Opinion

Alex Kane: A tale of two Belfasts

Alex Kane

Alex Kane

Alex Kane is an Irish News columnist and political commentator and a former director of communications for the Ulster Unionist Party.

Belfast is buzzing today, says Alex Kane - a far cry from the city he first came to in 1974
Belfast is buzzing today, says Alex Kane - a far cry from the city he first came to in 1974 Belfast is buzzing today, says Alex Kane - a far cry from the city he first came to in 1974

ON May 21 1998, the day before the Good Friday Agreement referendum, I took part in a radio debate.

There were about six of us, ranging from an 18-year-old casting her first vote, to a man in his late 80s.

We were all voting yes, albeit for different reasons. The young girl was casting her vote for the future.

The old man was voting to try and free the new generation from the shackles of the past.

I was voting yes because I believed that the agreement represented a 'moment' which hadn't existed before in my lifetime (I was 43 and had become a teenager in 1968): a 'moment' when most of the key players seemed willing to take extraordinary political and electoral risks.

I wasn't certain that the 'moment' would morph into a new era and a new way of doing business, but I was certain that a similar moment wouldn't come again for me.

I didn't have any children at the time, but I do remember saying that if I did have any in the future then I hoped that when they had their first vote it would be for something entirely different than the stale old choices I had faced.

In other words, I wanted them to be able to vote on 'normal' socio-economic issues rather than just orange and green.

Well, I do have children now, three of them. Megan had her first vote for the 2017 Assembly election. That Assembly has yet to meet.

She had her second vote a few weeks later when Mrs May decided to go for broke and managed to break her own government in the process.

In local terms it turned out to be the most polarised result in living memory, with the DUP and Sinn Fein more or less dividing Northern Ireland between them.

Megan was also the first generation of pupils here to sit the new post-11-plus exams.

Because of the general confusion we entered her for both the AQE and the GL, as did a lot of parents.

Her sister, Lilah-Liberty, turns nine in October and in a couple of years will begin the preparation for the transfer process from primary to post-primary.

We still don't have a formal, agreed replacement for the 11-plus; so for all the talk about how wonderful was the Executive from 2007 to 2016, the fact of the matter was that they weren't able to agree on moving pupils from one system to another. And don't get me started on hospital waiting lists...

One thing has changed, though: Belfast. I came to live here in 1974 to study politics and philosophy at Queen's and I've lived here ever since.

I remember it as a dark and dangerous place which closed down after 7pm. I remember the security gates and the police and army patrols.

I remember ducking, as did everybody else, when a car backfired. I remember that slight air of panic when a car drove slowly past you.

I remember never straying far from the university during hours of darkness. I remember the ritual of being ready to phone home after the 11pm radio news if there had been any mention of a bomb or shooting in the general area where I lived.

And in those first four years I didn't set foot in west or north Belfast. That's just the way it was back then.

Megan never knew that Belfast. Her Belfast is one where she can go more or less where she likes.

She mixes with all sides and none. The 'what school did you go to' is no longer the first question you're asked when introduced to someone.

She doesn't have to worry about saying she lives in east Belfast. Taxi drivers are happy to drive you from side of the city to the other. Buses aren't hijacked.

She has never been evacuated during a bomb scare. Clubs stay open until the early hours.

There are no locked gates; no armed patrols and no no-go zones. There's barely a week or weekend goes by without a major festival, concert, event or sporting occasion.

Belfast is buzzing today. A lively, mostly lovely city. A city where people smile and someone stopping you in the street isn't scary any more - it's usually a tourist.

For that reason alone it was worth voting yes in 1998. In political and electoral terms, there's still a long way to go and I'm not sure we'll get there.

Megan leaves for an English university in September and who knows if she'll come back here to live and work.

Lilah-Liberty has her first vote in 2027 and I think it's unlikely there'll be anything new on the political scene by then.

Indy doesn't vote until 2035 - almost 40 years after the referendum - and I still have some lingering hope that he'll be part of the breakthrough generation mentioned in that radio debate 20 years ago.

Mind you, I'll probably be dead in 2035 - so maybe I should stop worrying about it.