History of Belfast

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Belfast is the capital of Northern Ireland and its largest city. Its history as a settlement goes back to the Bronze age, but its status as a major urban centre dates to the eighteenth century. Belfast was, throughout its modern history, a major commercial and industrial centre. It has suffered in recent years from a decline in its traditional industries. Another sad aspect of Belfast's history is recurrent outbreaks of sectarian conflict between Catholic and Protestant communities.

The Lagan Weir, a major catalyst for redevelopment of the Laganside area and increasing use of the river throughout the city

[edit] Early history

The site of Belfast has been occupied since the Bronze ages, and the remains of Iron Age hill forts can still be seen.

The original Belfast Castle was at Castle Junction, where several roads meet at the top of the High Street. This was demolished at the same time the River Farset was covered over to create the High Street. There is a new castle on the slopes of the Cavehill above the Antrim and Shore Road, now a popular location for wedding receptions.

In the early 17th century Belfast was settled by English and Scottish settlers, under a plan by Sir Arthur Chichester to colonise and remove Irish Catholics from the land (see Plantation of Ulster). This caused much tension with the existing Irish Catholic population who, in a time of political crisis in England and Scotland and after a bad harvest, rebelled in 1641, attacking the Protestant settlers. The resulting slaughter is still strong in Ulster Protestant folk memory. Belfast was less important than Carrickfergus at the time, and it was there that refugees from the fighting fled and a Scottish army landed to put down the rebellion. Many of the Scots settled in the Belfast area after the war. Belfast was later settled by a small number of French Huguenots fleeing persecution, who established a sizeable linen trade.

[edit] Merchant and industrial town

Belfast thrived in the 18th century as a merchant town, importing goods from Britain and exporting the produce of the Linen trade. Linen at time was made by small producers in rural areas. The town was also a centre of radical politics, largely because its predominantly Presbyterian population was discriminated against under the Penal Laws. Another factor in Belfast radicalism was the influence of the Scottish Enlightenment. Belfast saw the founding of the Irish Volunteers in 1778 and the Society of the United Irishmen in 1791 - both dedicated to democratic reform, an end to religious discrimination and greater independence for Ireland. As a result of intense repression however, Belfast radicals played little or no role in the Irish Rebellion of 1798.

In the 19th century, Belfast became Ireland's pre-eminent industrial city (gaining city status in 1888) with linen, heavy engineering, tobacco and shipbuilding dominating the economy, and Belfast briefly overtook Dublin in population at the end of the 19th century. Belfast's shipyards, dominated by the Harland and Wolff company who alone employed up to 35,000 workers and was one of the largest shipbuilders in the world. The ill-fated RMS Titanic was built there in 1911. Migrants to Belfast came from across Ireland, Scotland and England, but particularly from rural Ulster, where sectarian tensions ran deep. The same period saw the first outbreaks of sectarian riots, which have recurred regularly since.

By 1901 Belfast was the largest city in Ireland. Since around 1840 its population included many Catholics, who originally settled in the west of city, around the area of today's Barrack Street. West Belfast remains the centre of the city's Catholic population (in contrast with the east of the City which is almost exclusively Protestant). Other areas of Catholic settlement have included the north of the city, especially Ardoyne and the Antrim Road and the Markets area immediately to the south of the city centre.

Conditions for the new working-class were often squalid, with much of the population packed into overcrowded and unsanitary tenements, and the city suffered from repeated cholera outbreaks in the mid 19th century. Conditions improved somewhat after a wholesale slum clearance programme in the 1900s.

Belfast saw a bitter strike by dock workers organised by radical trade unionist Jim Larkin, in 1907. The dispute saw 10,000 workers on strike and a mutiny by the police, who refused to disperse the striker's pickets. Eventually the British Army had to be deployed to restore order. The strike was a rare instance of non-sectarian mobilisation in Ulster at the time.

[edit] Conflict, partition and World War

Belfast became the centre of Irish unionism, and in 1920 it was declared the capital of Northern Ireland under the Government of Ireland Act, in which Ireland was partitioned into Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State (later to become the Republic of Ireland, when it withdrew from the Commonwealth in 1949). The period immediately before after partition (the Irish War of Independence) was marked by vicious sectarian disturbances, and a dramatic hardening of the city's sectarian boundaries. The Irish Republican Army was weak in the city and what actions it did take - such as the killing of policemen- were responded to with attacks on the Catholic population by loyalists -sometimes covertly aided by state forces. About 450 people died in sectarian violence in Belfast between 1920 and 1922 - a period known to nationalists as the "Belfast Pogroms". Unionists argue that this is an inappropriate term as while most of the victims (58%) were Catholics there was never a state policy of wholesale killing or expulsions of Catholics. In response to this violence, southern nationalists imposed a boycott on goods produced in Belfast. The violence in the city broke out in June/July 1920 largely subsided by July 1922. See also Irish War of Independence in the north east

Many thousands of Catholics left the city, often permanently, after the creation of Northern Ireland saw a sustained campaign of violence and intimidation against them, such as the families of former Fianna Fáil Taoiseach Charles Haughey, and Canadian-born actors Martin Short and James Doohan.

In common with similar cities world-wide, Belfast suffered particularly during the Great Depression. Partly as a result of these economic tensions, in the 1930s, there was another round of sectarian rioting in the city, although the most significant unrest of the period, the Outdoor Relief Riots of 1932, were notable for their non-sectarian nature. [1]

During the Second World War, Belfast was one of the major cities in the United Kingdom bombed by German forces and virtually the only one intentionally bombed by the Luftwaffe on the isle of Ireland, most of which had remained neutral during the War. The Belfast Blitz occurred on Easter Tuesday, April 15, 1941, when 200 German Luftwaffe bombers attacked the city, pounding working class areas of east Belfast around the shipyards. About 1,000 people died and many more were injured. Half of the houses in the city were damaged. Outside of London, this was the greatest loss of life in a night raid during the Battle of Britain. Roughly 100,000 of the population of 415,000 became homeless. Belfast was targeted due to its concentration of heavy shipbuilding and aerospace industries. Ironically, the same period saw the economy recover as the war economy saw great demand for the products of these industries.

[edit] The Troubles

Main article The Troubles

The post-war years were relatively placid in Belfast, but sectarian tensions and resentment among the Catholic population at the widespread discrimination festered below the surface, and the city erupted into violence in August 1969 when vicious sectarian rioting broke out in the city. Several people were killed, including two young children when a Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) armoured car opened fire with a heavy machine gun in the Catholic Divis Flats area. Predominantly Catholic Bombay street was burned out by loyalists (see Northern Ireland riots of August 1969). The perceived one sidedness of the police and the failure of the IRA to defend Catholic nieghbourhoods of the city was one of the main causes for the formation of the militant Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA), who would subsequently launch an armed campaign against the state of Northern Ireland.

The violence intensififed in the early 1970s, with rival paramilitary groups being formed on both sides. Bombing, assassination and street violence formed a backdrop to life throughout The Troubles. The PIRA detonated 22 bombs, all in a confined area in the city centre in 1972, on what is known as "Bloody Friday", killing 9 people. Loyalists paramilitaries, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and Ulster Defence Association (UDA) retaliated to the PIRA campaign by killing Catholics at random. A particularly notorious group, based on the Shankill Road in the mid 1970s became known as the Shankill Butchers.

The British army, first deployed in 1969 to restore order, became a feature of Belfast life, with huge fortified barracks being constructed, predominantly in nationalist west Belfast. Initially the British Army was welcomed by the minority nationalist community, but the relationship soured after such incidents as the Lower Falls Curfew of July 1970, when the Army fought a three day gun battle with the IRA in the Falls Road Area, killing four people. Major confrontation continued between the Army and Republican paramilitaries throughout the 1970s, notably in Operation Motorman in 1972, when thousands of British soldiers re-took nationalist "no go areas" in Belfast and elsewhere.

In the early 1970s, there were huge forced population movements as families, mostly but not exclusively Roman Catholic, living in areas dominated by the other community were intimidated from their homes. The general decline in European manufacturing industry of the early 1980s, exacerbated by political violence, devastated the City's economy. As recently as 1971 the city was overwhelmingly Protestant, but today is almost evenly balanced due to higher Catholic birth rates and rising prosperity, together with Protestant emigration (both internal, e.g., to North Down and external) have fundamentally changed the balance.

In 1981, Bobby Sands a native of Greater Belfast, was the first of ten Republican prisoners to die on hunger strike, in pursuit of political status. The event provoked major rioting in nationalist areas of the city. During the 1980s, the most notorious series of incidents in the city took place within a week in 1988. Firstly, a Republican funeral was attacked by loyalist Michael Stone (see Milltown Cemetery attack), then, the following week at the funerals of Stone's victims, two off duty British soldiers were lynched in the "Corporals killings".

In the early 1990s, loyalist and republican paramilitaries in the city stepped up their killings of each other and "enemy" civilians. A cycle of killing continued right up to the PIRA ceasefire in August 1994 and the Combined Loyalist Military Command cessation six weeks later. The most horrific single attack of this period came in October 1993, when the PIRA, in retaliation for the UDA's killing of Catholics, bombed a fish shop on the Shankill Road in an attempt to kill the UDA leadership. The Shankill Road bombing instead killed 9 Protestant civilans as well as the bomber himself.

Despite the paramilitary ceasefires of 1994, today the city still remains scarred by the conflict between the two communities. In all, nearly 1,500 people have been killed in political violence in the city from 1969 until the present. Most of Belfast is highly segregated with enclaves of one community surrounded by another (e.g., Protestant Glenbryn Estate in North Belfast, and the Catholic Short Strand in East Belfast) feeling, and often being, under siege. Fitfull paramilitary activity continues, often directed inwards as in the loyalist feuds and the killing of Catholic Robert McCartney by PIRA members in December 2004.

In 1997, unionists lost control of Belfast City Council for the first time in its history, with the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland gaining the balance of power between nationalists and unionists. This position was confirmed in the council elections of 2001 and 2005. Since then it has had two Catholic mayors, one from the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) and one from Sinn Féin.

The formation of the Laganside Corporation in 1989 heralded the start of the regeneration of the River Lagan and its surrounding areas, a process assisted by the ceasefires of 1994, although communal segregation has continued since then, with occasional low level street violence in isolated flashpoints and the construction of new Peace Lines.