Belfast
“High fences makes good neighbours”: Peace lines and public space in Belfast

“We walked through Peace Line gates toward Shankill Road, guided by the map given to us on the bus tour. I had no idea that the Catholic and Protestant sides of Belfast lived in such close proximity, or that they were separated by an actual wall, made of cement in some areas and fencing in others. It looks like the remaining stretches of the Berlin Wall in Germany and, like those, is partly covered in messages left by people from around the world, including Bill Clinton” (anonymous travel blog)

That’s how it often ends. (Black) taxis take tourists to trouble spots – after all, they too are an attraction. You can comment on them (yes please, inscribe your enlightened opinion for posterity). Foreign politicians happily gather there for giving some highly symbolic speeches.
Why should it be different for the Peace Lines of Belfast?

The first “peace line” (how ironic!) was built by the British Army at Cupar Street, on September 10, 1969 in response to the intensive sectarian rioting that broke out after the Battle of the Bogside in Derry (a three day confrontation between the local Catholic nationalist residents and the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the police force of Northern Ireland). The “Troubles” had started - so had the peace lines. More fences followed in the 1970’s. Intended as temporary stopgap measures, they became permanent fixtures. They multiplied over the years, from 18 in the early 1990s to 40 today.

How do they look like? The barriers themselves consist of iron, brick, and steel walls, topped with metal netting, or simply a white line painted on the ground similar to a road marking. The more modern ones, euphemistically known as Environmental Barriers, have been made less obtrusive with fancy brickwork, or railings and sensitive planting of trees and shrubs. On average, each fence is some 500 meters in length. Security authorities give orders to close the fences' gates at night to ensure people don't cross from one side to the other; in emergencies, the gates can be opened to allow ambulances and other vehicles to pass through. The Belfast interfaces are determined on a street-by-street basis according to local demography; they cut roads in half and split public parks down the middle. Alternatively, they can surround enclaves where a geographically defined minority lives within an area dominated by the ‘other’ community. The earliest physical barriers were simple barricades or barbed wire fences. Over the years, these structures have been built up, enlarged and extended. Some of the most recently constructed are landscaped with trees, shrubs and coloured fences, so that the barriers increasingly have a sense of permanence in the urban landscape.

The peace lines: producer or by-product of division?
Did the peace lines emerge out of the blue, as violence requested case-by-case adjusted physical measures of separation? Did they rather obey a pattern that could already be identified in the occupation of the city space by the two communities and the unofficial boundaries that were consequently shaped? John Conroy, a Chicago journalist who lived in West Belfast for twenty years during the period of the Troubles, thinks so. In his view, the structures erected by the army were “merely a formalization of what was already there”.
In other terms, how far have the peace lines been determined by the previous partition and perception of the “public space” and how far have they influenced its current configuration? The question immediately raises another one: whiles the peace lines prove the most concrete and visible division device, can’t we find other less visible, even invisible, forms or devices that reflect the divide?

Mind you, there are plenty of them. It can be a turn in the road, a local landmark, or a row of shops, newly constructed industrial or commercial zones; street names; grills and bars used to protect domestic property. You, happy stranger, will be unable to identify them. But the inhabitants order much of their daily routine, travel patterns and social arrangements according to this social geography.

Let’s take the example of the murals, a striking feature in Northern Ireland. Not only do they constitute visual landmarks that help you recognize areas. They also reflect how the division of urban space can be anchored in history. The tradition of mural painting there started around 1908, when loyalist painters began to paint large outdoor murals each July. Why July? Because, besides flags, marches, banners, bunting, the murals were part of the annual celebrations of the 1690 Battle of the Boyne, one of a series of battles for the English throne between King James II and his son-in-law, Prince William of Orange (soon-to-be King William III, who consolidated the British rule, and Protestant domination, in Ireland). With the establishment of the Northern Ireland state following partition in 1920, murals took on extra significance, becoming a civic duty for Protestants/Unionists, legitimised as such by the state and its governing party. While streets and public places were unionist, the nationalists (Catholics) were confined to private spaces: Catholic church halls, Gaelic sports fields, and private clubs. They did not paint murals. That situation changed with the prisoners’ hunger strike of 1981. Nationalists and republicans took to the streets in support of the prisoners. Some began "drawing support" for the hunger strikers on the walls. After the hunger strike, other themes were found, from the electoral strategy of the Republican Party Sinn Fein to media censorship, etc. Republicans were now in turn claiming and investing the public spaces. Disappearance of motifs (like King William), emergence of others (like stark military images or even pop culture like Bart Simpson), slogans, calls for vote, depictions (weapons in the hands) of Irish Republican Army men in action or unionist Ulster Freedom Fighters… Murals are the image of Northern Ireland history book: visible the narratives, imagery, symbols that shape the self-perception of each side.

The peace lines have generated dead spaces, no-go zones, and militarized or policed areas. Because they are on the edge of a community’s territory, they tend to be regarded as less desirable places to live. Thus, the vertical communal segregation of the city is compounded by its horizontal, class division. What was once home to families are now abandoned houses, lacking walls and windows, whose bricks will be picked up and used by children to produce a new item, in a modified mortar and pestle process known in local slang as “Belfast bricks” to be sold for a few pounds to enterprising contractors. Furthermore, while reifying group identity and hostility, the peace lines have created a dangerous ghettoization of each population – a situation that seems to fit the worldview of the paramilitary organisations that were responsible for the majority of deaths and injuries. Their vigilante surveillance of their respective areas often end in brutal punishment attacks, mainly on young people, ostensibly under the guise of reducing ‘anti-social’ behaviour. People do not only suffer intimidation and threats from across the divide, but are also victims of intra-communal violence. The paramilitary presence hampers any possibility of cross-community contact.

High fences make good neighbours… is a statement to be questioned. But one thing is sure, good neighbours never make high fences.