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Food Security and Power in West Belfast, 1969-1998

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Food Security and Power in West Belfast, 1969-1998 Dublin Gastronomy Symposium 2016 – Food and Revolution Quiet Revolutions: Food Security and Power in West Belfast, 1969-1998 Diarmuid Cawley This paper addresses the issue of food security during • McDonagh: schoolteacher and former local resident conflict in the context of a bitterly divided Belfast. The whose father ran a typical corner shop in a residential most recent prolonged period of conflict from 1969-1998, area, cited as (McD). incorporated many but not all the features of modern day • Brady: a hotel owner and member of Corrymeela war. Ambiguously known as ‘the Troubles’, the conflict had Peace and Reconciliation Community, cited as (Br). entered its fifth year when the international concept offood BELFAST – Each time I approached the city via the security emerged at the first ever World Food Conference motorway I was reminded of its history. Goliaths of the in 1974. However with Belfast being a part of the United industrial era still crowd the skyline. Old factories and Kingdom, access to food naturally was not high on the housing estates bunch up on gentle slopes, looking like political agenda of the day. Rarely does food security get overcrowded teeth in the mouth of the port. One of its most emphasised on a local level in the developed world. defining and now visited features, its high dividing walls, still Considerable attention has been paid to the main display sectarian flags which add to the sense that this is not aspects of the conflict in Northern Ireland, yet the your average city. Today most of inner city Belfast resembles normalised issues surrounding food have been given little other European cities yet the complexity of defined barriers credence. Cities in general are platforms for expression and and thresholds in the suburban sectors underlines its social tension and throughout the city power was organised reputation. Once famed for linen, tobacco processing, rope at a local level such that violence was stronger in working making and shipbuilding, Belfast’s darker history overtook class communities. For residents of the barricaded rubble that era of prosperity. This city has a reputation. filled streets of this segregated city, local corner shops were There are a large number of intertwining narratives in their main lifeline. Food was generally considered a any story regarding Belfast. Nothing here happened woman’s issue which exerted added pressure to their lives independently without being linked to another aspect of in an often unnoticed way. Tragically, though food life. The strand that interests me concerns the impact that practices ordinarily created spaces for women to come living in a complex urban conflict zone had on people’s together, venturing out during the Troubles meant food and food culture. Although many industrial cities heightened vulnerability. By addressing the significance of throughout the United Kingdom were blighted by poverty the social spaces from which ordinary women built identity and unemployment, cities in Northern Ireland and and meaning, this paper aspires to highlight the especially Belfast had the added complication of war. The revolutionary attitudes they adopted to feed their families. most recent prolonged period of conflict from 1969-1998, incorporated many but not all the features of modern day The terror, threats, and dread war (Ruane and Todd 1996). With characteristic Irish in market, hearth, and field ambiguity it became known as ‘the Troubles’, a name We know, when all is said, which underlines a general reluctance (and possible we perish if we yield (Kipling 1994). resistance) to declare it as a civil-war or a war of liberation. Unlike World War II (which was everyone’s problem) the Troubles were an ‘internal issue’, one that was greatly Key intensified due to disastrous spatial and territorial Part of the research for this paper is ethnography based. planning (M). Although the conflict took in the entire six For the purposes of clarity, sections of this text contain counties of Northern Ireland, sometimes spilling into the information and direct quotes from the person who took Republic, mainland Britain and beyond, the vast majority part in interviews and discussions. Direct quotes by these of victims were killed in Belfast, with most of those deaths participants are italicised as distinct from regular literature occurring in West Belfast. Over fifteen years have now based quotations. Although many people were involved in passed since the Good Friday Agreement was signed, yet the research for the purposes of this paper four individuals certain sections of society, in particular parts of West and will appear throughout this text. North Belfast, repeatedly regress into the atavistic rituals • Morrow: a prominent social figure, campaigner and of defiance and violence. For many younger people this is a researcher, cited as (M). Morrow’s wife also took part violence that has been imposed upon them. in this interview. The views are expressed jointly. This paper has two interrelated themes. Firstly it sets the • Bell: a hotel receptionist whose parents were active scene of life in Belfast during the era and describes the republicans, cited as (B). power struggles that shaped its environment. The complex 30 Quiet Revolutions: Food Security and Power in West Belfast, 1969-1998 web of hierarchies and actors, whether legitimate or Ireland was striving forward slowly pulling itself out of otherwise, which maintained the social tension for almost decades of political and economic stagnation. Britain was thirty years are a testament to the surreal nature of the emerging from another recession with beneficial time. I will put forth the argument that coercive power consequences for Northern Ireland (BBC 1993). determined ordinary people’s food choices. The second The Shankill, the road where the bomb exploded, theme demonstrates people’s ability (mainly women’s) to descended into a scene of chaos, as women and children, who adapt and overcome the politics of everyday living in were simply buying fish, died violently while trying to buy food Belfast. Communities need a social structure to exist with for their families. This moment in all its terror, was just one food as a core element of this. This focus on food security poignant and harrowing incident that typified life in Belfast illustrates that although bombings, assassinations and throughout ‘the Troubles’. Out of the 3,529 people to die as a intense street violence were part of day to day living in result of the conflict (1969-1998), more than 1,600, almost some flash zones, the vast majority of citizens passively half, of those deaths occurred in Belfast city, with the majority resisted it by living as normal a life as possible. The daily of those taking place in West Belfast (CAIN 1996-2013: rituals of the household, employment, sport and play, Sutton Index of Deaths). Across much of rural Ulster citizens somehow managed to transcend the last great struggle of were able to carry on their lives in a somewhat normal fashion the old British Empire (B, McD, M). with much less intrusive levels of disturbance and violence. The Much of the information contained here comes from conflict certainly existed throughout the entire province and ethnographic fieldwork in the form of walking the streets left scars in many places but historically as a result of heavy and talking to people, as well as conducting both informal damage sustained during WWII bombing raids by the and organised interviews. For obvious reasons it was not Luftwaffe, Belfast had been carved up and reshaped. This possible to be a participant-observer in a historical conflict. resulted in thousands of families being rehoused inadequately. I was reliant on current and former residents of West Post War surveys stated that, ‘one fifth of all dwellings Belfast, social workers, community workers and some other were unfit for human habitation’ (Leonard 1992, p.85). members of the general public to discuss their experiences Governmental legislation responded by building numerous with me. I also drew upon history books, articles and new housing estates and rushing in tenants that had being archive documentary footage of the conflict to build a temporarily squatting in ‘hutments’ (1992, p.85). The framework in which to place this struggle for food. The estates quickly gained a bad reputation which added to the research took place in the summer of 2013 and formed the overall difficulties of residents finding employment. From basis for a Post-Graduate Master’s thesis in the these foundations we find the roots of much of West Anthropology of Food. Belfast’s social issues. After the displacement and movement of thousands of families, the situation intensified. Initially most got on with life but as social tensions rose during the Interpreting the City 1960’s and the civil rights movement gained momentum, many people found themselves clinging to religion and A city is a product of both hegemonic and nationality to maintain identity amid claustrophobic living subordinate cultures, and, at the same time, the site conditions. Localised violence became a constant fact of life of their production (Agnew et al. 1984, p.1960). and from the mid-1970s was somewhat engineered by the Belfast is a port, the capital of Northern Ireland, the second British government as a direct reaction to the intense largest city on the island and is located at the inner most bombing campaign in the province (Ruane and Todd point of a fjord. In Irish, its name isBéal Feirste, roughly 1996). In 1972 alone the Provisional I.R.A. carried out meaning ‘Mouth of the Sandbanks’ or ‘Mouth of the Fjord’ approximately 1300 bombings (O’Brien 1995, p.119); an and in more ancient times ‘Battle of the Ford’ (Getty 1855). average of 3.6 for each day of the year. There is a feeling that this city is always shifting, adjusting During the worst years at the beginning of the Troubles and scraping along, akin to some giant fractured human the extreme danger levels and persistent bombing (BBC glacier inching towards the mouth of the sea.
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