Travel Blogging X

Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom: Whew, that sure is a lot of words to describe where one is – but all are needed. We did a tour of Belfast this a.m. and also did a Titanic museum, which was good. The Titanic was built here.

I had an insight about Northern Ireland - it resembles Singapore. Both are the result of gerrymandering to create a place with a particular majority.

Singapore was the result of carving off a large chunk of Malaysia’s Chinese minority into a new, Chinese-majority city-state. In the process the remainder of Malaysia became solidly Malay-majority, in other words, a Malay homeland.

Likewise in Northern Ireland. The island of Ireland had a substantial Scottish Protestant minority imported by the Brits to work for them when they owned Ireland.

When the Brits decided to stop fighting the Catholic Irish for control of Ireland, the problem arose of what to do about the Scots-Irish Protestants left behind. These Protestants liked being Brits, and didn’t want to become a minority in Catholic Ireland.

So the Brits gave up all of Ireland except the few counties in Northern Ireland in which there was a Protestant majority, counties which wanted to stay under the Union Jack, under the Crown.

The problem here is the Catholic Irish minority in these counties wouldn’t quietly acquiesce to this arrangement. Hence, “the troubles” so-called, a long-running battle between the Protestant majority backed up by the British Army versus the Irish Republican Army (aka IRA) and its various spin-offs supported by the Catholic minority.

You’ll hear that the problem is less religious than economic, that most Northern Irish don’t much care either way. I don’t believe it.

As we drove around Belfast there are still walls between areas which fly the flag of Ireland and areas which fly the Queen’s Union Jack. We drove around both with no apparent danger but we weren’t obvious partisans for either side. I understand there have been recent outbreaks of antipathy.