DON’T TALK to Paula Bradshaw about peace dividends or peace money – or inward investment, for that matter.
For the director of the Greater Village Regeneration Trust (GVRT), the economic buzzwords of post-conflict Northern Ireland simply don’t apply.
Bradshaw heads a community organisation that has led a long and gruelling campaign to improve the housing conditions in the Village area of South Belfast. Until now, progress has been painstakingly slow.
To the naive visitor, the narrow terraced streets that fan out from the Donegall Road hint at a kind of authenticity that is fast disappearing amid flurries of gentrification that are homogenising other parts of the city.
Such superficial charms however belie the fact that this working-class Protestant area contains some of the worst housing conditions in Northern Ireland.
Built during the Victorian era to house workers from the linen mills, many houses in the area have retained markedly Dickensian facilities. Outside toilets are commonplace, while many dwellings lack hot water and central heating.
A 2004 survey carried out by a quantity surveyor concluded that 34 per cent of the houses in the Village were unfit for human habitation. “This area has been untouched for decades,” says Paula Bradshaw. “Other areas got major work, but we didn’t get anything.”
Earlier this month, after more than nine years of campaigning, the residents of the Village finally made a breakthrough.
On May 1st, the Department of Social Development announced it had been designated as an urban renewal area (URA). About £100 million will be spent on demolishing about 520 unfit houses, building new homes and refurbishing existing dwellings.
The regeneration project, the largest undertaken to date by the Northern Ireland Housing Executive, is expected to last 10 years.
For Bradshaw and her fellow campaigners, the success is due to a growing self-confidence in the community and a newfound ability to take local politicians to task. “People’s attitudes to politicians used to be ‘well, he’s a great wee Orangeman’,” says Bradshaw. “They’re not buying that any more.”
The strategies adopted by the Village campaigners suggest a new kind of community politics in the North, one that is starting to reach out across old political boundaries. Earlier this year, protesters from the area gathered on the steps of Parliament buildings surrounded by a sea of toilets, to symbolise the poor sanitary facilities in many homes in the neighbourhood.
An equally unlikely accessory in the demonstration was Sinn Féin MLA Alex Maskey, who, despite the Village’s staunch loyalist credentials, has been a public supporter of the campaign. By contrast, local DUP MLA Jimmy Spratt was harangued by Village residents for what some saw as his lack of interest in the issue.
According to Bob Stoker, a local Ulster Unionist councillor and GVRT member, such political role-reversals are evidence that the entrenched attitudes of the past are slowly dissipating. Action is replacing affiliation among voters’ concerns.
“The flag- waving era is over,” says Stoker. “People will only respond to those who are trying to improve their quality of life.”
As local politics in the Village becomes less polarised, many of the physical remnants of past divisions are also being dismantled. Following the GVRT’s negotiations with representatives of paramilitary groups, a UVF memorial was removed from a local community garden and replaced with a children’s play area.
“There’s no way that would have happened 10 years ago,” says Bradshaw. “Today, we’ll talk to anyone if it’s for the greater good.”
With the housing campaign starting to bear fruit, the attention of Village campaigners is now turning to education. The level of under-achievement, says Bradshaw, is further evidence of the area’s neglect by government.
“How can kids get the whole way through school without people noticing that they can’t read or write? It’s disgusting.”
For Stoker, it was the Village’s violent reputation during the Troubles that caused governments to abandon investment in education.
“The attitude was, ‘we’re not putting resources there because they’re out shooting each other’,” he says. “The government stepped back and said ‘there’s no educating these people’.”
The legacy of that under- investment is that young people in the Village, an area that lies only a mile from the city centre, are excluded from the opportunities that come with Belfast’s economic resurgence.
“It’s great that there’s all these lovely jobs coming in,” Bradshaw says, “but kids in this area just can’t find work. They’ve been left so far behind that it’s like a different world.”
Following the success of its housing campaign, the GVRT has become the poster organisation of community activism in Belfast, with other working-class communities, both Catholic and Protestant, looking to copy their techniques. The campaigning however in the Village is not over yet.
“Watch this space”, says Paula Bradshaw, smiling. “We’ll be out protesting about the schools next”.
BRYAN COLL