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.