W2B-015 Political future-0.txt
Beyond partitions

It will probably only be when the people of the Shankill truly believe that the violence has ended for good that we will start to see a proper assessment of the last 25 years. Continuing paramilitary activity in both communities, the controversy over traditional parades and the ongoing impasse over decommissioning means that people in areas such as Protestant west Belfast remain cautious.

Nevertheless, since August 31 and October 13 as the weeks became months, optimism has increased in an inverse ratio to the level of tension. Many people are starting to believe that perhaps it is all over.

Some of the changes in the community have been glaring. The army has vanished from the streets. The RUC now patrols the area in short sleeved shirts, without flak jackets. After a lengthy campaign Lanark Way has reopened.

Initially it was the small things you noticed. No longer did you have to enter a cage, viewed by a small camera, before being admitted into the bar for a pint. Strange cars do not attract the same level of curiosity. Young people returning from the clubs in the city centre are more likely to walk home than before. A few shoppers from the Springfield and Falls Roads are returning to the Shankill to shop on a Saturday.

However this may seem to be a small return for the cessation of a terrorist campaign which cost over 3,000 lives. There remains a serious community relations problem on both sides of the peaceline. A problem which may well exhaust the Community Relations Council before it is solved. There continues to be stoning incidents across the barriers which have been erected to keep the two sections of the community apart.

It is worth bearing in mind that for the last 25 years we have been inflicting the most horrific crimes on one another. These wounds will not heal overnight. That notwithstanding, there is an increasing determination not to step back into the abyss. That, at least, is a start. We will have to build from the bottom up.

In some ways the declaration of a cessation of violence has acted as a catalyst for a process which commenced almost one year earlier. The Shankill bomb saw the birth of a determination for a new start. At that time many of us thought that this would translate into a resolve not to be ground down by a traditional enemy. However, with the advent of a new era in October 1994 this resolution became one of no longer being prepared to accept the role of an alienated community. For a quarter of a century the Shankill had been marginalised in all but the news programmes.

People started emerging, blinking into the light. It is now certain that Shankill residents will increasingly question the old certainties. The courage and dignity with which they faced the eye of the sectarian storm can now be turned towards delivering a better life for all within the community. This confidence should eventually lead directly to a normalising of relationships with our neighbours on the other side of the wall. It is in the attitudes of the people of the people on the Road that the peace has had the most tangible effect. There is a desire to make up for the loss of the last 25 years. This new vision, while born out of the tragedy of the Shankill bomb, would have been less likely to bear fruit if it had been forced to coexist with paramilitary violence.

It is not in the small changes that we can see the effects of twelve months of peace. Rather it is in the certainty that the great potential of the Shankill and its people may at last be fulfilled.
