Aerial view of Crumlin Road Girdwood site.

Aerial view of Crumlin Road Gaol & Girdwood Army Barracks site; Clifton Park Avenue is one of North Belfast's most volatile interfaces.
An Roisin Dubh

Why do we have the walls?

Why do we have the walls? Initially the walls were erected to prevent access to communities by armed groups at the height of the conflict. They restricted the movement of vehicles entering or exiting the community. They created a sense of relative safety at the time, growing into a type of comfort zone. This allowed a type of apartheid living arrangement that segregated and divided communities for the past forty years. Day to day living could go on without having to engage with anyone on the opposite side of the wall.

As the conflict changed, the walls became the focal point for community clashes during periods of community tension such as during the 1981 Hunger Strike, Drumcree & the Holy Cross Blockade. Since the 1994 ceasefires the violence at the interfaces has ceased to be any longer an inter-communal conflict and has become a problem of youth based anti-social activity.

The walls allow a sectarian mindset to go unchanged, drawing young people to them to organise rioting as a type of boredom relief, an adrenalin buzz with no sense of consequence. The walls are often the target for attack and residents living there are left to endure the consequences. Therefore the walls do not prevent trouble.

The sense of fear and mistrust that was present when the walls were erected has changed to a degree, while the likelihood of being shot or murdered by has been practically removed, the fear of physical attack is still residual. The walls still demarcate the perceived places where it is or isn’t safe to be.


An Roisin Dubh

Do good walls make good neighbours?

There is an adage that good walls make good neighbours and while in Belfast we have no shortage of walls, the creation of good neighbourliness has not presented itself as a subsequent dividend. It is hard to digest the description of dividing walls as peacelines; division, segregation and estrangement are not surely conducive to peace. Interface walls, Peacelines, Security Cordons or The Divide, whatever the title used the image of these walls is synonymous with the world’s vision of Belfast.

There is often reference made to the scars and the legacy of the conflict and the miles of corrugated steel and concrete are perhaps the most visible residue of the past. The Good Friday Agreement is ten years old and we have seen a period of relative peace along with the associated dividend of regeneration and economic development come to the centre of the city and the suburbs. This new sense of urgency to build, shape and change the image of Belfast is yet to find its way to tackling the interfaces and contested spaces of the north of the city or indeed to look to remove the walls that so long have shaped the daily lives of the people living there.

Walls themselves are neutral, inanimate structures, they hold no politics, intent or opinion but the use of a wall to separate, to divide, to partition and to control is laden with the politics of its architect. Through history the role of the wall has changed from that of protection, keeping out the roaming horde, to signifying dominance, the Norman castle declaring military and technological superiority to the landscape, and the present incarnation of the wall as a tool of the state to divide, police and control.

If North Belfast is to share in the concept of the peace dividend then it must begin with a commitment by government to begin to seriously address the eventual eradication of interface walls. It would be naive to think that this is something we can see beginning tomorrow, for people living on or at interfaces, the walls have assimilated a role and created a need for their presence, but the dialogue and the will to remove them must begin now. 10 years of peace, and 14 years from the end of the armed conflict must surely have more to offer than existing in a state of benign apartheid, real peace does not need to be sustained or “secured” by walls.