Rosaleen Petticrew once had compelling reason to appreciate the high walls that separated her Catholic part of Belfast from the adjoining Protestant neighbourhood.
For five dreadful months in 2000, she and other mothers from Ardoyne had to walk their daughters to Holy Cross school past a mob of loyalists who hurled insults, rocks and bottles. Even by Northern Ireland standards it was a vile protest and made headlines around the world.
Walls did not cover the whole school route, but Rosaleen still valued them as a bulwark. “I’d never felt that hatred before.”
Retaining Troubles-era “peace walls” between Catholic and Protestant areas seemed advisable even though the 1998 Good Friday agreement had supposedly ushered in an era of peace and reconciliation.
The sentiment might have calcified, like so much else in Northern Ireland, but in 2015 one of Rosaleen’s teenage daughters, Katie, fell in love with a Protestant. It was a shock. Questions abounded. Was he a bigot? Was Katie safe visiting his area? Was Stuart safe visiting their area?
Eight years later the couple are still together and have their own children. The Petticrew family love Stuart “to bits”, enjoy visiting his family, and supported the recent removal of a barrier on Flax Street that had separated Ardoyne from the Shankill Road area. “You just realise, we’re all the same,” said Rosaleen, who is now 54.
It almost sounds like a fable, darkness giving way to light, suspicion blossoming into friendship. It evokes a government advertising campaign from around the time of the Good Friday agreement that used a line from Van Morrison’s feelgood song Coney Island: “Wouldn’t it be great if it was like this all the time?”
It would. But Northern Ireland seldom feels like this. The dawn glow of 25 years ago when the British, Irish and US governments shepherded the region’s political leaders to a breakthrough deal, ending 30 years of violence and winning a joint Nobel peace prize for David Trimble and John Hume, seems to have given way to darkness at noon.
Society and politics are sectarian and dysfunctional. Loyalist and republican paramilitaries still wield control in some communities. Children still tend to go to Catholic or Protestant schools, and families still tend to live in Catholic or Protestant areas. Peace walls still proliferate, especially in Belfast. One at Cupar Way, between the Falls and Shankill, stands 45-feet tall, three times higher than the Berlin Wall, and in place for twice as long.
More than eight in 10 people still vote along tribal – or constitutional, to use a fancier term – lines. The Democratic Unionist and Ulster Unionist parties are overwhelmingly Protestant. The Social Democratic and Labour party and Sinn Féin are overwhelmingly Catholic. Power-sharing has again collapsed – the Stormont executive has not functioned for 40% of its existence since 1999 – and this time the assembly is also in mothballs. Civil servants run the region on a sort of administrative autopilot, unable to take big decisions.
Little wonder, then, that a pall hangs over plans to celebrate the agreement’s anniversary on 10 April. It delivered peace, a monumental achievement, but lack of reconciliation bequeathed a toxic polity unable to govern itself. Brexit, which reopened debates about identity and sovereignty, is partly to blame. It poisoned discourse and stoked fears. Northern Ireland returned the favour by dripping venom into the Conservative party’s civil wars.
“Northern Ireland is an ethnically divided society in which two groups are divided on much more than sovereignty, but also religion, sport, language, territory, education, political party organisation and whatever some loony councillor in the sticks chooses to get uppity about next,” said Malachi O’Doherty, a commentator and author of the book How to Fix Northern Ireland. “The power-sharing system actually consolidates this division and incentivises the big parties to preserve it.”
Public discourse should pressure parties to not base support on ethnic or sectarian groups and there must be more effort to end territorial division, which reinforces education segregation, said O’Doherty.
Prof Peter Shirlow, director of the University of Liverpool’s Institute of Irish Studies, believes the gloom around the anniversary is misplaced. Northern Ireland has become far more open, tolerant and economically successful, he said. “In terms of taking us away from violence, and building a peace dividend, the agreement has been very successful.”
Research shows a sharp decline in sectarian incidents and much greater mixing between Catholics and Protestants in workplaces and socially. The institute’s most recent survey showed 24% of relationships were mixed, treble the 8% recorded in 1999, said Shirlow. “A lot of the prejudices that ran people’s lives have declined.”
About a fifth of people do not care about orange versus green disputes. Many of these non-aligned “neithers” do not vote, but when they do they back the centrist, liberal Alliance, which has surged to become the third biggest party, behind Sinn Féin and the DUP. There are growing calls to change Good Friday agreement rules to recognise this middle ground and to prevent Sinn Féin or the DUP taking turns to collapse Stormont’s institutions.
All this points, said Shirlow, to a thawing of the sectarian permafrost. According to the 2021 census, 45.7% of the population is Catholic and 43.5% Protestant – a historic reversal, but secularisation hollows its significance. Many churches are empty on Sunday. A boom in fintech and cybersecurity companies, and a rise in immigration, has given Belfast a globalised vibe.
Signs of normalisation are visible across society: an Irish language project in the loyalist heartland of east Belfast; city centre pubs devoid of any affiliation except to craic; LGBTQ+ Gaelic football clubs.
But the most potent symbols of division – the barriers erected in the 1970s and 1980s to deter killings – are dwindling very slowly.
“The walls just meant that if you wanted to shoot someone you had to be a bit more creative,” said Rab McCallum, a project coordinator of Twaddell, Ardoyne, Shankill Communities in Transit (Tascit), that promotes cross-community relations. “They should come down. They’re segregation barriers to keep people segregated.”
In the past decade about 18 walls were removed and a similar number were reduced or modified, leaving about 60, according to the department of justice. This reflects the painstaking process of obtaining community support, said Paddy Harte, chair of the International Fund for Ireland, which supports peace line initiatives.
“The glass is half full. Life across Northern Ireland is significantly better. The idea you can walk with ease through a border village or a Belfast interface is huge progress,” said Harte. “A fractured society, yes, but I don’t get any sense of going back to the dark days. People are getting on with their lives. People want the normal things.”
Few would dispute that. But there is no clamour to remove peace walls. Partly it stems from fear of trouble, if not the Troubles. Petrol bombs whizzed over an interface at Lanark Way, dividing the Shankill and Falls, in Easter 2021. “Perhaps it’s best to keep them up because if they came down there might be more ruckus,” said Gemma Louise, 30, a mother on the Shankill side.
For some loyalists the walls are protection against perceived nationalist ascendance. Catholics outnumber Protestants, Sinn Féin has become the biggest party, making Michelle O’Neill the region’s putative first minister, and Brexit has revived the spectre of a united Ireland. All are psychological shocks.
“Only one side benefited from the Good Friday agreement and it wasn’t unionists. It was a stitch-up,” said Jeff, a 67-year-old retired soldier. Peace walls were one of the last defences against encroaching Catholics, he said. “The minute it’s down they’ll be over and move into our housing.”
The Good Friday agreement was a collective leap of faith – a declaration that separate identities could govern together while seeking different destinations. The hope that accompanied the Van Morrison soundtrack today feels naive. Politics churns with rancour, squabble, crisis. But the killing stopped, and horror, grief and despair ebbed. The result is limbo: a messy, inchoate, post-conflict dispensation. It is not pretty. And yet, compared with what came before, it gleams.
