U.K.’s Divided City Seeks to Escape a Past Inflamed by Brexit
Britain’s departure from the EU thrusts Northern Ireland into the spotlight. But there’s a growing number of people in Belfast who no longer identify with the divisions of the past.
Photographer: Mary Turner/Bloomberg
It’s a rainy evening in West Belfast and three young children are taking turns to jump through a hopscotch course drawn in white chalk on the street. An expanse of slate grey concrete looms above them, along with dark green corrugated iron topped with wire mesh.
Erected in the late 1960s amid the onset of the violence that blighted Northern Ireland for three decades, the reinforced 20-foot fence separates the largely Catholic residents from the Protestants on the other side. Gates at the “peace walls” dividing the communities are typically shut from early evening until early morning.