government had to strengthen the Peace Line in the Short Strand, a Catholic enclave under siege by Protestants.
The Troubles, which began almost 35 years ago, have become a stable industry, benefiting the workmen who strengthen the Peace Line, the community activists paid to mediate between the Falls and the Shankill, and the security forces, who, while reduced since the 1998 agreement, remain far more numerous than should be necessary for a province of 1.6 million people.
Since it took direct control of Northern Ireland in 1972, the British government has poured money into the province to the point where a third of the work force is employed by the state. The European Union has also contributed a significant share of aid. Northern Ireland, even while it is enduring a loss of industrial jobs, enjoys a relatively low 5.6 percent unemployment rate. And Belfast has benefited from redevelopment of the Lagan riverside. Three years ago the Odyssey entertainment complex, funded mostly with government money, opened near the now-derelict shipyard where the Titanic was built. Meat Loaf was the headliner there recently.
Yet as the economist Michael Smyth explained by telephone from the University of Ulster, much of the real estate development is catch-up for what would have taken place years ago except for the violence. There are few signs of the private technological development that has made the Irish Republic to the south one of the fastest-growing economies in the world.
The Belfast City Council is unlikely to get back any of its power until the provincial Assembly, set up under the 1998 agreement, proves its worth. And the assembly has barely functioned since the agreement was signed because the Irish Republican Army refuses to give up its weapons. Posted on: 2004-01-07 02:14
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