(All Pictures Taken by Randy Graham, My Father)

I just got back from Ireland, please excuse my two week hiatus, and absolutely loved it. Flew in to Dublin and realized that was NOT Ireland and left the city life for the countryside, spending 14 days driving around the coast of Ireland. I had heard, but didn’t understand that the island of Ireland is actually two countries: The Free Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, which is under British rule. Originally my idea for my first article back was to do a re-cap of my time in Ireland–packed with photos of the beautiful countryside and small seaside villages, but at the end of the trip we found ourselves in Northern Ireland, in Belfast, and realized the article should be about the Peace Walls that were originally built to oppress the Catholics by the British Protestants.

Known as “The Troubles”, a conflict between Irish Catholics and English-loyal Protestants, began in 1966 in Northern Ireland and wouldn’t officially end until the “Good Friday” agreement in 1998. During this time hundreds, if not thousands, of Irish were murdered as the civil war between the two religious groups. Originally, England’s Parliament officially moved away from the Catholic Church, who they believed had to much influence on the people and therefore their Democratic system of governance, developing a national Protestant movement. Northern Ireland, under British rule, was Catholic and wanted to stay that way; they believed the British government was oppressive and they wanted a free Northern Ireland that could then unite with the Southern, Free Republic of Ireland.

What arose from this conflict was the British government bringing in English military troops to combat and suppress any political uprising–to establish their rule without any dissention or conflict. However, this fueled the loyal Catholics and the Irish Republican Army (IRA). The IRA acted as a guerrilla-like group that created a viscious, high-civilian casualty, war between religious groups. I shit you not… when describing the conflict our guide said the United States has the Crips and Bloods, while we have Protestants and Catholics; the rivalry was that bad. Bombings were constant and assassinations occur still to this day. Dividing up the cities across lines of religious affinity huge walls, with steel pickets at the top of the fences, surrounded by barbed-wire, and a thin road inbetween them.

“We Will Never Be 2nd Class Citizens to You Scummy Bastards” (Catholics to Protestants)

For decades (1960′s-1990′s) this was an area of Belfast where riot squads suppressed, well, riots; where Prostants fought Catholics; where bodies were scraped off the floor by ambulence and EMT workers; an area of catalyst for the religious rivalry. Somewhere down the line, after “Good Friday” in 1998, an agreement between the two major political parties in Northern ireland, controlled by Protestants and Catholics, agreed to put aside their differences on accounts of the lives lost on both sides. Afterwards, the narrow streets where these walls were constructed were painted over and thousands of people from all over the world started writing on it (“Bring Peace to Belfast”, “Give Peace a Chance”, etc.) and eventually it began an infamous, known worldwide, wall for graffiti art. Here are some photos of some beautiful pieces. The city of Belfast actually grants space to artists and crews to paint over the wall… Here are some of the photos my dad and I took:

A small taste of far the walls stretch and how high the fences were…

While the walls still hold a political charge to them, reminiscent of a repressive time as pillars of segregation and religious apartheid,  they still stand, intact, as symbols of what once was and what has become a canvas for Change & Peace.

From Belfast with Love,

Bobby James