Madam, - A desire to say nice things about Belfast is commendable, but hardly justifies the flights of imagination that have characterised the series of articles under the banner of "1994 IRA ceasefire - a decade on".
The piece by Frank McDonald (August 25th) acclaims "landmark developments born out of absence of bombs in the streets' and then, with the honesty one would expect from the writer, tells us the rebuilding of Belfast began more than a decade before 1994, when the bombs were still exploding in the streets. The Waterfront Hall was planned several years before the IRA ceasefire, as part of the whole Laganside project, conceived and commenced in the 1980s. Work on the hall began in May, 1993.
Despite all that, Dan Keenan tells us elsewhere in the same edition that all is changed utterly in the Northern capital, and that the city has been rebuilt in the past decade. He then takes us on a tour of the places we might visit - all of which, with one exception, were built not just before the 1994 ceasefire, but in some cases almost a century before it.
He even ends up on the "Golden Mile" - which, we are told, is how locals refer to Great Victoria Street. If they do, it is only in jest. They know it as a nondescript thoroughfare with some good restaurants, others that come and go, and various short-lease businesses. The term "Golden Mile" was invented in the 1980s for tourism brochures and gullible visiting journalists.
Kathy Sheridan (August 24th) begins with a quote about "10 years of peace in North Belfast", which makes it difficult to take anything that follows seriously.
Good things have happened in Belfast. The absence of bombs in the city streets has helped, as has the decline in the level of violence. But it is still a city with enormous problems. Royal Avenue has never recovered from the Troubles. The city centre has shrunk as out-of-town shoppers have deserted it. Does it really need another vast shopping centre at Victoria Square? Did this square, including the incomparable Kitchen Bar, have to be obliterated despite public protest and the reservations of planners, when it could have been restored as one of old Belfast's more agreeable city spaces?
The welcome, though limited, regeneration of Belfast began when the IRA was still trying to destroy it, physically and economically. It was driven by citizens who had had enough of IRA thuggery, and by UK Ministers who saw it as one way of countering terrorism. The 1994 ceasefire may, in part, have been brought about by it. Not the other way round. - Yours, etc.,
DENNIS KENNEDY. Belfast 7.