When Northern Editor GERRY MORIARTYmoved to Belfast in the 1990s, it was grey city of dereliction and bombed-out sites. The scars remain, but so much has changed
HE TIME I worried about my children going native up here was when Northern Ireland, and its striker David Healy, were on Ta roll in the mid-noughties – especially after, virtually on his own, he defeated England in 2005. On the back of that victory my then seven-year-old youngest son, who had a sports-store voucher, bought the Northern Ireland kit.
Hmm, was my reaction. But I kept my counsel although I was sorely tempted to play the old soldier and recount the sectarian ballyragging I, and the handful of others from the South who attended the games, were subjected to at Windsor Park in Belfast when the Republic played Northern Ireland in 1993 and 1994 – very bitter nights in November. In the spirit of the peace process and parental responsibility I bit my lip.
I arrived in Belfast in the spring of 1991. Settling into this place took time. Life was divided in two: work, which back then was essentially covering the Troubles – killings, wounding, bombings on a daily scale with a little politics thrown in; and social and home life. You had to maintain a distinction between the two to keep your sanity.
Social life was pretty limited. You had to be careful where you went – in certain places an Offaly accent could land you in serious trouble. In south Belfast, close to Queen’s University, were the pubs where you could be sure of having a mixed-religion clientele. Poet Michael Longley dubbed it the “Bermuda Triangle” of the Wellington Park Hotel, and the Botanic and Eglantine pubs. Often, though, you couldn’t readily get into them at the weekends because of the long queues of people anxious to socialise in an atmosphere where your religion didn’t matter. There were some decent restaurants but not many.
But what Belfast lacked in Dublin razzmatazz it made up for in friendliness and spirit. Belfast people would go way out of their way to help you. If we were looking for directions people wouldn’t just tell you the way, they’d virtually walk you to your destination. Conscious that they were speaking to a Southern greenhorn they might also provide a geography cum political lesson as well, as in: “Be careful if you go down that road – that place’s safe – for God’s sake keep away from there, you’ll be shot.” Or “shat”, as they say in Belfast. People were also hugely patient, and they needed to be. If a traffic hold-up caused by a checkpoint, bombing or shooting delayed you for an hour or so well, so what, your employer or the friend you were meeting would understand.
Dublin was only 100 miles away but it was a different world. In our office at the time there were six full- and part-time reporting, managerial and secretarial staff. Of the six, one Protestant woman’s businessman father had been murdered by Republicans; another, a manager of an Irish Times subsidiary, a Catholic, had his businessman father murdered by Loyalist paramilitaries – both sectarian killings, plain and simple.
Almost everyone in the North has a story to tell. If they weren’t directly affected by the conflict they had relations or friends who were. There’s peace now but the scars and the psychological damage that thousands shoulder is the unfinished business of the Troubles. Yet, I never found Northern Ireland a place of self-pity.
Back then you seldom saw Southern registration cars, although our families regularly came to visit. We’d bring them to the Ulster Museum, the folk and transport museums, stroll along the Lagan tow-path – as beautiful as anything you’d see in a Constable painting – out to Helen’s Bay to walk the shore of Belfast Lough. I’d take our more adventurous relatives on what I called the war tour of the Falls and Shankill.
Then there were the six counties to explore. One weekend in 1992, on the back of a 40/1 Cheltenham Gold Cup winner, Cool Ground, we headed for the Glens of Antrim. We visited Glenariff Forest Park and waterfalls, went to Cushendall,Cushendun and Bushmills. We visited the Giant’s Causeway, Portrush, Portstewart and Castlerock. The coastline and the glens, forests and cliffs were so striking. That tour, and the Mournes and the Fermanagh Lakes and woodlands became part of the itinerary for visitors.
Belfast and Northern Ireland have changed hugely since the Troubles started petering to an end. I had a bird’s eye view of that gradual metamorphosis from the roof of high-rise Fanum House where The Irish Times Belfast office was based. The building of brutalist architecture is soon to be toppled. International TV crews frequently visited looking for interviews on the latest atrocity or political crisis and the roof invariably was the favoured location.
In the early years you looked down on a grey city of dereliction and bombed-out sites. Gradually the positive alterations began as the peace process kicked in. Now there is the Waterfront Hall near the Lagan; the Odyssey centre in the docks area; apartment blocks fronting the river; and city-centre Victoria Square with its great glass dome. And now there are the Titanic Building and all the other developments in the Titanic Quarter.
Belfast is a metropolitan city with edge, the lingering whiff of cordite adding to the attraction. There are scores of great bars, restaurants and coffee houses: truly unimaginable when I first came here to live. And there is so much happening: numerous cultural and arts events being held over the summer in tandem with the London Olympics; Derry is UK City of Culture next year; attractions such as the Titanic Belfast exhibition, the new Lyric and Mac theatres; the first annual festival dedicated to Samuel Beckett in Enniskillen in August, and much more besides.
Sectarianism hasn’t gone away, but it isn’t anything nearly as bad as it was those nights in November in Windsor Park in the early to mid-1990s. Everyone’s changed, to varying degrees. I’ve even patched up my differences with the Northern Ireland football team, which is trying to attract cross-community support, and generally wish them well – except when they’re playing the Republic.
The time when I really felt this place was changing was a few years ago when my youngest son skipped out the door of our house to attend a soccer summer camp, wearing his Northern Ireland shorts and Republic of Ireland jersey. I could live with that.