The GCW Tour, A Few Bits of the UK and Ireland: Belfast Part 2, The Black Cab Tour

Note: When it comes to the "troubles," I've got no agenda save the belief that it ought to be possible for people to live without worrying that they'll get blown up or shot in the street. Beyond that, how Ireland should be configured politically is not really my call.


On our way in from the train station, our taxi driver mentioned that there was something called a Black Cab Tour, where a taxi driver in one of the old style cabs would drive you through the parts of Belfast that were most in the news during the '70s, '80s and '90s, and give you the rundown on those events. Knowing little more than what can be teased out of an older U2 song, it seemed like a good investment of a couple of hours and a few bucks. 

And so once again we begin with one of my cribbed history lessons...

Prior to, say, the 1500s sometime, Ireland was separate from England. Prone to invasion from Vikings, Scots and others, Ireland was sort of the "wild west" of Europe, a scary place of magic and the unknown. But like most wild, unknown places, it first became known, and then less wild, and then became a part of England under William of Orange or some such person. Flash forward a few hundred years, and some of the Irish are getting kind of tired of being under English rule, especially because in the sorting over which flavor of Christianity everyone would buy into (which was also a sorting over which ruling family everyone would fall under), Ireland chose Catholicism while England landed on Protestantism. 

So in 1916 you get the Easter rebellion/uprising, in which a small group of Irish nationalist and labor unionists and others launch a rebellion against the English, only to get fairly quickly shut down by the English, at least to some degree because they didn't have much popular support. But then the English choose to execute the leaders of the Easter event, and so now that popular support appears. Five years later, you get the Anglo-Irish Treaty, in which Ireland becomes a quasi-independent country (a "dominion"), except that six of the nine counties in the Ulster Province choose to stay a part of England, since the majority of the citizens in those counties started out as Presbyterians from Scotland, and so align with Protestant England rather than Catholic Ireland. And so now Ireland is split.

In 1937 Ireland gets a new constitution, and is now an independent republic. And things keep rolling along until the 1960s. In the 1960s, the world starts to witness all sorts of groups angling for various forms of respect and autonomy -- Martin Luther King, Jr., being a primary example. Inspired by these efforts, some of those in Ireland who always saw the Anglo-Irish Treaty as a temporary measure get tired of waiting and start agitating for Irish unification. Soon the British army is brought in, and that portion of the world goes to hell in a hand basket until 1998 (mostly) when the Good Friday Agreement was signed and a more or less lasting cease fire began.

OK, with apologies for any errors or omissions, now we can get on with the Black Cab Tour. The tour starts at the Europa Hotel...

It looks a little nicer than it once did, and the city is denser around it than it once was, but you may recognize the Europa from various newscasts back in the day as the Europa is known for being the most frequently blown up hotel in Europe. Thirty-three times the Europa was damaged by a bomb. 

It's of course to be expected. At the time (and maybe still) the Europa was the nicest hotel in Belfast, so it's where the VIPs all came to stay. And if you want to get a VIP's attention, blowing up the hotel where s/he's staying is not the worst strategy in the world. And so the poor Europa got bombed again and again and again.

Next the cab took us here...

I don't know the name of this building, but it's the tallest building in the neighborhood of West Belfast where the troubles were largely located, and thus the British army wound up occupying the top two floors during their occupation of Belfast. You can't see it here, but once the English pulled out, one of the first things that happened was a large room like a Quonset hut was placed on top of the building. The curved roof of the hut would prevent helicopters from ever again landing on the roof, as that was how the British army used to bring in soldiers and supplies. 

While we were parked under this building, our driver/guide gave us a rundown on the history and the geography. Here's a little map of the neighborhood...

In short, you've got the Catholic neighborhood, with its main road on the bottom; the Protestant neighborhood with its main road on the top; and between them is the "Peace Wall" which has roads running through it, but those roads are gated and the gates are closed at night.

Since we were already on the Catholic side, from here we drove past a number of the streets where various murals in support of Irish unification and independence are painted. The interesting things to note here are a) that  the murals are still being painted, and b) that it's not just Ireland that is the subject of the murals. Even the recent Orlando massacre has already been commemorated. 

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On the way, then, to the Protestant side we passed by the monastery where the peace process leading to the Good Friday Agreement was started. That's the brick building on the right. It was sort of odd, but while we were there the driver showed us photos of the same parking lot we were in filled with British army vehicles taken at the beginning of the occupation.

Next we passed through the gates to make our way to the Protestant side. It's a terrible photo, but this is all I've got...

On this side the wall is far more exposed, and so easier to see. One thing that quickly becomes clear is that there's a lot fewer political murals, and more generic graffiti -- graffiti which we, in fact, were encouraged to add on to...

This is not to say there weren't murals on the Protestant side. They certainly had their heroes, and their testaments to peace.

And with that, our guide took us back to the city and an ATM handing out Monopoly money. But I've already written about that.

I have to say, Belfast today is really a beautiful city. Plenty to see, lovely countryside surrounding it, fabulous restaurants. In some ways, one of my favorites so far. 

It's hard to imagine how it would've been thirty or forty years ago.