May Day 2013 in Belfast

One thing that struck me during and after this march yesterday was still how little the trade unionists or political activists had to say about what was going on in the streets around them. Indeed in having it at Writers Square and in collaboration with the City Council and losing out to a competition with the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival or even the dire Festival of Fools it had the effect of corralling what should be a class based counter culture working towards a Co-operative Commonwealth as envisioned by Larkin and Connolly into an adjunct of the cultural quarters model of gentrification and a speculative studentification which is supposed to bring about a 'creative city' built on the destruction of existing social and spatial relations. The closest I got to a conversation on any of these matters was when someone from the Sparts was decrying the Richard Boyd Barrett led campaign about the Baths in Dun Laoghaire while a comrade raised in North Belfast lamented the demolition of a Bathhouse there.

Urban Regeneration and Community Development Policy Framework Consultation (closes 25/10/12)

“I firmly believe that for Northern Ireland to truly prosper, we need to come together to tackle deprivation, strengthen the competitiveness of our towns and cities and develop connected, cohesive and engaged communities - communities that can identify their own needs and work with government and others in meeting those needs.” - Minister Nelson McCausland

The public consultation will run until Thursday 25 October 2012 and can be accessed at: http://www.dsdni.gov.uk/consultations. Hard copies and alternative formats of the consultation are also available on request from the Department for Social Development. 

For more information contact: URCDPolicy.Framework@dsdni.gov.uk or telephone 028 9082 9445.

'Re–stitching the City' - Forum for an Alternative Belfast Summer School 13–17th August 2012

The Forum for Alternative Belfast are holding it’s fourth summer school from Monday 13th to Friday 17 August 2012. The venue will be in Belfast City Hall, main rotunda.

Following publication of the ‘Missing City’ map, the result of the first summerschool in 2009. Subsequent schools focused on inner north and south Belfast with publication of the “Six Links” and “Streets not Roads”. This year working together with the East and West Belfast Partnership Boards we are concentrating on inner East and West Belfast and their connections to Belfast city centre.

We are looking for professionals and students in the built environment and community fields who can sign up for the weeks study. As in previous years key to the success of the week has been the input from people in the neighbourhood areas and government bodies who cannot attend all week but who can contribute at specific events during the week. 

If you wish to register interest you can do this in two ways; Casually or Sign up for the

week to: info@forumbelfast.org 

Casually
Drop in during the week as you wish, including evening discussion sessions. We will update you of the detailed programme.
(please title your e–mail: register casual)

Sign up for the week
as full participants, suggested for architects/ planners/ students and others who wish to attend the entire week and contribute. Registration by e–mail and £50 payable on 13th Aug (£25 students/unemployed) (please title your e–mail: register full–time)

Detailed programme below in PDF – further updates will appear on this page

http://forumbelfast.org/cmsfiles/events/2012/PDF.pdf

Girdwood - What's going on?

Two weeks on from the initial non-event of a photo shoot on the former military barracks and still the debate around the future of the Girdwood site refuses to go away. Now the Cliftonville Community Regeneration Forum have invited all public representatives and those in the Council responsible for the Hub bid to a public meeting:

Its worthwhile tracking the media story which unfolded immediately after the announcement. Beginning when the BBC's Political Editor for NI; Mark Davenport, asked if 'the devil was in the detail' given the lack of any specific details on housing units/ or their sectarian allocation based on the 90% Catholic/ Nationalist/ Republican imbalance on the 2,400 + waiting list for social housing in the North of the City. The following night Mandy McAuley's Spotlight investigation delved into how Minister McCausland justified his cancellation of the previous Social Development Minister's plan for 200 + housing units within months of taking over responsibility for Housing, Welfare and Regeneration and how the allegedly sectarian leaflets issued by the Housing Executive (which is a body funded by his Department) encouraged exclusively only those from the Protestant/ Unionist/ Loyalist community to move into the area as well as the exclusion of the NIHE itself from having an input into the current development.

Then on Thursday and, again, last Tuesday during two dedicated radio shows by Stephen Nolan (here and here) there was an attempt to shift the focus on to the Alliance Party's decision to walk out of Stormont's 'Shared Future' working group and the SDLP's intimation that a reduction in housing on the Girdwood site formed part of the PSF/ DUP deal on the Maze/ Long Kesh site's revised and reduced regeneration bid which saw the First Minister perform a volte face from describing the project initially as 'a shrine to terror' to 'a beacon for tourists' achieved (ironically) through the removal of a shared sports stadium. 

The focus was kept mainly on the site in the coverage given by the Irish News with Allison Morris using her column on Wednesday to assert that 'the Hillview retail park [built nearby in 2003] has been held up as an example of how not to regenerate an interface area' and pointing to the site becoming a potential wasteland utilised solely by learner drivers and market traders for years to come. The following day, the normally quite incisive satirical commentator; Newton Emerson, descended into obfuscation when he closed his column with:

In general, any reluctance people have to live in mixed areas or even evolving interfaces comes down to fear of harassment. The response by the authorities to such incidents ranges from the useless to the cynically fatalistic, which fills nobody with the confidence to be an urban pioneer. By law, every individual has the right to live in peace, in whichever 'community' they choose to make their home. We should focus on upholding that right above all. From it, everything else can follow.

The particular sectarian geography at the interface around Clifton Park Avenue 'evolved' out of the violent cleansing of Catholics in 1996 and would most likely be further entrenched under the current proposals so how these supposedly pioneering urbanists (or the average citizen on a waiting list) can be filled with 'confidence' (or be provided with their human right to adequate housing) by an alternative arrangement to the current system of consociational indecision with it's attendant crumbling and corrupted public, community and voluntary sectors would be worthy of elaborating upon and striving towards rather than the inferred call to the gentrifiers or state forces to step in when things inevitably go awry. 

Housing academic, Jenny Muir, gives a good run down on her blog of the run up, since 2006, to the point where it has been 'fudged again' but resigns herself to the status quo of the £9 million EU Peace III funded 'Community Hub' which is likely to house some schemes by the University of Ulster or Belfast Met as part of their campus relocations while house building is put off for an unspecified number of years. Nelson McCausland also sets out a chronology of failure in his blog while washing his hands of any responsibility from the current debacle primarily by blaming his predecessors. 

Perhaps the best insight into the actual potential functions for the site took place during the Place Winter School in March by Mark Hackett and assorted architects and urbanists from the Forum for an Alternative Belfast during an evening presentation of their findings (which this blog participated in and surreptitiously recorded hence the poor audio):

Prior to the involving themselves in 'Occupy Belfast' protests and camp (and the spin off occupation of the former Bank of Ireland as part of a campaign to actively house the homeless and to raise the demand for citizens to 'Take back the City') this blog braved the elements to join with community groups in the local area, the Irish Republican Socialist Party, the Irish Socialist Network, Republican Network for Unity, People Before Profit and independent activists as part of the North Belfast Civil Rights Association's three day camp on the Girdwood site that runs along Clifton Park Avenue and will not hide their interest in this issue nor the fact that they will continue to work with those active on the ground to ensure that this issue is not allowed to be parked up for another few years. Girdwood and the role of Gerrymandering and Gentrification in the denying of Civil and Human Rights for Belfast's Citizens is an issue which is not going to go away.. 

Unlock NAMA in Limerick City

Following on from their participation at the Crisis, Austerity, Resistence conference in the University of Limerick, Unlock NAMA held an evening workshop in a gallery in Limerick city centre. The following presentation on how to find NAMA properties in your local area was given by Catherine Kavanagh (apologies for the audio) 

Direct action at the (£200 a head) NI Housing Conference

As part of todays direct action in the Baby Grand this statement was read out: The £200 a head NI Housing Conference was today the target of the campaign to 'Take back the City' for the 99% and Occupy Belfast who have also been in the Bank of Ireland building for 10 days. The objective is to draw attention to the decisions being made behind closed doors with no democratic oversight. These decisions affect the social rights of the majority of citizens such as: the right to decent and affordable housing or to a dignified level of social security in particular the attack on those in receipt of Housing Benefit which has not been opposed in any meaningful way by local politicians, unions or civil society. The *invite to speak extended to* Ian Paisly Jnr., in his capacity as a member of the Westminster Committee on Welfare Reform, is an affront to any accountable democracy given the scandals surrounding land deals in North Antrim. Such backroom deals have been a recuring theme of the Stormont regime. The scandals which have emerged briefly exposed how the Peter Curistans, Barry Gilligans and Seymour Sweeneys of this world are given an ear at the highest level and have profited immensely from the 'peace dividend', in particular from the sale of public services, utilties and assets while inequality and housing waiting lists soar and the shadowy finance sector is bailed out by the taxpayer and our supposed representatives remain mute. There is a clear correlation between the waiting lists and the Thatcherite sale of social housing along with the corruption in NIHE and Housing Associations . We call for investment not cuts, the utililisation of empty building and an end to evictions and repossessions.

Bank of Ireland occupied - hopefully the first of many..

The State raise a bear in the air while onlookers pass by

PSNI City Beat cops weren't really sure what to do other than threaten photographers and damage a listed building!

Occupy Belfast have taken control of the Bank of Ireland on Royal Avenue in opposition to soaring homelessness, lack of affordable social housing and home repossessions. We hope today’s announcement will serve to initiate the building of a housing campaign. Building such a campaign will not be easy. To do so we need to begin to organise as workers, students and the unemployed in a real and meaningful way in our communities – to become involved in discussing, agreeing on and organising the tactics necessary to build resistance and a better society for all. No politician will do it for us. We hope the seizure of the Bank of Ireland will be the place to begin. Banks take our houses so we take their buildings. This is a repossession for the community!