Tuesday, December 11, 2007
West Belfast: eastern Europe without perestroika or glasnost…
Pól Ó Muirí is a blogger now as well as a columnist in the Belfast Telegraph and ‘eagarthóir’ of Irish language in the Irish Times. He even wrote for the Andersonstown News when at University. Over at El Matador he gives his view of what has happened to his old community in West Belfast. It’s a story of decline that could be matched with the loss of traditional authority right across the English speaking world. Indeed, he might be speaking about Walton or Scotland Road in Liverpool in the eighties. Except that he blames a new political hegemony he believes has politically sponsored the decline.
Mick Fealty @ 02:25 PM
I’m not from West Belfast, but I did have the good fortune to have a lot of friends there, so I spent a lot of time there.
I’m originally an East Belfast Prod, but I live oop North now. I’m in Belfast a lot...I think the place looks great this year. But I do identify with a lot of the points that PĂłl makes in his blog. A lot them are equally relevant to the East of the city.
The warmth that many of these communities had - on both sides of the divide - is gone. Glass and steel, depreciable over a 25 year period stand where brick, depreciable over 100 years once stood.
Much that was wrong with the squalor of the city - the reason for the “shitty indices” mentioned earlier - has gone. But with it, the sense of community has gone too. I am equally at fault in terms of looking back with some elements of nostalgia; admittedly, my nostalgia doesn’t have the same whiff of cordite about it.
From my early days in East Belfast, one person still lives at the end of the street in Ballyhack, and I occasionally call with her to catch up on gossip. Chains on the door. Panic button installed. Strand of razor wire across the yard at the back fitted by her son. I don’t remember these in any of the houses when “i was wee”.
I don’t know if PĂłl is right when he lays the blame at the door of Sinn Fein, even though I feel a wry smile coming on when I read about dachas and country retreats - a phenomenon not just peculiar to republican politicos. But something has gone badly wrong in parts of the city; those who lived there through the worst of times are by no means getting to experience the best of them…
Posted by on Dec 12, 2007 @ 12:01 AMChris,
It is clear that PĂłl has very much declared for the SDLP and I find him an articulate addition to ElB, which I had ceased reading, but his basic point is very much the same as that made by Squinter and I find it hard to believe he is operating to an anti-SF agenda.
Sometimes criticism can be legitimate regardless of who gives it.
Now the Stormont administration is reestablished and SF are co-equal senior partners can we at least accept that as from March responsibility for quality of lives there, and pretty much everywhere, is SF’s and that is how the electorate should judge them?
With power (of sorts) comes responsibility?
Posted by on Dec 12, 2007 @ 12:10 AMReading O’Muiri’s remark about the SF “officer class” buying houses on the Malone Rd did indeed bring a wry smile to my lips.
The only political representative that I can think of that’s swapped the place where “so many just vote for Sinn FĂ©in without thinking” for a shiny new plush apartment in a tree lined exclusive Malone Rd avenue is a certain MLA and former Belfast City Councillor. Wonder how his brother feels after being left to carry the can for the absentee MLA?
Strange how his article skipped over that.
In terms of Pol’s icredible arrogance surrounding the ability of the WB electorate being able to think for themselves, they do and will. Just ask uncle Joe, [pity he is a genuinely nice guy], who occupied the seat for a while in the early ‘90’s.
O’Muiri seems to have a touch of Malachi O’Dochertyitis as someone whose not shy about using their formative years in WB to further their professional position yet has a massive superiority complex regarding its populace and pathological loathing of the place because of the particular political party the electorate choose to represente them.
Posted by on Dec 12, 2007 @ 12:20 AMMark
Absolutely; people rightly would have expected political reps to get about the business of representing their electorates, regardless of whether the administration was up and running at Stormont.I fail, however, to see the legitimacy of his criticism, premised as it is on the belief that republicans are to blame for pensioners being afraid to walk the streets in Ross Road.
I note how O’Muiri freely admits to having virtually no connection with the area nowadays, beyond the odd conversation with family members and/ or friends.
On such a basis, am I equally qualified to declare that Ballymena is a drug-infested, sectarian bearpit whose residents are blinded and traumatised by their commitment to a demagogic figure- oh, and aunty Bess tells me they’re all afraid to go out at night!
Such an analysis ignores the much wider demise of the era of deference and respect for authority, and lazily attempts to pin it on Sinn Fein ‘cause the locals don’t vote for Pol’s party of choice.
As The Raven points illustrates, we can all indulge in a bout of ‘things ain’t like they used to be’- and with much justification.
But let’s call it for what it is.
Posted by on Dec 12, 2007 @ 12:23 AMbtw: with the Eastern Europe feed line to this thread and PĂłl’s piece, I’m currently watching a documentary on BBC4 on the children’s homes in Bulgaria. If thats what ‘perestroika or glasnost’ gets you I’ll take West Belfast any day. I’ve never cried while watching a documentary on West Belfast.
Posted by on Dec 12, 2007 @ 12:37 AMChris - you have alerted me to the fact that I hit the submit button without doing the full cut-and-paste from Wordpad. I left out:
“...but let’s not allow the rose-tinted glasses blind us as to how far we have come - and how far we have yet to go.”
Like I say, I have no long-standing history IN the area in question, and therefore, I will leave the political aspect of this discussion to those in the know.
Posted by on Dec 12, 2007 @ 01:10 AM“I have often wondered how SF get away with constantly pointing to the fact that West Belfast is at the top of all sorts of shit hole indices, without the people ever pausing to wonder at the correlation between this fact and the fact that Sinn Fein have dictated the pace of politics there for so long.”
Precisely the same thing would be true of any area that is dominated by loyalist paramilitaries. Private sector activity becomes impossible, due to extortion, and anyone who can afford to move out does so.
Posted by Sean Fear on Dec 11, 2007 @ 06:00 PM”
Exactly Sean Fear, but the difference is that in those loyalist areas, the loyalist paramilitaries do not enjoy political support. The failure of the UUP over many years and the failure of the DUP so far to be bothered to make a positive impact in these pockets of deprivation is a topic for seperate discussion.
Posted by on Dec 12, 2007 @ 10:38 AM“I fail, however, to see the legitimacy of his criticism” - Chris Donnelly
That doesn’t come as a major surprise Chris.
Posted by on Dec 12, 2007 @ 10:39 AMChris,
Far from playing it down, I’m suggesting that he’s as right as you are about West Belfast.
Critics have a tough time explaining away the real popularity of Sinn FĂ©in. It’s clearly not fake since it gets proven over and over again. Rightly or wrongly the success of Gerry Adams and his party is a source of much local pride. And there are numerous examples of social entrepreneurship that many from other parts of the city quietly admire and wish they could emulate in their own communities (FĂ©ile an Phobal being just one of many examples).
But there is fear and loathing aplenty in the place too. I cannot think of anywhere else were a major feud involving over 600 incidents, including the attempted (possibly successful) demolition of a dwelling house by JCB in a place the size of Ballymurphy which has been given such little coverage in the wider media.
As I’ve said a few times in this thread already, much of what has been wrong about West Belfast (it’s not a socially homogeneous) is generic to the decline of the working class across the west. Indeed much of the efforts of Republican activists in the early days were brave attempts to stem the flow of skilled and unskilled jobs there were away from the area.
Patricia Craig in her extracts from The Rannafast Summer, carried in Irish Pages last year is well worth reading:
“Parts of the road were semi urban, though its core was anything but; it was rich in local lore and indigenous repartee, and harboured a fraternity of the self taught whose spiritual home was the fusty public library on the corner of Sevastopol Street. Catholicism and nationalism pervaded the air it generated - with the odd gust of socialism just to keep things polemical. Religion and its rituals shaped the life of the area: Sunday Masses, Holidays of Obligation, evening devotions, weekly confessions, Men’s Confraternity meetings, Children of Mary, May altars, Corpus Christi processions, the family rosary and what-have-you. Dominican convent was only one of a score of religious buildings dotted along the road, though its elevated position - pace The Ulster Examiner - enabled it to take a haughty view of itself.”
That’s the Falls I, vaguely, remember from my sixties’ childhood. What blew most of it away was the tumult of ‘69 and the ‘war’ of the following thirty years, along with a wider drift from the church towards secularism. Craig also reckons its collective identity was forged between the 1890s and the 1940s: “sixty odd years of fearsome privations, raucousness, clan-solidarity and disaffection”.
I guess PĂłl is challenging the quality of Sinn FĂ©in’s leadership and asking whether the party is genuinely taking its people out those historical privations or perpetuating them, as well questioning the effects of the party’s democratic centralism on the largest single population on the island where it pre-dominates.
Posted by on Dec 12, 2007 @ 10:46 AMI won’t stick my west Belfast credientials up on a flagpole before replying, and i have to say i found Pol’s piece actually quite moving. When i return now to visit elderly relatives i am saddened beyond belief at what has become of ‘my hometown’.
I often wondered how exactly SF have not been held politically to account for the stagnation which has undermined the community of WB for decades. For all but 5 years Gerry Adams has been MP since 1983 - 1983! - and the best we get is protest politics and whining about the Brits. And of course the odd stratehgy / review / masterplan thrown in for good measure.
Why did political representatives in West Belfast allow the A’Town barracks issue to even become an issue? In Derry the Stoops ddemanded - and got - Fort George and Ebrington donated for community / economic use. In A’Town the community gets white line protests. How can you attract economic investment to the lower Falls when it is dominated by murals of Turkish bloody hunger strikers and ETA?!
When i started work in Casement a pint was ÂŁ0.49, on my first night there it was robbed at gunpoint by the freedom fighters in balaclavas. just saying.
Posted by on Dec 12, 2007 @ 11:18 AMMick,
I remember someone started a thread on politics.ie - ‘should Fine Gael have won the election?’.
I cannot fathom how anyone would question democracy so blatantly, but I think there is a resonance here also.
We live in a newly born partially functional semi-democracy. Far from perfect, but alot better than the meritocracy I feel is oft implied in the writings of journalists like Ă“ MuirĂ and O’Doherty for example. If these people had a real alternative to Sinn FĂ©in in West Belfast they would stand for election, but they don’t and they don’t.
Of course, it is their role to critisce, not to come up with solutions. But I feel uncomfortable with what I feel is the entitlement that some self appointed members of the ‘intelligensia’ (sic?) to disrespect the views of the ‘proles’.
They may not like it but they must respect it. Sinn FĂ©in do not stop anyone from standing againist them. They do not stop people from voting againist them.
The simple fact is that Sinn FĂ©in represent the views and aspirations of the vast majority in West Belfast, of that their can be no doubt.
Malachi O’Doherty for example does not share in those aspirations but that is his choice, he cannot fault the people of the West for that.
I myself feel that it is a great pity, in the intersests of democracy and the health of the commumnity, that more effective alternatives are not available, but there is not, at least not in terms of electoral politics.
But for example, Seán Mitchell I feel did well for a teenager (?) in the recent elections. I feel he made a mistake however in not producing his material bilingually (apart from at the big march), his team felt that it what alienate unionists.
But many feel that for a buachaill born and reared on BĂłthar Seoighe that that was an error in that he could have brought out 2000 votes for himself if he played on his background and used the language, but he chose not to. He didnt get elected.
Posted by on Dec 12, 2007 @ 11:30 AM“I often wondered how exactly SF have not been held politically to account for the stagnation which has undermined the community of WB for decades. For all but 5 years Gerry Adams has been MP since 1983 - 1983! - and the best we get is protest politics and whining about the Brits. And of course the odd stratehgy / review / masterplan thrown in for good measure.”
Exactly what Executive power has the MP had to do anything in that time? Squat.
Posted by on Dec 12, 2007 @ 11:45 AM“is oft implied in the writings of journalists like Ă“ MuirĂ and O’Doherty for example. If these people had a real alternative to Sinn FĂ©in in West Belfast they would stand for election, but they don’t and they don’t.”
But to stand requires money which SF has in abundance through various sources some of which brings in readies that advocates of democracy could only ever wish to have in a bid to advance democracy towards a new direction.
Posted by on Dec 12, 2007 @ 11:50 AMDC,
The deposit for the assembly election, according to my 3 second internet search is ÂŁ150.
Perhaps beyond the reach of the unemployed but not of anyone on a wage.
All political parties have to fund raise, in many ways it is the first measure of popularity.
Posted by on Dec 12, 2007 @ 12:01 PMgg,
Are you suggesting that a journalist has no right to criticise a politician/political party without standing for election?
I’ve a huge aversion to Daily Mail (’what’s he done wrong?’) journalism, but the day that people taking large chunks of public money to do (as ken so succinctly puts it) ‘squat’ cannot be held to account outside the elective space is probably the day to pack ones bags and leave town.
Posted by on Dec 12, 2007 @ 12:09 PMKensei “Exactly what Executive power has the MP had to do anything in that time? Squat”
so what? does that stop any MP who is not in Government working for their area? didn’t stop Hume or more latterly Durkan in Derry scoring on disused army barracks while the Shinners lined the roads with placards.
i think it is a problem when the MP for the area is so committed to leading a cause that he neglects his constituency. If even Robin Livingstone can concede that point after all these years then thats progress.
Posted by on Dec 12, 2007 @ 12:09 PM“so what? does that stop any MP who is not in Government working for their area? didn’t stop Hume or more latterly Durkan in Derry scoring on disused army barracks while the Shinners lined the roads with placards.
i think it is a problem when the MP for the area is so committed to leading a cause that he neglects his constituency. If even Robin Livingstone can concede that point after all these years then thats progress. “
SF seem to have done as well as any in terms of pulling in money for the area; and they have setup the Feile, among other things, as Mick points out.
But they are powerless, like all the other parties here, to do much about any of the things mentioned here in a direct fashion.
Posted by on Dec 12, 2007 @ 12:20 PMMick,
I am not saying that at all.
What I am saying is that whilst it is their job to question politics, political parties etc. I feel that some fail to give enough respect to the wishes of the people which is dismissed unfairly as the wishes of unthinking sheep. I have never met anyone who was unthinking.
But, if a ‘writer / columnist’ strays into questioning the legitamacy of people’s democratic choices, on the basis of some sort of communal physcosis, brain washing or just plain stupidity, then yes, I would like to see them put their cards on the table.
Posted by on Dec 12, 2007 @ 12:22 PMThe quality of the SF leadership is tested every time they stand for election whereas Ă“ MuirĂ has only to pass the test of whether or not he’s republican/West Belfast bashing to get his tuppence worth past a features editor. As with his Irish language journalism, one gets the impression that no progress was made since the time he was going about in short pants.
It seems to me, from reading the likes of Ă“ MuirĂ and O’Doherty, a far superior writer, that there’s a nice handy living to be made out of dissing your own in public, particularly if it happens to be a SF ‘stronghold’. CĂşl le cine is what I call it.
Posted by on Dec 12, 2007 @ 12:47 PMOC-
“I know of only one army which operated illegally in west Belfast - the one whose soldiers wore a uniform and got paid by MOD.”
Ach there were a few knocking about that matched that description. Nice berets they wore too. These days some of them continue to be paid by the British Government, albeit through more ‘maintream’ methods.
Posted by on Dec 12, 2007 @ 12:57 PMOili,
Louis de Paor’s translates his own use of that phrase in his poem Oidhreacht as ‘black sheep’, it’s worth reading in either language. Any society/community that cannot brook the opinion of its own black sheep is in bigger trouble than it cares to admit.
Posted by on Dec 12, 2007 @ 01:36 PMI think West Belfast has little problem brooking the opinions, half baked and ill informed as they are so very obviously, of the likes of PĂłl Ă“ MuirĂ. His audience isn’t the people of West Belfast but more the editors and other hacks to whom this kind of hackneyed tripe appeals. His opinions are so far from the reality that they say more about his own failure on the glasnost front than anything else.
Louis de Paor, now there’s a poet....
Posted by on Dec 12, 2007 @ 01:59 PMKensei “Exactly what Executive power has the MP had to do anything in that time? Squat”
An interesting insight into why SF have got away with doing nothing with the huge mandate given to them in West Belfast. For your info Kensei, for all those years, the MP for the area would have had the same lobbying powers (Possibly more given his celeb status) than all the other MPs in NI if only he could have been arsed to do the job.
Hume in Foyle, Mc Grady in South Down, Paisley in North Antrim - none of these guys had executive authority but did much to attract investment to their areas.
Your defence that Sinn Fein has managed to get funding for the Feile is very depressing. As I said earlier, Bi-lingual community arts projects that support the ruling party’s politics are grand, but they’re a very poor substitute for highly skilled jobs and proper infrastructure.
The fact that Robin Livingstone is beginning to call them on this stuff should be worrying them.
But I suspect it isn’t.
Posted by on Dec 12, 2007 @ 03:51 PMIt is interesting that no one has mentioned the fact that Gerry Adams will not sit in Westminister due to SF policy of abstentionism, whilst I believe he is correct it this, it must play a significant role in his inability to carry out pork barreling activities at Westminister. As these often involve making deals with MPs from other constituencies, i e you support me in getting X into my constituency and I will scratch your back at a later date.
Having said this, Mick I believe you are mistaken about the glory days of the working class, as by and large they passed west Belfast by. Male mass unemployment was a fact of life for decades within that area as was poverty. Social solidarity of the type I think PĂłl Ă“ MuirĂ is writing about came about because people shared what ‘little’ they had, times have changed.
He is also not only wrong about people voting for SF without a thought in their head and I might add bloody insulting. Funny how he never mentioned that the same people he looks down his nose at voted Gerry Adams out and the good doctor in, perhaps he should question why they then voted Adams back in.
When people vote for a Tory or Unionist over and over again we never here the type of criticism i e these people cannot think for themselves. It is only when us workers return the same party to power or parliament. This type of crap is pure middle class prejudice and is based on blind arrogance and ignorance. Because the likes of PĂłl Ă“ MuirĂ does not vote SF, he has to kid himself that those who do must do so because they are stupid or being intimidated. what joker.
Yes SF must do better, but to be fair to them they have been up against a great deal of opposition from within the UK state and the local bureaucracy. However as they ‘some how believe’ the party is now in power they will now have to produce the goods or they will be replaced by the SDLP or eirigi .
Posted by on Dec 12, 2007 @ 05:33 PMI wonder if Ă“ MuirĂ went to South Down or North Antrim, would he similarily question the voters’ intelligence, given that both constituencies have seen the domination of a single MP for a number of terms. Doubtful. Ă“ MuirĂ’s article is prompted by his own sense of loathing of all things he perceives as green and SF republican. I hold no brief for SF but I view with distaste Ă“ Muiri’s semi literate attempts to paint everyone with the same brush. If he was as keen as promoting diversity of opinion at the Belfast Telegraph or the Irish Times, he would be more credible.
Posted by on Dec 12, 2007 @ 06:14 PM
