Belfast spent last week in a strange, happy delirium and only some of it was explained by the temporary liberalisation of street drinking.
The city’s first ever Fleadh Cheoil (though not the North’s – Derry hosted in 2013) quickly became more than just a celebration of Irish music and culture, though it was absolutely that.
It altered people’s concept of how space can be shared, joyfully, in one of most Europe’s most historically divided cities. That is wonderful news, not just for Belfast and the North – but for all of Ireland.
Belfast is known and marketed as a maritime city. But for most of the city, the defining physical characteristic is not the proximity to the sea, but the hills which surround and loom over the place. Divis and the Black Mountain to the west, Cavehill to the north and the Castlereagh Hills to the southeast.
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Take a look around and it can make a medium-sized city, the second on this island, feel claustrophobic even on a good day. And on the bad days of the past, when the hills had watchtowers and helicopters zoomed over the tops of people’s heads, it was a city defined by its closed-in-ness, its citizens watchful of their own movements, their own space – and mindful of being watched by others.
In one of most his quoted poems on the North, Seamus Heaney famously wrote of the “tight gag of place”, the sense that simply existing in a contested, tense space weighed unhappily on Northerners. Minding yourself, watching where you went and what you said.
Not last week. People moved freely and happily – and yes, merrily – in a city centre which little more than a generation ago was literally locked up at 5pm every evening. What was once the most bombed hotel in Europe was booked up all week with ceilidh dances.
That historical backdrop is why the joy of the fleadh was not confined to the young, but manifested itself in a strange, baffled pleasure in the faces of older people walking streets they would never have associated with communal happiness or togetherness.
But the spatial changes weren’t limited to a former conflict zone becoming a festival site. And the opening up of Belfast wasn’t simply psychological, it was literal. The city is intensely car-orientated with extremely limited pedestrian zones – and attempts to extending the latter have met intense opposition.
A battle to pedestrianise a short section of cobblestone Hill Street in the tourist-oriented middle of the Cathedral Quarter has been going on for years and has involved ever more surreal excuses from Stormont’s Department of Infrastructure as to why it hasn’t yet been done.
But the fleadh achieved a dramatic closing down of the entire inner city to traffic – ironically probably the most drastic since the days of regular bomb threats and security operations.
The latest statistics indicate that about 1.6 million visited the city during the fleadh – double what was expected – and while many of those will have visited before, they will never have experienced it like this. No one has. Some parts of Dublin – though still not enough – have been able to engender what is often called a “European” or “continental” sense of ambling around and enjoying the atmosphere, stopping occasionally to buy, drink or eat something.
People know the fleadh doesn’t come around every week, but they also may be less willing to accept perennial excuses for why Belfast can’t be more liveable and pleasant for pedestrians and cyclists all year round. A similar argument arises for our antediluvian licensing laws, which have usually served to restrict new venues, whether temporary or permanent.
[ Fleadh ‘miracle’ sparks optimism for Belfast’s futureOpens in new window ]
But the fleadh saw people fall in love with reimagined derelict spaces that became pop-up bars and music venues. Queues formed outside a derelict former office building missing a back wall and outside a disused electricity substation – spaces that 10 days before were empty and forgotten. Again, politicians and decision-makers may become victims of the fleadh’s success as citizens are less willing to accept that they can’t have nice things – because they evidently can and just have.
The sense of easing in Belfast wasn’t just a historic one, it was about the way things are now. The North that Heaney describes in Whatever You Say, Say Nothing has been slowly unwinding for decades in people’s everyday lives, but the sense of a divided and dysfunctional public space and political system has remained. It is embodied by a space far away from Belfast city centre and roundly held in contempt: Stormont.
Four months into the financial year and the North remains without a budget, while Sinn Féin and the DUP are circling one another threatening potential collapse of the government they are supposed to jointly lead. The fleadh isn’t politics, but it is an illustration to people that the North doesn’t have to be like the tribal pantomime at Stormont.
It was a logistical triumph, a celebration of Irish culture and heritage – and one of the largest ever – while also finding a space to incorporate and celebrate expressions of Britishness intrinsic to this part of Ireland. Belfast and the North proved something to itself last week about how we can live together.
But the transformation isn’t just about the North either; it is about all of Ireland. I met genuinely countless numbers of people from all over the island who were in Belfast for the first time.
Accordion players, ceilidh dancers, gaeilgeoirí or just interested punters experiencing Ireland’s second city either literally for the first time, or in an entirely new way. Not as the post-conflict North, or a place to be mindful of where you park – but as the most exciting space in Irish culture today.
I won’t make bold predictions, but I do think something has changed – and for the better.
Matthew O’Toole MLA is leader of the opposition in the Northern Ireland Assembly
