Belfast Wall Symbolizes Unending Strife : Ulster--the Sectarian Hatred Deepens

Berlin is not the only city in Europe divided by a wall. A forbidding concrete barrier, 20 feet high in some places, cuts through working-class Belfast, separating not political ideologies but Protestants and Roman Catholics.

The Belfast Wall is gradually replacing sheet-iron and barbed-wire barricades thrown up in the late 1960s after sectarian violence broke out in the six British-controlled counties that make up Northern Ireland, or Ulster, as it is known.

The wall snakes through West Belfast for more than a mile, a monument to the permanence of Ulster’s sectarian hatred and the years of trying to end it.

Nearly 17 years have passed since the start of the latest eruption in the centuries-old feud between Protestants (there are about 900,000 of them in Ulster) and Catholics (about 600,000), yet there seems to be little appetite for a truce, let alone a lasting reconciliation. During those 17 years, almost 2,500 people have been killed in the communal violence.

This month, a string of anniversaries of violent incidents and a tour by about 130 American members of the controversial Irish Northern Aid Committee, known as NORAID, have combined to heighten tensions and, with it, the level of violence.

The British government views NORAID as a principal financial supporter of the Irish Republican Army, Ulster’s most powerful terrorist organization. NORAID officials claim they send only humanitarian aid.

On Friday, police fired plastic bullets to disperse youths in Catholic neighborhoods of Belfast and Londonderry who were attacking them with Molotov cocktails, bricks and concrete blocks. The confrontation was part of a wave of unrest marking the 14th anniversary of the British government’s policy of rounding up suspected terrorists and interning them without trial.

Although the practice was suspended in 1975, the anniversary of its imposition continues to raise the political temperature. More unrest is expected today in Londonderry and Sunday in Belfast, where large rallies are planned. Police and the 2,000 British army troops stationed in Northern Ireland are also braced for violence next Wednesday, the 16th anniversary of British army deployment in Londonderry and Belfast.

The level of August unrest is merely the most recent evidence of a polarization that has strengthened advocates of political extremism and squeezed moderates who only a few years ago commanded an important center ground that many felt might be expanded to pave the way for an end to the violence. But today, Ulster’s moderate political center appears impotent and under siege.

A peace movement flourished briefly in the mid-1970s, bringing the Nobel Peace Prize to two local women, and it continues to survive, but more as a youth development organization than as a political force. The movement’s workers are harassed by Protestants and Catholics alike, both groups suspicious of anyone advocating contact with the other.

“Nobody likes us,” Eileen Toler, an official in the movement, said at its office here the other day.

The moderate Alliance Party, formed in 1970 to break the sectarian mold of Ulster’s political institutions by appealing to voters of both religions, has gradually slipped in popularity and now counts survival among its principal achievements.

“We haven’t made the breakthrough we had hoped for,” the party’s general secretary, Susan Edgar, admitted. “Movement is now towards the extremes of both sides.”

Nearly a generation of violence has all but eliminated contacts between the two communities and led a growing number of people to the conclusion that only extremism can succeed.

Sinn Fein, the legal political wing of the IRA, took part for the first time last May in elections for the province’s 26 local government councils and won 10% of the seats. It campaigned on a platform that condoned the use of violence to end British rule in Ulster and called for uniting Ireland as a single nation.

Ulster moderates were stunned by such a strong show of support for a party thought by most analysts to appeal to no more than the radical fringe of Catholics. The British government was dismayed and Protestant attitudes were further hardened.

“We’ve unleashed the fear that we can become the biggest political element among the nationalists,” Sinn Fein spokesman Danny Morrison said.

Morrison is one of those who helped to persuade skeptical Sinn Fein leaders to take part in the elections, arguing that the fight against British rule could be waged more effectively “with an Armalite (rifle) in one hand and a ballot paper in the other.”

The presence of Sinn Fein members, many of them convicted of weapons offenses, sitting together with hard-line Protestants has poisoned the atmosphere in the chambers of Northern Ireland’s local government councils. In Belfast, Sinn Fein councilmen sit with two Protestant members who have been shot in IRA attacks; in Londonderry, a man convicted of bombing the City Hall 13 years ago is now on the council.

Some in Londonderry have suggested that the protective metal screen that was placed around the City Hall after the bombing ought now to be removed. With the bomber inside, they reason, the screen is no longer needed.

“Politicians will always differ, but it’s more than that now,” said Sammy Wilson, a Belfast councilman who represents the Protestant-dominated Democratic Unionist Party. “Over the period of this council, someone will be shot. I’ve no doubt about that at all.”

One of the few points of agreement between Protestant and Catholic extremists in Northern Ireland is that IRA attacks have softened the British government attitude toward the Catholic community and its aspirations.

There are indications that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher may be willing to grant the Dublin government of the Republic of Ireland a consultative role in Ulster and to permit such symbolic acts as flying the Irish tricolor and posting some street names in Gaelic. This would be seen as a victory by the Sinn Fein and as heresy by the Protestant parties.

The Protestants here saw it as an ominous sign last month when the government insisted that a Protestant parade be rerouted from its traditional path to avoid conflict with Catholics.

James Molyneaux, leader of the Official Unionist Party, another Protestant political organization, said there might be civil war if the Irish government were granted a formal role here. All the unionist parties agreed to unite in opposition to any such concession.

Sinn Fein’s electoral success has not been overlooked by the leaders of Protestant paramilitary groups, who have waged a countercampaign of intimidation and violence against Catholics for the past decade and a half. In Protestant East Belfast, Andy Tyrie, the leader of one such group, the Ulster Defense Assn., said he is trying to organize a small, disciplined cadre of shock troops similar to those of the IRA.

“We realize now you’ve got to be more than just tough,” he said. “You have to plan, organize and manage. It’s war here, not a crime wave. The only way to beat terrorists is to terrorize them.”

The prospect of a new and more virulent Protestant terrorist group is demoralizing to people who are struggling to maintain law and order in the province, but Tyrie and other Protestants like him feel that it may be necessary to keep Ulster from being drawn into a united Ireland.

“Ulster is different,” he said. “It is a nation with its own long history.”

Indeed, Ulster’s present strife is merely a continuation of a conflict that began nearly 400 years ago when Queen Elizabeth I decided to colonize Ireland. Ulster’s Catholic chieftains resisted, far more than did anyone elsewhere in Ireland, and as a result the British singled out Ulster for intensive colonization at all levels of society throughout the 17th Century.

The Protestant settlers took over much of the land--and in the process touched off Catholic resentment and sectarian strife that continues today. When independence was granted to Ireland in 1921, six of the nine Ulster counties wanted nothing to do with it, and remained a part of the United Kingdom.

Economic and political factors are involved in divided Ulster, but religion is still the primary factor. An Ulsterman’s religion can generally be determined by his address, his school, whether his name sounds English or Irish.

When the latest round of violence began, in 1968, the British government moved to reduce discrimination in jobs and public housing. These steps helped substantially to improve the situation of Catholics, but they have not erased the centuries of inequity. A British government survey published last June found that unemployment among Catholic males was more than twice what it was among Protestants.

There have been positive developments, including a gradual reduction in the level of homicides in the past four years, and there would seem to be grounds for a measure of optimism in Ulster.

The decrease in violence has spurred private investors to pump considerable amounts of money into a revival of central Belfast and the British have pulled out some of their troops. Anglo-Irish interest in some form of joint action to tackle Ulster’s problems appears to have been revived.

Yet none of these developments appears to have brought any realistic hope for peace in the near future.

“Ten years ago, I would have bet that if you could reduce the level of violence significantly, the bitterness and fear would also drop, but this hasn’t happened,” said William McGookin, spokesman for the Royal Ulster Constabulary, Northern Ireland’s police. “So much poison has been injected into the system, into people’s minds, that it’s become impregnable.”

The lower level is attributed in part to improved anti-terrorist methods by the 2,000 British troops and 8,000 civilian policemen based in the province. But an IRA decision to concentrate its attacks on military and government targets rather than crowded commercial areas is believed to be a more important factor. And this assessment appeared to be reinforced by last week’s response to a boast by Britain’s secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Douglas Hurd, that the government had the IRA on the run.

Within 48 hours, a 300-pound bomb severely damaged a Belfast hotel, and fire caused by a 500-pound bomb gutted stores along the main street of Ballynahinch, a market town 20 miles south of Belfast.

The growing polarization of Ulster has made it far more difficult to find any middle ground. Many people see nothing ahead but more years of unrest. “It requires courage, stature and ability to occupy the middle ground, and there’s a lack of all three among all but a few politicians here,” said a senior British government official who has spent much of his career here.

For the ordinary citizen of Belfast, courage is sometimes not enough. A Catholic mother of seven told of trying to organize mixed children’s sporting events and social gatherings in West Belfast to bring Protestant and Catholic together.

“One day the Sinn Fein told me to stop or one of my children would get hurt,” she said. “It wasn’t worth it, so I quit.”