Northern Ireland: Dabbling In The Troubles
By James Morgan

This morning in Belfast I awake to the pipes and drums of a passing Orangeman parade.  It is the day after the Republic of Ireland’s traditional independence day, the day after Easter Sunday, and, by way of reinforcing their loyalty to the British crown, the Orangemen march.  Their lambeg drums, something like an American marching band’s bass drum on steroids, are thunderously loud as they echo through Belfast’s winding brick streets.  The stout windowpanes of my friend’s apartment rattle with their passing.  That this is meant as a deliberate affront to nationalist republicans and Catholics in general is beyond question.  They wave the Union Jack and the Red Hand of Ulster and beat their drums until the thick leather straps of their drumsticks cut their flesh and blood spatters against the quivering heads of the lambegs.

I go outside to watch, but am intimidated, approach no one, and dare not take a photo.  This is Belfast; this is riot country.  This is hard death, blood and violence down the narrow lanes.  This is the lines of burning busses, the bombs and the lads running forward and back down the Falls and Shankill Roads, the pools of blood, the shattered windows and bricks and the sorry old tragedy beneath an endless gray sky.  This is what I have heard about, and a great part of me cannot believe that I am seeing it.

There are no spectators at all, and it is a strange parade by all standards I know of.  They are a grim and joyless lot, determined and slab-faced in the reality of widespread international condemnation of their cause.  They march in defiance, not in celebration.

At least, I think, they have given up marching on Easter itself.

This is considered a compromise in Northern Ireland.  “You don’t care for us marching on your national day of independence?  OK, here’s a compromise; we’ll do it the day after.  Now, what will you give us?”

I had spent most of the day before, Easter Sunday, in Galway City on the west coast of the Republic of Ireland.  There was a parade there too, but it was much more cheerful, had numerous spectators; and while a few local politician types saw fit to deliver fiery speeches in Kennedy Square, there was nothing forbidding about it; and the only ominous note was the presence of a few black-clad beret-wearing men who stood at military attention before the Irish tricolor and generally had the air of fellows not to be trifled with. 

As I pack my things in my friend’s apartment in Belfast, the lambegs still pounding off in the distance towards the city center and my mind working overtime with the implications of what I’ve seen in the last two days, it occurs to me that my next destination, Londonderry, is natural if I wish to understand these two alternate and completely conflicting views of Ireland, of Northern Ireland particularly.

It’s a three-hour bus-ride from Belfast through County Antrim to County Derry.  I sleep some of the way as the landscape is similar to that I’ve seen all over Ireland; deep green farm country, sodden and with the unmistakable look of thousands of years of agrarian settlement.  The only difference here is that from time to time, mounted on telephone poles, one is apt to find the Union Jack instead of the Irish tricolor one sees in Northern Ireland’s primarily Republican regions and throughout the Republic’s border counties.  This can be misleading however, for while in purely geographic terms one might be excused for imagining that Northern Ireland is predominantly Catholic and Republican, the truth is that the relatively smaller region dominated by Protestant Loyalists has a much denser and larger population than does that of the nationalist-dominated hinterland.

Derry is significant because in the relative simplicity of its smaller city persona it is perhaps a purer distillation of “The Troubles,” as they are called, than is Belfast.  For one thing, the old divisions are easier to see in Derry; indeed, they are set in stone in the form of the old 15th century city walls, which, alone of all Ireland’s major towns, are still intact, and from which, in 1689, the city’s heavily outnumbered Protestant citizenry withstood 105 days of siege by forces allied with James II, the Catholic contender for the British crown.  Derry’s successful stand against the Catholic besiegers has long been a battle cry for Northern Ireland’s Protestant majority and has much to do with what contemporary observers describe as the “loyalist siege mentality.” 

It’s raining when I arrive in Derry; and as my guide-book gives only the vaguest notion of where I might find a bed, I slog off uphill across cobble-stoned streets and mount the old age-blackened walls with an idea of doing some sight-seeing.  The walls themselves form an irregular sort of rectangular diamond that encloses a surprisingly small area built on a sloping crest that falls off sharply on two sides.  I am hard-pressed to figure how upward of 30,000 people lived within these walls during the 105 days of the siege.  It must have been a terrible experience. 

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