SquaresRenew 10: conflicting stories

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Meeting point for Conflicting Stories

I said at the beginning of this series that I didn’t want to get into the politics of Northern Ireland, but sometimes it is hard to avoid.  We went on a walking tour called Conflicting Stories in which we were taken up the (mainly Catholic and Republican) Falls Road and back down the (mainly Protestant and Unionist) Shankhill Road by guides from each community. The idea was to learn from their personal experiences what it was like to live through (and participate in) the Troubles. We also viewed the very different murals and memorials on each side of the divide.

I would like to say we found examples of moving forward, but they were few. Our Republican guide, an ex-political prisoner, came closest and seemed to have some hope for the future, but the Unionist came across as angry, bitter, and constantly looking to the past. (Of course, this might well have been the other way round with two different men, and most of the other people we spoke to had a much more nuanced view.)

This was definitely the day when my confidence in Northern Ireland’s renewal took the biggest battering, though there was one hopeful place that stood out that I shall include tomorrow. In the meantime, as a palate cleanser, here is a much more inclusive message that we found just before the tour’s meeting point. How the world could move forward if everyone took this to heart!

Be proud of the human race

Part of Becky’s SquaresRenew Challenge, using images from our April 2024 trip to Northern Ireland to illustrate one or more of the following (with apologies for doing so in a mainly negative sense today):

  • Move forward
  • Reconstruct
  • Renew
  • Burgeoning
Scotland, UK , ,

35 Comments »

  1. It’s too bad the tour group allows for guides like the Unionist who came across as angry and bitter. It would serve them better to have guides who express the more nuanced view; I’m sure the Troubles could have made for a lot of bitterness, but there is a time to move on, to open your mind, and to think about the whole picture.

    Our tour guide in Medellin, Colombia was very nuanced, and though he had his negative opinions about the drug cartels and Pablo Escobar, he acknowledged that many poor people saw him as a savior for things he did for the community. I think it’s good for a guide to have his/her opinion but not to be too stringent in stating it. There are nuanced views to almost everything (almost)!

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  2. many wars were started due to religious convictions or, at least, they used it as an excuse. I like tht last photo with all the sayings

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  4. It is very hard for people who used to have the upper hand to come to terms with the fact that others are human too when it has been their guiding principle that the others were somehow less than human.

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  6. I guess in some ways it is a sign of moving forward that they are not restricting what the guides say and how they say it, but so sad he wasn’t able to show more positive signs by the end. Perhaps he was just having an extra hard week.

    I am glad though you have shared it, and your final square which you saw at the start is one we all need to remember

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    • Yes, I wanted the last square to be a counterbalance. The walk was an unusual set up, in that we had booked with one company and expected a seamless tour – probably very naive. In reality, the two parts were sub-contracted to different companies, one Republican, one Loyalist, and the emphasis very much was that they were expressing their own opinions. Reading the reviews I think what we got was pretty much what everyone else did!

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  11. It’s still very real for a lot of folk over there. One of the museums we were in the old guy showed us around and I was fascinated by the size and weight of the rubber bullets used in crowd control decades ago. I asked a question about them saying I would not fancy getting hit and he said his son was killed by one. So although he was a tour guide it was not ancient history to his age group. Bob. BSS.

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  12. That sounds like a challenging tour and not what I would have expected – I might have thought people signing up to lead such a tour would be keen to promote how far the city has come since those days.

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    • The first part was more what I expected with a bit of history, an explanation of how what started as a peaceful civil rights movement erupted into violence, and a view of the future which was reasonably optimistic. The second was pure polemic – I don’t think he did his community any favours. We were handed over from one to the other at the “peace wall” which I was shocked to discover is still locked at night. The first guide thought they should try leaving it open, the second didn’t. So it was definitely a game of two halves 😉!

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