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Northern Ireland

Over Easter a group from the chaplaincy at York joined up with a similar group from Hull to go to Ireland together. We were a mixed denominational group encompassing at least five different denominations. The plan was to find out about the peace process and the situation in Ireland generally. We spent the first few days in Belfast and then travelled up to the North coast to Ballycastle where we stayed at nearby Corrymeela.

There are so many things I could say about the trip that I don’t really know where to start. While in Belfast we had a very busy timetable. On the Sunday we spent the day at Knock Methodist Church, a rather large Methodist church in the suburbs of Belfast. We went to the morning service there and then took the evening’s service ourselves. We weren’t quite sure how we would be received being a mixed group taking a service in a Protestant church in Northern Ireland, but it went really well.

The next day was very hectic, we had five meetings with people from different sides, and people working with the communities in Belfast. Firstly we went to a Methodist church which is on one of the peace lines. The peace lines in Belfast are the roads which divide the Protestant and Catholic communities. There are often high walls on one side of the road with gates (that are locked at night) to get through to the other side. Now this church was on the Protestant side of the road, but on the Catholic side of the wall as the wall went behind it. When the wall was first built this had lead to a dramatic decrease in numbers at the church. Nowadays the church does work trying to bring people of both sides together. However because of its unique position it faces difficulties in getting either side there, as both see it as being on the other’s territory.

That day we also met up with an Assembly Member (equivalent of an MP) from the main Ulster Unionist party (Protestant) and a local council member for Belfast from Sinn Fein. These two painted very contrasting pictures of the situation. Dermott, the Unionist, seemed very dogmatic and unable to appreciate the other side’s position, whereas Tom (from Sinn Fein) seemed to have a full understanding of the whole situation and really understood where the other side were coming from as well as what his own community is going through.

While in Belfast we also paid a visit to the main catholic cemetery where many of the terrorist graves are. Here it was quite noticeable that many of the graves had inscriptions which implied they died in a war. Before this I had never really thought of viewing the situation in Ireland like that. This also helped me make sense of the issue of prisoner release. I had always thought of terrorists just as being criminals, which of course they are, however I had never considered the fact that by their own communities they are often considered to be prisoners of war.

Another thing which was noticeable both here and in Derry, was the huge forts of police stations overlooking Catholic areas, these were equipped with enormous watch towers with CCTV cameras pointing in every direction, wherever you were within the surrounding area, the police could see everything you did. Now at the time we were laughing and joking about it, waving to the policemen who were watching us etc., but imagine living like that every day under the watchful eye of big brother.

In Corrymeela we spent time learning about the work they do bringing people from both sides together, we experienced the team building games which they use to build friendships between people from different backgrounds. We also learnt about Corrymeela’s background and theology.

Altogether I think I could write a book about our experiences over there, so I won’t bore you any longer. If you want to know more about what we did, (there was lots of fun stuff as well as serious), then talk to myself, Angela Squier, Chris Geisow, Annette Cooper, Karen Breslin, Graham Jones (the Methodist chaplain), Julian Martin, Tommy or Felix.

Rachel Cavill

Last modified: 25th November 2005