Trip To Belfast.

Peace,

I know I did kind of promise that I would write up a blog statement about my trip to Belfast so here it is.

So I and a group of about 21 students from my Via Media enrichment group attended an educational trip to Belfast on the 3rd and 4th of December…making the days of school on Thursday and Friday! So yes I got the chance to miss two days of school :P

The reason for the trip was for my enrichment group’s knowledge on the conflict between the Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland. I’ll just give you a quick overview about the whole thing. Basically there are two groups who basically fought against each other, the Catholics and Protestants…

The Catholics have a group known as IRA (Irish Republican Army), the IRA is a group of Irish people/volunteers who believed that Ireland should be a political unity. And because England (the British) had invaded parts of Ireland, the IRA fought to have their land back. So the IRA had a war against the people who wanted to keep Ireland with Great Britain (it aint that ‘Great’) and keep the British in Ireland. So overall the IRA is aimed or is aiming for the British to be gone out of Ireland – they want Ireland to be united as a single country.

Now the Protestants have remained as part of UK. They are known as ‘Loyalists’ and they have many groups such as UDA (Ulster Defence Association), UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force), and LVF (Loyalist Volunteer Force). All these groups were and are in Northern Ireland. These groups wanted to assassinate members of the IRA because they wanted to remain with UK or British.

Most frequently the loyalists have targeted the IRA and sometimes even innocent Catholics. More Catholics were/have been killed than Protestants. Almost 3,500 people on both sides have died since the Troubles began in 1969. It’s hard to say what exactly the war is over, because simply more than thousands of people cannot possible just get killed over land…could they? Some will say that it wasn’t only over land or being on which side, but in fact it was to do with social class and religion. So there are different views and yet today a couple of people will get killed now and then. This is just some of what I have learnt whilst the 2 day trip in Belfast, we had some people speak to us about their experiences of the war and even what their role had been in it.

There were many paintings, pictures, drawings, graffiti, etc on walls of houses, buildings and anywhere where there was room for a freedom of speech picture. Strangely whilst looking at many of these pictures i wondered if it was illegal to have such pictures on walls!

The image below shows a picture of 3 men who were wrongly accused, convicted and hung in 1867 in Manchester.

This picture below was one if my favourites, i was quiet suprised to see such a picture in Belfast. It shows support for Palestine and shows Israel aggression. It also shows the wall that seperated Israel and Gaza strip.

This is a picture of Bobby Sands who was a poet, MP, IRA volunteer. He wanted his demands to be met so he starved himself. He eventually died after slipping into a comma.

This is 'the peace wall' in Shankill.

This picture shows the loyalist (Protestant) group.

"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". - This is probably a statement that was said by a loyalist.

I had to include this picture :D some of us went to pizza hut in Belfast City.

After eating my group ran to the top of that.

The Via Media enrichment group.

Belfast City.

The view outside the hostel (the place we were staying at).

Bogside.

Notice the palestinian flag painted on the wall in the Bogside area.

This is used to shoot or bomb the above area ages ago.
Another picture outside a museum of Palestine with me beside it :)
The plane my group was on.