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The Berlin walls of Belfast

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British Politics Aims and scope

Abstract

Year 2019 will be the fiftieth anniversary of the construction of the first and possibly still the most famous peace wall in Northern Ireland (NI). The wall was built in 1969 to separate the Catholic Falls Road and the Protestant Shankill Road. An Army Major, overseeing the construction of the wall at the time, said: ‘This is a temporary measure … we do not want to see another Berlin wall situation in Western Europe … it will be gone by Christmas’. In 2013, that wall still remains and almost 100 additional walls and barriers now complement the original. This article presents new primary research that measures public attitudes towards such structures today. Some recent thinking in government policy circles suggests that the building of walls as a viable policy response to the conflict in NI is now over. If this is true, what should happen to the existing walls and to the concerns of those living closest to them? A draft government report, leaked in January 2013, suggests that these peace walls should be brought down by 2022. Understanding public attitudes towards such a potential move is critical for both policymakers and practitioners on the ground and our research findings offer important and comprehensive quantitative baseline indicators. The use of these indicators may go some way to help shape the formulation and implementation of peace walls policy in the future.

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Acknowledgements

Our thanks to Dr Fidelma Ashe and Professor Arthur Aughey, University of Ulster, for insightful comments on an earlier draft of this article, as well as to our two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions.

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Gormley-Heenan, C., Byrne, J. & Robinson, G. The Berlin walls of Belfast. Br Polit 8, 357–382 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1057/bp.2013.11

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