Belfast between the cracks...

Pity the tourist walking through Belfast City Centre these days.

The second our unsuspecting friends from Osaka or Valencia or Boise, Idaho step off their cruise liner, or drop a foot outside their hotel, they become instant quarry to the horde of city tour operators that now provide such a visible presence on our streets.
No-one can pretend Belfast doesn’t throw up a curveball PR conundrum to anyone interested in ‘selling’ the place. And following another poisonous July, it’s difficult to see visitor numbers increasing anytime soon. It’s no surprise then to discover that – despite their brightly coloured jackets and ten foot banners – most companies in the tourist tour trade are driven by a timid, play-safe ethos.
So – you’ll hear quite a bit about the Titanic (and next year’s centenary); you’ll see lots of murals (at least lots of third and fourth generation ones: including, in one part of the city, a ‘greatest hits’ montage of murals from yesteryear), and you’ll be introduced to the odd Peaceline or two. Or three. Or four.

Which is fair enough, I suppose: there’s an interest there to be sated. But it’s a skim read. A Cliff’s Notes version of the city. And Arthur Magee thinks both Belfast and its guests deserve something with a little more variety and depth.
“I hate the term ‘Peace Walls’”, he tells me. “It’s as skilful a piece of spin as you’re ever likely to encounter. A more apt description would be ‘Monuments to Hatred’. The mainstay of tourism in Belfast: the fact we built a boat that sank and the fact that sections of the population hate each other. There’s another side to Belfast, though, the side that invigorates: the humour, the people, the radicalism. That’s the side I’m interested in.”
Arthur, in common with a number of smaller, like-minded souls has been operating his own walking tour for a number of years now – attempting to offer a more intimate and knowing alternative to the lily-livered mainstream version.
“It’s a journey around the city centre for people who want to experience Belfast rather than just see it,” he says. “Belfast is a pleasant city. It’s beautifully located; surrounded by mountains, overlooking the sea – but it’s not a grand city like London, Barcelona or Munich. It’s not even like parochial cities such as Bristol, Liverpool or Glasgow. The trick to Belfast is the people. If people here like you, they insult you. At least that’s what I tell the tourists every time someone calls me a bald, fat bastard. There are stories to be told and buildings whose influence resonates in Irish history and I look at them.”

A musician with a long and meandering story of his own (including spells in the studio with Martin Hannett, and a claim to being the person who first brought The Stone Roses to Northern Ireland), Arthur’s route is less driven by customer-based feedback than by the same psycho-spatial impulse that propels Iain Sinclair around London. His tour is all about magnifying insignificant looking details (the bolt holes on the walls on Arthur Street that are all that remain of the city centre security gates), and linking them in with wider narratives.
“I’d suggest that the Presbyterian Church on Rosemary Street is possibly the most important church, not just in Belfast but on the island of Ireland,” he reveals. “Its reach spreads across the continents in the arts and sciences and politics. Edgar Allan Poe’s grandfather was a minister here. Women ran the church. The Ladies’ Humane Society set up the first Maternity Hospital which was free and open to anyone. They opposed slavery and boycotted sugar because it was produced by slave labour. The church is and was radical – taking its guide from Scottish enlightenment, the general idea being to help lift people up, the greatest benefit for the greatest number. They did all this and went one further – providing 50% of the funding for the first two catholic churches built in the city, St. Mary’s and St. Patrick’s. The church sits at the centre of Irish history. It confronts the stereotypes of Belfast, the reactionary and the bigoted, the backward and sectarian. If you visit one building in Belfast, visit this.”

He’s also keen to throw new light on more famous tourist trail staples.
“The City Hall – it’s Victorian bling,” he laughs. “It cost the equivalent of 400 million quid to build. At a time when Belfast was richer than Dublin, it’s shouting: ‘Look at me, I’ve arrived.’ The other thing it’s saying is: ‘Belfast is British.’ At the time of construction, the question of identity was in sharp relief because of the question of Irish Home Rule. It was making a very clear point. It’s also loaded with Masonic symbolism. The building is full of it.”
The micro-tours offered by Arthur and his ilk may never challenge the financial hegemony enjoyed by the big operators, but it seems that Belfast has, in its own manner, provided the space for them to grow and flourish. There are, after all, still swathes of the old city that can’t be seen through a bus window.
“This is one of the first pedestrianised shopping precincts in Europe,” says Arthur, “a perfect place to walk around. It’s a happy accident that it works so well. The main reason for pedestrianising the city centre was to stop people driving car bombs in.”
 
Arthur’s Walking Tours run daily. To contact, phone +44 (0)777 1640 746, or email: [email protected].