A LONG time ago, when I worked for the US Government, one of my duties was to take the microphone and provide the commentary for coach loads of American visitors on tours though Belfast.
It was not the usual tourist crowd, my audience included the chief executives of big corporations, US cabinet secretaries, senators and Congressmen, White House correspondents and American TV networks.
At the time the job was to flag up to Americ
an decision makers and opinion formers that Northern Ireland was changing and it was a good place to think about visiting and setting up business in.
I like to think I had a pretty good patter going on as we criss-crossed peace lines, gawped at murals and contemplated murder sites. My signature wrap up was a quick scamper from west Belfast to the flashy car showrooms on Boucher Road. From poverty and oppression (quite whether the oppression came from "the Brits" or the "the Provos" is a matter of opinion) to some of the world's most successful outlets for luxury cars.
I always enjoyed giving those tours and often when I get on a coach I still get an urge to stand upfront, brace myself uncomfortably on a seat frame and start spieling. Just in case someone calls and offers me a gig, I had better get my script up to date.
"Welcome to north Belfast, we are just going through a district called Ardoyne. Those of you who enjoy a round of golf, might have noticed all the golf balls lying on the street and be wondering if there is a driving range nearby; unfortunately there isn't. The golf balls were recently hurled at members of the Orange Order by local thugs. Even a priest who tried to intervene to calm the rioters down received rough treatment.
"No, sorry, we cannot stop and collect the golf balls. As Sean Murray, chairman of the Springfield Road Residents Action Group and a former IRA man has decreed "It's a Nationalist Road", so we might need to have special permission from his Group before foreign feet such as your own would be allowed to walk on their ground.
"So here we are in south Belfast. You will notice the boarded up windows, the result of prolonged harassment by local hoodlums of Romanian immigrants. They do not take kindly to foreigners around here either – please do bear this in mind if you are thinking of relocating any executives. And if you look over there at Belfast City church you will notice the broken windows, the result of a night's work by immigrants who took offence at the church.
Where are they now? Oh they have packed up and gone home. The beggars and buskers have concluded that Belfast is not a great place for their inward investment.
"And here we are in east Belfast where we can see signs of progress, unionist and nationalist politicians recently gathered here for a District Policing Partnership meeting. How did that go?, you ask. Actually not well, there was a threatening masked man on the roof, 20 or so Trotskyite republicans stormed the meeting and attacked unionist and police representatives with eggs and such like.
So now we come to famous Divis area of west Belfast. Please do keep your heads down; just two weeks ago a packed tour bus had its windows smashed when it was attacked with stones. Oh, look out...
"...Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Royal Victoria Hospital, I do hope your injuries heal quickly and I look forward to seeing you back in Belfast again soon."
Some of the audience may have visited before and they might ask where all the money that was poured into Northern Ireland over the last 20 years went. So if we can get everyone through casualty quickly enough, I think that it will still be necessary to end the tour outside the flashy car showrooms.
Ok, I have taken a selective package of recent events to highlight the negatives, but the point is that they are all recent and they are all real events that are on record and can be cherry picked to create a negative narrative. They all can, and do make the international news.
In the dozen or so years since I last hosted a Belfast coach tour, many things have changed, but not as much as we hoped for.
A few weeks back I challenged the NI Executive to submit to the News Letter letters page a list of the Assembly's achievements. We are still waiting to receive it! And that is the nub of Northern Ireland's problem. Increasingly many people are becoming disillusioned with the Assembly's lack of ambition and ability; violence, not democracy is still the proven way that people get what they want in Northern Ireland.
The people who wanted the Romanians out of the community have succeeded, the people who wanted to draw attention to themselves and stop cross-community progress in Short Strand got what they wanted and the people who do not want to keep Ardoyne ethnically pure have the upper hand.
