University research - interviews wanted!

[bluebird]

I was up in Belfast yesterday, (hospital appointment) we got in and out as fast as we could,  not much of Belfast left of my childhood, it has  changed to much...This forum allow me to keep the Belfast I grew up in alive ..Beautiful memories with and about family and friends, A community of people who far,wide  and near share the same feelings about our wee place we call ...HOME;

[RebeccaK]

Then again, the walls were only supposed to be there for six months in '69 and it's been almost 47 years since they've been up (and increased in number)... It made me wonder whether the "peace" walls truly brought peace and the research was born!

I figured I might give you some updates: I have contacted the PSNI under the Freedom of Information act 2000, inquiring about annual police costs in the month of July over the past few years to see if any of it has increased. They're supposed to send me an answer within 20 days so I'll keep you all updated.

[chi]

transparent is important.
Folks wouldn't want money 
mis-directed/spent

[jmac]

Then again, the walls were only supposed to be there for six months in '69 and it's been almost 47 years since they've been up (and increased in number)... It made me wonder whether the "peace" walls truly brought peace and the research was born!

I figured I might give you some updates: I have contacted the PSNI under the Freedom of Information act 2000, inquiring about annual police costs in the month of July over the past few years to see if any of it has increased. They're supposed to send me an answer within 20 days so I'll keep you all updated.

Ah!!! so you've went from asking us for information to giving us information 

What would the cost of PSNI policing during the month of July have to do with peace walls 

 

[RebeccaK]

Ah!!! so you've went from asking us for information to giving us information 

What would the cost of PSNI policing during the month of July have to do with peace walls 

It has to do with the marches held in the month of July. My logic would be that because of separating communities from one another, these marches provide even more of a clash between the communities and thus a higher police cost when trying to bring some order. I emailed them (the PSNI) an initial request to please send me information on the years 1980-2015, but got an email back saying that they likely didn't hold information prior to April 2009 so now I'm taking that part of the research apart and trying to see if there's been a staggering growth in cost in those years.

I hope that answers your question

[jmac]

It has to do with the marches held in the month of July. My logic would be that because of separating communities from one another, these marches provide even more of a clash between the communities and thus a higher police cost when trying to bring some order. I emailed them (the PSNI) an initial request to please send me information on the years 1980-2015, but got an email back saying that they likely didn't hold information prior to April 2009 so now I'm taking that part of the research apart and trying to see if there's been a staggering growth in cost in those years.

I hope that answers your question

I would suggest you to E mail the PSNI on the cost of policing the dissident Republicans who are intent on continuing the murder and bombing on our streets as well

[edmor]

It has to do with the marches held in the month of July. My logic would be that because of separating communities from one another, these marches provide even more of a clash between the communities and thus a higher police cost when trying to bring some order. I emailed them (the PSNI) an initial request to please send me information on the years 1980-2015, but got an email back saying that they likely didn't hold information prior to April 2009 so now I'm taking that part of the research apart and trying to see if there's been a staggering growth in cost in those years.

I hope that answers your question

               

         I guess my logic is a wee bit flawed, I would have thought that the walls would separate the marchers from those who have an objection to the parades thus reducing the chance of violent confrontation ergo less burden on the security forces.  There has been an increase in policing costs in recent years as far as I know, due to a parade being blocked and I have noticed that the people crying loudest about the cost are those preventing the parade completion.

[doare.]

Doare I have lived in Belfast most of my life and the nearest I have come to the peace wall is pictures and film on telly! It maybe has outlived it's use ? ;

I lived less than a stones throw from the percy st peaceline....grew up on townsend st, the 12th of july every year was unbelievable, the celebrators were escorted from sandy row right up durham st across divis st, then along twnsend st, carrying falgs and singing crazy singe, the ruc lined the sidewalks as their escort til they reached the shankill...at one street interval, at half way mark.. there was always a large gang of attackers, they would wade into police and loyalists alike, there was mayhem ever year for as long as I could remember, I lived on the divis st end...top half of our street was protestant , bottom half catholic. .then I moved into percy st...right beside the peace line there...some craic..

[chi]

I lived less than a stones throw from the percy st peaceline....grew up on townsend st, the 12th of july every year was unbelievable, the celebrators were escorted from sandy row right up durham st across divis st, then along twnsend st, carrying falgs and singing crazy singe, the ruc lined the sidewalks as their escort til they reached the shankill...at one street interval, at half way mark.. there was always a large gang of attackers, they would wade into police and loyalists alike, there was mayhem ever year for as long as I could remember, I lived on the divis st end...top half of our street was protestant , bottom half catholic. .then I moved into percy st...right beside the peace line there...some craic..

That's a vivid image!!!

Some folks call that the good ould days

[bluebird]

I lived less than a stones throw from the percy st peaceline....grew up on townsend st, the 12th of july every year was unbelievable, the celebrators were escorted from sandy row right up durham st across divis st, then along twnsend st, carrying falgs and singing crazy singe, the ruc lined the sidewalks as their escort til they reached the shankill...at one street interval, at half way mark.. there was always a large gang of attackers, they would wade into police and loyalists alike, there was mayhem ever year for as long as I could remember, I lived on the divis st end...top half of our street was protestant , bottom half catholic. .then I moved into percy st...right beside the peace line there...some craic..

Wow! Doare If I have made that nightmare to come back into your mind, I am really, honestly, Sorry.  Bluebird.

[RebeccaK]

               

         I guess my logic is a wee bit flawed, I would have thought that the walls would separate the marchers from those who have an objection to the parades thus reducing the chance of violent confrontation ergo less burden on the security forces.  There has been an increase in policing costs in recent years as far as I know, due to a parade being blocked and I have noticed that the people crying loudest about the cost are those preventing the parade completion.

Your logic isn't flawed. It's just that I would reason that since these groups usually live divided and don't see each other as often, it would be a big deal if marchers went through Catholic streets/neighbourhoods.

[McNamee]

Anybody any idea when exactly the peace walls went up?

[RebeccaK]

Anybody any idea when exactly the peace walls went up?

1969, at least the first one, I believe. It was shortly after O'Neil's term.

[chi]

It's good to hear that folks are
 addressing the wall issues

excerpts from NI Observer Sean O"Hagan  (2012)

, the International Fund for Ireland, an independent organisation promoting reconciliation in Northern Ireland, announced that it will fund a £2m project aimed at bringing down the Belfast peace walls "by building confidence between the communities". Given the slow pace of political change in Northern Ireland, that may take some time.

Chris O'Halloran, co-ordinator of the Belfast Interface Project, which has mapped out the city's interfaces in detail, is cautiously optimistic. "The most important thing is to work at the speed of local communities, listening to their fears and trying to address those fears. I would suggest that it might be wise to concentrate on removing the interfaces that are the least contentious and to build slowly on those small successes. That said, it will be a slow process and the biggest walls may well be the last to come down, but come down, I think they will."

"As it is, we have a situation where 80% of the funding for community-relations-based project in Belfast comes from sources outside government," says O'Halloran, "and the big funding projects from Europe and America that followed the ceasefires are now all into their exit strategies. There is a real danger that Belfast will sleepwalk into a twin-speed city marked by areas of affluence and areas of great deprivation."The big question raised by a walk through the troubled and divided communities of north Belfast is: why didn't the millions of pounds of post-ceasefire development money poured into the city filter out to the most beleaguered areas at a greater rate? And what will those communities do in the face of the imminent drying up of funding?

This is a real fear expressed by all the people on the ground that I spoke to. "I'll probably get into trouble for saying this," says Sgt Caskey, "but Belfast doesn't stop at Royal Avenue. People around here have to feel part of the new, regenerated city, too, not excluded from it. And the people who are working hardest on the ground to bring down the walls in people's heads need acknowledgment, too.

"It will take a while to change things, but it needs that kind of courage and it needs a plan. We're all in this together and it benefits everyone to have a 21st-century city that is not stigmatised by walls that keep people apart."

[doare.]

Wow! Doare If I have made that nightmare to come back into your mind, I am really, honestly, Sorry.  Bluebird.

hi bluebird, many in Belfast never experienced some of this stuff..more power to them..no longer a nitemare..lol  even then we accepted to some degree, it would all blow over...til the following year..we are prisoners of history, fostered by sick politicians..to get elected..looking back from here, it seems like a million years ago...