STATEMENT by DONALD JORDAN PhD.  IRISH HISTORIAN

San Francisco State University, Stanford University

Belfast is a graceless nineteenth century town of brick and iron, whose streets still ring with the thunder of "Roaring" Hugh Hanna and Sir Edward Carson. A decaying industrial town, its tight grid iron of red brick houses once sheltered the families of farmers, spinners and weavers who became the shipyard, mill and textile workers for industrial Belfast. It has never been a city kind to its residents. It was built up so they could be devoured in the factories and shipyards, while sectarianism has transformed the rows of terrace houses of West Belfast into divided neighborhoods bearing names like Shankill Road and Falls Road. Tangles of wire, corrugated iron and concrete now act as barricades between the residents of identical streets, preventing them from seeing, hearing, or harming each other. Despite this bleakness, Belfast was, in the words of one Falls Road resident, "a good wee town once," when "cinemas, theaters, music halls and shops were packed" and when houses were a family's refuge in the daily struggle for survival. However, she added, "things will never be the same again." Unemployment (approaching 40% in some neighborhoods) and fourteen years of violence and intervention have left Belfast, especially West Belfast, a battle zone --- burned out and boarded up. Douglas Holmes' relief sculptures cry out with the restrained voice of deeply-felt passion, not for a United Ireland or a protestant state, but for the people whose arched doorways are boarded up and windows are shuttered with steel mesh. These reliefs provide a frightening commentary on the state of "civilized society," not just in Belfast, but in Beirut, Gdansk, San Salvador, or Detroit. They capture the despair of a wounded city. The bricked-up facades of houses, shops and theaters standing amid rubble of stone and glass bear silent witness to the tragedy that is Belfast. Yet, unlike the over two-thousand people who have been killed in Ulster since 1969, the shattered buildings could be revived as part of a rebirth of Belfast. These pieces challenge us to waver between hope and despair and to confront our own responsibility.