Urban Decline:BELFAST WAS "an ailing city" in 1978, beset with violence, poverty, poor housing, unemployment and a declining population which was most marked in Protestant areas.
This government view of Belfast as a rapidly declining industrial city is expressed in confidential Stormont files released by the Public Record Office in Belfast.
On December 28th, 1977, Ken (now Sir Ken) Bloomfield of the Department of the Environment defined the "problem of Belfast". Much of the violence of the last eight years had taken place within its boundaries.
"There is an entrenched and bitter sectarianism which poisons many aspects of its life. Some of its established industries are in an unstable position.
"The state of much of its housing stock is deplorable. Large areas of the city are characterised by multiple social need."
Bloomfield noted that Sir Robert Matthew in the early 1960s had predicted a continuation of dynamic growth in the city but the economic downturn and impact of the Troubles had shattered this optimistic assumption.
What Belfast needed above all, the official argued, was "a restoration of self-confidence and self-respect". Unless the government could reverse the view that it was "a city in continuing decline", its "dirty, drab, depressing face must increasingly repel potential investment . . ."
The problems of the city dominated a meeting of the Policy Co-ordinating Committee at Stormont on January 11th, 1978, attended by officials from all the main Stormont departments and the Northern Ireland Office. Bloomfield said recent surveys had highlighted the poor state of housing stock in the city and this, together with unemployment, was unanimously accepted as the major problem. Population in Protestant areas had fallen fastest and movement out of the inner city had tended to be imbalanced with the young families resettling elsewhere (eg Craigavon) with the old and the unskilled left behind.
Dr George Quigley (Department of Commerce) referred to unemployment in particularly Catholic areas of the city where immobility of labour presented one of many difficulties. There had been a net loss of some 10,000 jobs between 1972-76. It was unlikely that the four largest companies serving the area (Mackies, Harland and Wolff, Shorts and Gallahers) would contribute to net employment over the next five years because of the decline in the shipyard.
The meeting considered a report from the Department of the Environment on the changing sectarian demographics. This noted that the population in Protestant areas such as the Shankill, East Belfast, Sandy Row and Donegall Pass had fallen fastest.
"The Shankill area for example has lost almost 10,000 people over five years. The loss of population has been reflected in a crude housing surplus in these areas resulting in bricked-up dwellings, abandoned modern flats and vacant land."
The report continued: "In the Protestant areas, age structures generally tend to be heavily biased towards the older age groups and therefore . . . passage of time will tend to reduce the population of these areas further.
Conversely, the Catholic population was increasing.