Notes from Wigtown Book Festival event
Quaker from Laggan Valley - Skarvar village. Port Drumlin country.
Loyalist/Unionist/Protestant
Nationalist/Republican/Catholic - the Falls and Springfield Road.
Stormont in east Belfast
N & W Belfast for interface communities
NI has highest suicide rate in Europe.
Setting fire to Republican flags
control zone at night when gates are closed
Kingsmill massacre - workmen on the west coast speaking Irish
98 Good Friday Peace Agreement after 36 years of IRA violence.
Omagh horror put peace in people's hearts.
Quaker service to combat violence in a non-judgemental way.
Quakers started late 60s. Quaker cottage became a family centre and college for cross-community work. In NW Belfast?
Bombay St ethnically cleansed
Internment for male Catholics at Long Kesh army camp that became HMP 'The Maze'.
Petrified 18 year old soldiers from the other 3 countries..
The Falls area is Catholic, as is Springfield Road.
No job, no money but a role in a paramilitary that still has a grip.
One third of peace walls have been constructed since GF 98. 40 feet concrete wall. 59 peace walls in NI.
Police stations are fortresses. Vigilante policing is rife. Paramilitary violence still has a grip.
3,500 killed in the Troubles
4,500 through suicide
Deprived, forgotten communties and divisive, tribal politics.
Don't care a monkeys; no functioning government. Apathy Rules OK.
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