Meeting Spaces

Nina and I just returned to Derry from our last day at Belfast Exposed. Today we continued working on organizing reviews and publications about the gallery. In finding different types of information about most of shows in the past 5 years, one exhibitions, Archive_Belfast, really stuck out to me This show focused on life in Belfast and supported part of the mission of Belfast Exposed: to produce and exhibit photography relating to Northern Ireland and capturing the history of the Troubles. Unfortunately, there is not a record of the actual photographs in these exhibitions, which I would be very interested to see the full content of the show. There are some images on the Belfast Exposed website and brief statements about the shows which help to give an understanding of the projects.

Archive_Belfast was a show that concentrated on the spaces in Belfast which allowed the creation and perpetuation of conflict. It does not touch on the actual events of conflict, but instead shows where conflict developed and the reasons behind the violence. I think that this is a very innovative approach to studying the conflict because the hatred had to start somewhere. Most people concentrate on the events and constant violence as continuing the struggle, but without individual spaces the violence could not have been able to organized or carried out.

This makes me wonder about the communication within paramilitary groups. I know that members of the IRA were not allowed to meet more than a couple other members in order to protect the secrecy and leadership of the organization. How, then, were attacks organized? I am curious about the space that leaders of the IRA met in to organize their plans and strategies. It could not be publically announced or even mentioned in public because of the IRA’s position as a terrorist group and their constant hunting by the RUC and the opposing paramilitary groups, the UVF and UDA.

In researching the organization of the IRA I found that it is lead by the General Army convention which meets only once every two years. On a dat-to-day basis the IRA is run by a seven person Army Council with people from different areas of Ireland. But, during the height of the Troubles, things must have been run differently. Where did local members meet to make their plans without being discovered? I imagine that it would have been very difficult to find a secure place when the RUC, UVF and UDA were constantly trying to find them. They must have had a well planned out method of organizing operations and then delegating people to carry them out.

As a group in Northern Ireland, we have heard about the paramilitary groups, but we never really have learned about their individual strategies or organization. It was more about learning they key players in the conflict. Looking through some of the Archive_Belfast information made me start to think about what went on behind closed doors. Today there are still an estimation of about 200 active IRA members in Northern Ireland. How are their meeting spaces different than thirty years ago during the height of the conflict?