North council elections: ‘It’s very slow. Northern Ireland is very slow to change’

It’s less than an acre in size and has become therapy for its volunteers at a Belfast interface.

Scarlet Oriental poppies are coming into bloom in one corner, and in another Phyllis McMinn is joking with a friend as they plant courgettes.

On the eve of Northern Ireland’s council elections on Thursday, there is little talk of politics at the Grow Waterworks Community Garden in the north of the city.

“People are interested in it but they’re not prepared to tell you what they think. They’ve pretty much made their minds made up on how they’re going to vote,” Carmel McWilliams tells The Irish Times.

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“I find this space a healing space and we never talk politics. It’s not that I don’t think we should – it’s extremely important but this is a mixed set of people.

“For me, politics should be a healing process and it’s not at the minute. It’s loggerheads. That’s why I like coming here.”

McMinn, a semi-retired community nurse, agrees: “It’s an oasis here, it should be a offered as a social therapy. It’s a very happy bunch of people.”

There’s a waiting list to join the project, head gardener and support worker Craig Sands says as he shows a group how to plant cabbages. The garden is leased to the Grow charity by Belfast City Council – the largest of the North’s 11 district councils, serving a population of more than 340,000.

With 60 seats up for grabs across Belfast’s ten district electoral areas, the city council’s make-up reflects Stormont’s (currently defunct) composition – with Sinn Féin holding the most seats followed by the DUP and a growth is the so-called Others, including the middle-ground Alliance Party, since the last 2019 election. No one party commands a majority.

Directly in front of the community garden, white lines have been freshly painted on a controversial council-owned soccer pitch inside the main Waterworks public park.

For two years prior to the pandemic, the completed pitch and new changing room facilities – funded by £400,000 (€460,500) of ratepayers’ money – were locked up after a row broke out over who could use them.

Private mediation talks between Sinn Féin and DUP councillors took place for over a year to find a resolution for a soccer team from a Protestant/unionist background and a Catholic/nationalist team. Meetings were held with the teams and the two clubs now ground share the pitch.

“This was unthinkable 30 years ago, but the reality is that some of the Belfast DUP councillors get on brilliantly with Sinn Féin. A lot of the work they do in working class areas is behind the scenes, which is why is works out okay. They like to keep it under the radar as there is still a lot of raw sectarianism about. The Waterworks pitch is a good example of that, a lot of work was done to bring people to their senses – it was either share the pitch or there was no pitch,” one senior council source told The Irish Times.

“North Belfast is unique, almost every main road is an interface. If there’s not physical walls all you have to do is drive up, you know what community lives where.”

On some council matters however where the two largest parties have openly backed projects – including a £100 voucher ‘hardship’ scheme that cost the council £1 million – there have been accusations of a Sinn Féin/DUP “carve up” by other parties, with claims that voucher distribution favoured some parts of Belfast more than others.

Similar criticism was made by Alliance, SDLP and Green Party councillors when Sinn Féin and the DUP agreed on a community funding scheme to reduce tensions and antisocial behaviour around July and August bonfires this summer.

The Waterworks soccer pitch is located at the ‘top pond’ of the facility, which, during the Troubles, was often referred to as the ‘Protestant pond’ where kids from one tradition played in its playpark. A separate lower pond and second playpark are located on the same site that first opened in 1840 when it supplied water to the city’s factories and residents.

“When my kids were youngsters in North Belfast, I could not take them on this side of the Waterworks,” says community garden volunteer Ron Keegan, who moved to Belfast from the United States in 1979.

“If you walk down this side, you see’ll the graffiti KAT (Kill All Taigs) and I’m not talking about KitKats. Put it this way, the first time I took Maeve and Cormac to the playpark – because someone recommended it – they magically transformed into Nigel and Heather. That was 2010. It’s very different now.”

The former Belfast Corporation bought the Waterworks in 1956. The corporation was replaced by Belfast City in 1973 when it was an Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) dominated local authority.

Today, the park has a new playground on the upper pond site – where kids in Bunscoil school uniforms can be spotted alongside those from an integrated school. An oasis for wildfowl, both upper and lower parks are also thronged with hundreds of runners and walkers on a Saturday morning for the 5km park-run (the first on the island of Ireland in 2010).

Rain is threatening before the gardening group’s 11.30am sit-down for tea, scones and Battenberg cake; Joe Jago summons them by clinking his knife off the large tea canister:

“I’ll go on Thursday to vote,” he says, “but it’s very slow, Northern Ireland is very slow to change.”

Craig Sands, who is originally from New Zealand, is getting the site ready for the next morning’s women’s group, some of whom are seeking asylum.

He has been managing the project for almost a decade.

“People say they don’t talk politics here but in a way they do as everything is political. It’s my job is to co-ordinate work and divvy up jobs for people in the garden – but also to support people and maintain relationships with people.”

Sitting beside potted parsley pots, Jennifer says she has little enthusiasm for the council election and believes that people will continue to vote along traditional lines:

“I worked in community relations for most of my career in the civil service. Yes, things have changed but it’s always amazed me how if you scratch the surface, it’s never far away. I hate to say that because I spent my whole career trying to change that.

“Especially now, with things so volatile since Brexit. Fundamentally, it goes to the very basis of people’s security – if you’re not secure, you don’t feel safe and nothing else works.”