Among this year’s files releases for 1991 from the Public Record Office in Belfast is an almost surreal account by a senior Northern Ireland Office (NIO) official of a visit to republican West Belfast.
Reporting his experiences to colleagues on May 20th, 1991, Peter Bell of the security police and ops division entitled his account as “Into the Alternative Universe – West Belfast”. He described feeling “like a character in a science fiction novel who had slipped into an alternative universe”.
The official stated that, although he had lived and socialised in Belfast for some years (more than his NIO colleagues) he found himself in areas of the city whose names he knew well “but which were, nevertheless . . . almost as strange to me as the Forbidden City would have been to a Chinese before 1911”.
Bell added significantly: “I think I am not alone in having this view of the west of the city”. He went on: “Only once, in the heart of Ballymurphy, did I find myself in an area which I thought as frightening as it was depressing: it could serve without alteration as a Derek Jarman film set.’ He was reassured that the Rough Guide to Ireland also regarded this district as ‘the most depressing part of the entire city”.
Apart from such occasional “mysteries”, he wrote, he was perplexed as to why no children appeared to be at school: “it turned out to be Ascension Day”. He added: “My main other impressions were: how oppressive it must be, most notably in the Clonard area, to live in a small street right up against a peace-line . . . this and the anecdotes of sectarian attack over that line [related by his guide] intensified my sensation of having peered into another world”. It also convinced him of the need for many of the peace walls to remain.
Turning to the issue of security, he informed colleagues: “One could not avoid the security force presence from the futuristic/medieval security force bases . . . to high level patrolling that day. Nobody seemed to be taking any notice of the soldiers, however. This I would regard as a good sign.”
Dr Éamon Phoenix is a political historian, journalist and commentator. He is a member of the Taoiseach’s Expert Advisory Group on Centenaries.