Belfast City Council last night.

Tom Ekin of the Alliance Party proposed the demolition of Belfasts “Peace” Walls. There are several of these Walls in Belfast dividing Protestant/Unionist areas from Catholic/Nationalist areas. Working class areas. In the language of the British Army, these are “interfaces” where the removal of the walls would create tension and almost certainly violence.

They are for many…….a horrible admission….that we can never live together or be a single homogenous community. For me they are a guarantee of security and an admission that we are divided and equal communities. On one side of the Wall, people live as Irish people. On the other side people live as British people.

Indeed the re-development of Belfast over the past forty years has actually factored in community division and actually instituted the divisions, whether with shoppong malls, parks, open spaces, and major thoroughfares.

Ironically earlier this summer we commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the Berlin Wall and some people (I feel wrongly) have a sense of shame that Belfast is now the only city in Western Europe which has a wall to keep its citizens apart. Now it must be remembered that inevitably these walls exist in working class communities but I would suggest that Belfast just like any other major city in the world has (invisible) barriers which divide people.

Councillor Tom Ekin (whose upmarket address is on the Belfast City Council website) does not live at an interface. And I dont think there are any in his Balmoral Ward. And thats the odd thing about people who advocate bringing the Walls down. They dont live in ghettoes. But are these upper middle class and exclusive areas as much a ghetto as the places where “visible” walls exist. A public sector housing estate to re-house low earners might bring a trail of Balmoral voters to see Councillor Ekin to do something about the effect on the market values of their homes.

It is argued that these Walls are not “natural”. Alas in Human History boundaries are often natural.The four miles of fields which seperate the County Tyrone villages of Ardboe (staunchly republican) from Coagh (staunchly loyalist) are natural. Likewise in other counties Aghagallon (republican) is two miles from Aghalee (loyalist) and Maghery (republican) is three miles from The Birches (loyalist).

There are scores of villages which are the same. It would be difficult (or impossible) to live openly as a British person in Crossmaglen, County Armagh. And equally difficult to live as a Irish person in Bushmills, County Antrim.

The great and the good in the “Golden Halo” of the lucrative Community Relations Industry are inevitably upper middle class who just as inevitably believe that they know whats good for folks in working class communities. If the Middle Class are entitled to worry about their property values so too are the Working Class. Nothing lowers property values quicker than a petrol bomb thru your window.

I live in a small village. It is 98% Nationalist. I can live like an Irish citizen without fear of insult or injury or worse. And more importantly I dont have to compromise my sense of Irishness to live here. No Walls. No Barriers. And the nearest unionist is about four miles away and out of sight.

Tom Ekin is of course talking thru his hat.
Peace Walls (sic) are very bad things and it naturally behoves councillors to make totemic calls for their removal. But thats all it is…..lip service.
Nothing short of Joshua’s trumpet will bring the Walls down and Ekin knows it.
And if the Walls ever do come down (and it will be a blow to the Befast Tourism Industry as the Tourists love them,I look forward to Ekin handing the keys of his house over to a resident who currently lives in Cupar Street or Bombay Street (where the above pic was taken in 2009)……and Ekin will move there.
Problem solved.
Of course that would be more than lip service.