Perhaps in comparison to many other European cities, Belfast has encountered a particularly varied and challenging history. It all began as an English settlement in 1613 and evolved into becoming the capital and the primary port of Northern Ireland. Along the way they had the small matter of a rebellion in 1798, joined the GB union two years later and gained their city status in 1888.
They were the largest linen manufacturers in the 1900’s and also utilised the waterfront with their huge shipyards which covered around a quarter of all UK trade. One of the chief proponents were Harland (not the Manchester City player!) and Wolff, who were responsible for that big ship called the HMS Titanic which they built in 1911 for a cost of £1.5 million, which now equates to a contemporary cost of £180 million. The company still have their famous landmark (known as Samson and Goliath) within the now titled Titanic Quarter and their vastly overpriced museum. The structure has been utilised as a backdrop to many TV shows.
Harland and Wolff cranes. Image Credit Northern Ireland
The ‘Troubles’ commenced in the 1920’s with an astounding occurrence of over 2000 bombings in a single kilometre area of the city centre between 1969 and 1977. Anyone who lived through this period even from a geographical position from across the water will recall that you eventually became somewhat anaesthetised to the regular bloody headlines on the daily news feeds. I have worked in government offices all my life and I recall the monotonous regularity of bomb scares, and in those days you didn’t argue and ensured you exiting the building post haste!
There is a recent BBC documentary titled ‘Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland’ which has interviews with people from both sides of the divide, many who had never publicly spoken about it before. It is an astounding bruising watch and investigative TV at the top of its game.
The historic Good Friday agreement was struck and signed on 10th April 1998, memorably prefaced in Billy Bragg’s idiosyncratic style on his 1996 track ‘Northern Industrial Town’ off the ‘William Bloke’ album. This has resulted in the regeneration of the central area of the city into a vibrant tourist location, but the old hostilities remain in the suburbs and will probably take a generational change before they hopefully finally dissipate.
Billy Bragg. Image Credit theconcertdatabase.com
Perhaps understandably set against that tumultuous backdrop the city was immersed in the punk scene with my faves Stiff Little Fingers early output including ‘Suspect Device’, ‘Tin Soldiers’ and ‘Wasted Life’ which literally oozed with barely concealed anger and disillusionment. Fellow city residents were the Undertones who were managed briefly by Terri Hooley of the Good Vibrations record shop and label, who famously dropped a tape into John Peel of ‘Teenage Kicks’, and the rest as they say is history!
They are the smallest city to host the MTV Europe Music awards in 2011 and in 2021 became the third British location after Glasgow and Liverpool to be awarded the UNESCO City of Music. They have two universities and two airports, the George Best Belfast City in the centre and the International airport located fifteen miles to the west. Many famous people have Belfast as their place of birth and these include David Trimble, Ian Paisley, Gerry Adams, George Best, CS Lewis the author of Chronicles of Narnia and the musician Van Morrison.
I have visited twice, and the first trip was with Gill and a couple of friends in 2009. Fortunately, Blackpool Airport was still operational then, so we headed out from there with only a handful of customers on the flight whilst encountering the novel situation where they deliberately spaced us around the plane to ensure the required balance! We then traversed in on the 45 minute shuttle bus ride and had a hotel near to, but not in the Europa which is the most frequently bombed hotel in Europe.
Hotel Europa. Image Credit drifttravel.com
With a remarkable flurry of late results my football team Preston North End had managed to secure an unexpected end of season play off tie against Sheffield United. However, the kicker was that the first home leg was on the day of our outward travel. So, it transpired that I was watching the first half in a very busy bar on a small TV with no sound from a fair distance away and randomly swore at one point with other punters looking at me askance!
At least we had a better viewpoint and a seat in another bar to observe the second half. Still no volume, but we had cold Harp (tastes sharp until the bottom of the glass!) on tap. We drew 1-1 that night but unsurprisingly lost the second leg three days later. We had a fine 48 hours there and took a liking for the vibrant student areas and had a fantastic meal at the Red Panda Chinese restaurant located very close to the famous Crown Liquor Saloon.
A postscript this week is that I have hit a literary milestone of 200k words in total thus far in my 293 articles. For the record, the 100k word was Manchester and slightly anti climatically the 200k word is ‘place’, though pertinent as either the venue or in this context as city of birth.
