Summary of my 2006 trip to Ireland and Northern Ireland (NI)

 

I left the small airport in State College, PA at about 6:30 PM on Saturday, June 10^th and after a stop in Philadelphia to change planes, flew to Dublin, Ireland arriving the morning of  June 11^th. After a few hours of wandering around the airport, I met Jim Skelly (our leader for the seminar) and the other 5 members of the group. We packed into the VW van that Jim rented and drove several hours to Belfast. Crossing the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland (NI) was a non-event. I couldn’t even tell where the border was. Upon arrival at our hotel we checked in and met for an overview of the period called “the Troubles” by our leader, Jim Skelly.

 

The Troubles refers to the period of unrest between 1969 and 1996 in NI. It started….well it is not really clear how far back all of this started. In 1690 William of Orange (a Protestant) defeats England’s Catholic King James II at the Battle of the Boyne. Catholics are immediately banned from holding public office and loose much of their land, which means they cannot vote. One argument I heard for  the British interest in Ireland is that they feared that Catholic Spain or France would use Ireland as a backdoor way to invade Great Britain. Ireland is essentially under British rule until the 1916 Easter uprising where a group of Irish nationalists claim Irish independence. The British response is so forceful (they execute the leaders of the movement) that the movement for Irish independence gathers force. The use of a "hard-line" approach designed to send a message to the people of Ireland back-fired and galvanized the Irish people. The movement for Irish independence actually gathered strength because of the hard-line approach taken. The Anglo-Irish war ensues and Ireland is granted independence in 1922, except for the six counties that now make up NI. Oppression of the Catholics’ civil rights remains and in the late 1960 the people of NI, inspired by the US civil rights movement, hold protest marches. These marches gain momentum and many are held despite not being sanctioned by the government of NI. In 1972 a civil rights march deteriorates into chaos when British soldiers open fired on the marchers killing 14 people. This is known as Bloody Sunday. Again, the hard-line approach backfires and the IRA gathers strength. The event is viewed as murder by the Irish Catholics who are infuriated that the British government refuses to admit any wrong doing. The Widgery report states that British soldiers would only have fired if they were fired upon and that no deaths would have occurred if the illegal march had not taken place. Essentially, this report blamed the victims. The event is still under investigation today and the Saville report is due out late 2006. The Troubles continue and in 1998 the Good Friday agreement addresses the major civil rights issues for Catholics in NI although NI remains separate from the Republic of Ireland and under British rule.

 

We had dinner that night with Alan Sharp, Provost of the University of Ulster. I went out that evening to have a Guinness and listen to live music.

 

The next morning, Monday the 12^th, we had a guided tour of Belfast. It is clear from the fences separating Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods, the graffiti, and the murals, that the Troubles are not far behind. It was also clear that as an occupied people, they have a very negative view of the US actions in Iraq. There are Iraqi flags being flown in NI in sympathy for the occupied people of Iraq.

 

 The wall shown above separates Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods.

 The writing on the lower left of this mural reads as follows: "CATHOLICISM IS MORE THAN A RELIGION IT IS A POLITICAL POWER THEREFORE IM LED TO BELIEVE THERE WILL BE NO PEACE IN IRELAND UNTIL THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IS CRUSHED. OLIVER CROMWELL"

 

After the tour we met with Michael Ferguson, a member of Sinn Fein, and then a member of the Democratic Unionist Party for their respective views on the current state of affairs in Northern Ireland. Something came up in these meetings that continued to astonish me. Only 5% of children in NI attend integrated schools (both Catholics and Protestants). The other 95% go to either a Catholic or Protestant school and first take classes with the “other side” at the university level. Separate but equal? 

 

The next morning (Tuesday the 13^th) we headed for Derry/Londonderry with important stops enroute at Bushmill’s and the Giant’s Causway on the Antrim coast. The Giants Causway is a unique geological site with amazing geometric rocks. See pictures below.

 

 

We stayed at a friendly B&B in Derry/Londonderry. Apparently, the name Derry is based on the Irish name but the influx of money by British merchants in town resulted in a name change to Londonderry. The name is still a point of conflict but the city council now calls itself the Derry city council. We had a walking tour of Derry that was amazing. This city was home to much of the Troubles and is the site of Bloody Sunday. The pictures below say a lot about the area and history.

 

 The picture on the left is of two hunger strikers who died in prison. The man on the right is Bobby Sands (I do not remember the woman's name). They were on a hunger strike because they were demanding the recognition as political prisoners rather then as criminals. The British view was to consider them criminals and the whole NI military action was official a police action to enforce the law, not a war. Interestingly, the US has similarly refused to acknowledge prisoners captured in Afghanistan as POWs (political prisoners) and instead considers them criminals and therefore not protected by international laws specifying treatment of POWs. No captives at Guantanamo Bay are considered POWs and they have similarly gone on hunger strikes to protest their treatment. Ten people died on hunger strikes before the strikes were called off in NI. To date, 3 inmates at Guantanamo Bay successfully committed suicide. They were not allowed to continue their original hunger strike and at least one prisoner was force-fed through a feeding tube.

The mural on the right says "ONE MAN ONE VOTE." Voting in NI was limited to one vote per household. Since the Catholics were poor they had many families in one house. Protestants were more likely to have one family per house. This was one of the many ways that power was kept out of the hands of the Catholics.

 

 

 The writing above says "YOU ARE NOW ENTERING FREE DERRY" Signs like this were erected during the Troubles to indicate areas of IRA control. Streets were blocked by trash and abandoned cars and the area inside was know as "Free Derry" because it was free of British control.

 Barbed wire is very common throughout NI.

 The Real Irish Republican Army (RIRA) is a splinter group from the IRA that did not accept the Good Friday accord. They have still not declared a formal cease-fire and they adhere to the view that Ireland needs to be united as one country.

 There were many graffiti markings that read "BRITS OUT"

 

As usual, I went out that evening for Guinness and music. The next morning we met with Gareth, a former British soldier who was stationed in South Armagh, NI in the early 90s. He told us why he joined the army at the age of 17, his experiences in NI, and the personal toll it took on his mental health for years to come. He spent the day with us. Next we went to Magee College to hear an excellent lecture by Stephen Ryan. He talked about transformation from conflict to peace in NI with details I won’t attempt to summarize. He discussed the cycle of victimhood and retribution in NI (something we now see in Iraq between the Shia and Sunni populations). He mentioned that in the 70s the male unemployment rate for Catholics in Derry was 80%. He also discussed the role of fundamentalism briefly.

We then met briefly with the new Mayor of Derry. Her chief concerns appeared to be economic development. We asked her about alcohol and drugs and she acknowledged that these are huge issues throughout NI. In many of the discussions we had in Derry there was mention of a culture of lawlessness. It seems as though the police are very hesitant to enforce laws unless there is a major violation taking place. This hesitations stems from historic tensions between the almost exclusively Protestant police force and the Catholic population. Even today in Derry while the population is about 67% Catholic, the police force is 92% Protestant.

We then went to the Derry Women’s Center and learned about some of the fallout effects of the violence on women and children. A woman at the center, Dee, was raised in Derry and at the age of 8, her brother was shot and killed on Blood Sunday. Gareth was there for this talk and I can’t imagine how he must have felt listening to this. We then went to the Bloody Sunday museum. Dee, Gareth, Jim, myself and others ate dinner and went out for beers. It was really something to see Gareth, a former British soldier stationed in NI, and Dee bond during the evening. They talked for a long time and I felt fortunate to be present.

 

The next morning (Thursday the 15^th) we left for Galway stopping at Yeats’ grave along the way. We had a tour of Galway and I went out for more Guinness and music. Friday morning we went to the university at Galway and I listened to Irish spoken for the first time. Many of the courses here are offered in Irish and there is a big push to increase the number of people who speak Irish. They are afraid of it becoming a dead language. Currently, Polish is more common in Ireland than Irish. The Irish economy is doing so well that there are tons of eastern Europeans coming to Ireland for jobs. The EU makes nationalism much less relevant. As the EU becomes stronger and national differences become less relevant, the differences between NI and the Republic of Ireland become less meaningful as both are members of the EU. I really don’t need to mention anymore that I went out for Guinness and music in the evening. Just assume I did that every night.

 

The next morning we departed for the Aran Islands, a row of three islands off of the west coast of Ireland. Very beautiful and one of the few places where Irish is still the first language. We visited old fortes and monasteries, stared off of cliffs, and toured the largest of the three islands, Inishmore. See pictures below.

 

 

 

 

It is three hundred feet down to the water and looking over with the wind slamming you in the face is a rush. I am lying on the cliff edge at the middle of the ring fort pictured in the postcards above.  The picture below is my view from that same spot.

 

The most tradition music I heard in Ireland was played by these three women on Inishmore. Too much of the music I heard live in the now tourist packed pubs was the same as you can hear in any cheesy US bar with a cheesy cover band. I heard "Brown eyed girl" way too many times.  The thatched-roof cottages you see in the background are now only for tourists. Apparently the saying "keep the home fires burning" stems from these cottages. The thatch gets very damp and is dried from within the house by the fire. If the home fire is out for an extended period of time, the thatch gets heavier, rots the wood and collapses the roof.

 

We spent the next two nights in a nice small town called Ballyvaughn and then headed to Dublin where we had lunch, more intellectual stimulation and a final goodbye dinner. I stayed an extra day so I could tour Dublin and go to Wonkaville (AKA Guinness). The Guinness brewery is amazing! It has a 7 story “storehouse” that is really a museum with a bar at the top. The bar has all glass walls looking out over the city of Dublin. While walking around, I went to Dublin Castle, the General Post Office (site of the 1916 Easter rebellion), and many other places. I walked for about 9 hours and collapsed in bed early. The next morning I hopped a plane across the pond to arrive home. It was really nice to see trees again. I was really struck by the lack of trees in Ireland. Just about the entire island is deforested and the only “forest” I saw was on an old English estate (Lady Gregory’s estate). All new construction is cinder block with stucco since there is no wood. I was also amazed at the differences between NI and the republic. The south is booming with tourism and there are no real signs of war. The north is dead after 5:30pm (except for the pubs) and the history of war is very near the surface.