Murals are modern frescos, but not all the towns seem to appreciate this artistic expression. Early April 2006, the minister for Social Development announced that £1 million (€1.5 million) would have been allocated to erase the murals, at least the most aggressive. If they will ever begin the job, it will take some time to finish it, because not everybody agrees to the obliteration, and for many reasons.
It is not wise to wake up a sleeping dog; the murals are a tourist attraction; if you erase a mural, a new one could be painted the following night. Surely, murals don’t show a desire of reconciliation. Names of martyrs, prisoners, accusation from both sides of different crimes. The impression is that the republicans have a wide range murals, fighting the invasion of Iraq to the occupation of Palestine. The loyalist murals are more Ireland related.
They denounce foreign aids to IRA, its collaborations someone could call revolutionary but someone else has defined terrorist – or vice versa, it depends from your point of view. Loyalist people criticize their own representatives for having signed the Holy Friday agreement of 1998. This agreement was confirmed by two referenda – one in Ireland, the other in North Ireland and supported by a vast majority of the political actors. The only notable exception was the big Democratic Unionist Party. Notwithstanding its position in 1998, or maybe thanks to that, the latter acquired increasingly importance in the last years, becoming the fourth biggest party in UK. In the mural above it is written “Training FARC rebels”. Training communist guerilla is not, probably, the most common activity of IRA activists – and the accusation refers to a specific episode. In August 2001, three Irishmen were arrested in Colombia. They affirmed that they wanted to “to see first-hand another process of conflict resolution in motion”, but they were actually travelling with fake passports, and that was the only accusation recognised as true at the first trial. In December 2004 the three Irishmen were convicted by the Court of Appeal, but at that time they were already home.
Clandeboye Garden is a catholic area, surrendered by protestant neighbourhoods. “Love thy neighbor” on the wall. The last clashes, with some Molotov bombs and bricks flying from one side to the other, happened in 2002. Small houses, mild temperature, northern blue sky and warm sun when we arrive. In the protestant zone, not many people around. Here tens of children in the streets. They skate, play football.
It looks a bit a stereotype, but they were different dozens of “Do you take a picture of me?” It is a pleasure, indeed. It is a competition to be photographed. Two stories red-brick houses. The parents in the yard chat, smile and watch the scene. Subsidies are huge: almost £3,000 [per year] for each of its 1.7m inhabitants, says The Economist. But, at least, money spent in these council houses are well spent. It looks a small, old village.
With four meter high fences all around, and barbed wire. Just to play further the stereotype game, there is a clear difference between catholic and protestant pub. We are both atheist, and choose the pub regardless the religion of the clients and the barman. In the protestant pub people is more like in any other place in Europe, Italy included.
You drink your beer, but you don’t speak with the person next to you. In the catholic pubs, people immediately understand that you are a stranger, and talk to you after two minutes – one if they are high. Belfast is not, of course, the town you would imagine watching “In the name of the father, but some effects of the trouble are still present.
Last year, Denis Donaldson, a IRA militant who confessed he collaborated with MI5, was shot dead in his house. It looked a bit a suicide – he wanted to live alone and in the countryside. Or like the beginning of Chronicle of a death foretold: “On the day they were going to kill him, Santhiago Nazar got up at five-thirty in the morning”. But just now, one year later, it came out that Donaldson was killed by accident during a kidnapping attempt.
Speaking with people. The first night, after the bell announced the last pint, we found ourselves in a small apartment, drinking, smoking and speaking about Antonio Gramsci. The owner was about forty, and at the end of the evening tried to sell us a dreadful picture, something like a drawing you could find in the worst motel in town over your bed – great evening.
Another night we met three men, about fifty. Here again, nice people, but you wonder how they could get by without any governmental subsidy. No one worked. One was convinced to have daily talks with God and the Archangels. The other two, although extremely nice, were more than drunk. At the end of the night, this time, we found ourselves in an bar, something between a disco pub and a brothel. Outside the bar, teenagers were screaming, crammed with alcohol.
Click on the first photo.
