A Day in Belfast - Reflections from an American Ireland Fund Young Leader

Kevin Kent is an attorney and shareholder at the Philadelphia-based law firm, Conrad O’Brien Gellman & Rohn, P.C. Kevin regularly represents corporations and professionals involved in business disputes and criminal investigations. Kevin was also recently admitted to the Roll of Solicitors in Ireland (practicing certificate application pending), and is a member of The American Ireland Fund’s Philadelphia Young Leaders Committee.

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Not a typical city
It’s a beautiful June day. I just hopped off of a two-hour train ride featuring a full catered breakfast, boarded a tour bus and now I’m passing through the city centre, intrigued by shiny new office buildings and hotels, medium-rise luxury condos on the river, a beautiful glass-enclosed marketplace and an ultra-modern hockey arena, all of which are interspersed among well-kept and apparently renovated older buildings. Normally, these sights would not catch my eye, let alone cause me to pause and think about their presence. They’re typical of many cities these days. However, I’m in Belfast, which has never been known as a “typical” city.

Then...
If someone had told me during my previous experiences in Northern Ireland in the early 1990’s that Belfast would have these amenities within about a decade, I’d have suggested that they have their head examined. My first excursion into any of the six counties came on a simple drive to Clones for the 1992 GAA Senior Gaelic Football final. From Sligo, we drove through Leitrim, crossed the border into Fermanagh on the way back across the border again into Monaghan. What should have been just over an hour’s drive took closer to four, due largely to several British military and RUC checkpoints. For an American, it was an extremely unsettling and unusual experience to have been asked for my identification by soldiers in full battle gear—facepaint, helmets and large machine guns—and Uzi-carrying RUC officers, some of whom looked to be not much older than my seventeen years. Military helicopters were visible in the sky for much of the drive.

I found myself in Belfast just a few years later, where the military and RUC presence was only slightly diminished in light of a recently announced IRA cease-fire. The cease-fire was a tremendous development, but there seemed to be grave and justified doubt as to how long it would last. An air of high tension still seemed omnipresent. The Europa Hotel still looked more like a fortress than a place of lodging, and the city centre was not exactly what I would call vibrant.

...And now
Suffice it to say, the contrast between the Northern Ireland I saw in the early 1990’s, and the one I was now seeing in 2008 was fairly dramatic. As to what brought me here this time around, I was going to be in Dublin for business concluding on the day that The Ireland Funds’ Annual Conference commenced, so I made plans to stay the weekend for the conference. Part of the conference involved visits to projects supported by The Ireland Funds. The highlights of the Belfast visit included a meeting at Stormont Castle with First Minister Peter Robinson and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, as well as presentations by PeacePlayers Northern Ireland and Sesame Tree Northern Ireland.

The meeting with Robinson and McGuinness is yet another contrast of the Northern Ireland of old and its latest incarnation. Not long ago, few people, if any, would have believed that anyone from either of their political parties could work together in government, let alone stand side by side in the same room together. I felt a tremendous sense of pride being involved with The Ireland Funds, which helped contribute to the process by which these two men, and their constituents, found a way to forge a new Northern Ireland despite intense political and historical counter-currents.

Peace Walls
As we all know, however, real change and real progress is more subtle and fickle than the change evidenced by Mr. Robinson’s and McGuinness’ government or the overhaul of Belfast’s city centre. Driving out of the city centre through West Belfast and North Belfast makes that apparent. It is a curious fact that the oddly-termed “peace walls” dividing Loyalist and Nationalist neighborhoods have grown higher in recent years, and indeed more have gone up. Talk with the locals and you quickly learn that segregation and division—with its attendant suspicion—is still the norm here. One senses that although economic and governmental developments in Northern Ireland have dampened tensions between the communities here, it would not take much to set the region alight again and propel it on a course paralleling that of the 1970’s and 1980’s. Generations have lived through strife and violence, and it will undoubtedly take generations to create a situation in which such conditions are not only a distant memory, but a practical impossibility. It is clear that the real work in effecting long lasting change still lies ahead.

PeacePlayers & Sesame Tree
It’s as part of this process that PeacePlayers Northern Ireland and Sesame Tree Northern Ireland, both projects supported by The Ireland Funds, find their place. PeacePlayers brings children together from the two predominant communities and has them share the basketball court as teammates in a game with no historical or political ties to either community. Sesame Tree Northern Ireland attempts in its programming to educate children from each of the respective communities about the other, and develop a sense of understanding of their differences and shared sense of pride for their hometowns and counties. In summary, at their core, each strives to foster relationships and tolerance between different communities and ethnic groups in places like Northern Ireland where ethnic tensions frequently lead to violence and division. Each takes on the yeoman’s work of facilitating inter- community friendships and understanding in the hearts and minds of children, arguably the only place where lasting change, and lasting peace, can occur. As one of PeacePlayers’ founders put it, “Children who play together will become friends.” We met some of the children who are part of PeacePlayers, and this simple but profound prediction is becoming a reality among them.

Pride
Recognizing that real and lasting change cannot be brought about by outsiders, but that they can help facilitate it; seeing these projects supported by The Ireland Funds in action gave me a great sense of pride to be affiliated with the organization.