Foreign Perspectives

Northern Ireland hasn’t been in the international news much lately but that’s not really an indication of peace as such, more an indication that violence isn’t happening which isn’t quite the same thing (welcome as non-violence always is, of course).

In fact the first indications of the arrival of peace was on its way started quite a number of years ago and, to my mind, was the arrival of the supermarket chain Tesco in 1997.  Prior to that the only UK supermarket chain operating in Northern Ireland was Marks & Spencer which had opened in 1967, 2 years prior to the start of the troubles, and hadn’t bothered expanding much since then. Nothing really says that peace is coming quite like big chunks of cash being invested.

However, the more certain arrival of peace (as opposed merely to reducing violence) was really only in the last few years and that has been marked in two very noticeable ways. Firstly the investments being made in the local economy are massive these days: you can’t drive more than a mile or two in Belfast without seeing building works of some kind. That’s also an aspect of the second point which is that there has been a large scale migration to Northern Ireland by everyone from the Poles to those that left because of the violence. Combine those two and the booming of the economy is very noticeable.

One very obvious side-effect of that mass immigration is that the house prices are going through the roof (hence the building work everywhere, of course) which is effectively a catching up on rises that didn’t happen in the last 30 years. The banks don’t seem to know what has hit them and mortgages are now available for up to 8 time salary (vs the maximum of 3 times just 3 or 4 years ago).

Anyway, at least Northern Ireland can now stand as an example of what it’s like when you do get to the end of the violence. Hopefully, it’ll provide an encouraging example to areas of the world that are still immersed in a culture of violence such as Colombia.