Film Review: Belfast, Bill Clinton, and remembering the Troubles.

 The movie Belfast is up for an academy award.

It is a quiet movie about a boy's normal growing up in a time when chaos and violence is getting worse all around him.

Here is a discussion about the film.

One problem: How many folks under the age of 50 actually remember the troubles in Northern Ireland? 
I had Irish friends who gave me the background: That if you were Catholic, you would be kept out of available jobs, which would be given to Protestants.

the Catholics were seen as dirty uneducated superstitious drunks. Sound familiar? Just peruse any chat room in the USA, where Republicans say such things about Blacks and immigrants, and Democrats say this about the Trumpite Deplorables...

It is often blamed on religion, but it is actually a tribal thing: the ScotIrish in the North were brought there deliberatly after 1609 to keep those nasty Catholics in the south in line after genocides depopulated the area.

The ruling Brits however made sure they were rabid Protestants and encouraged religious/tribal prejudice against the local Cathlics in a way that reminds one of how rich southern planters in the USA encouraged red neck Southerners to hate the local blacks: keep them fighting each other and they won't see the big shots who are benefitting from keeping them poor.

Wikipedia has a page about "The Troubles" as that time was called.

The conflict began during a campaign by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association to end discrimination against the Catholic/nationalist minority by the Protestant/unionist government and local authorities.

The government attempted to suppress the protests. The police, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), were overwhelmingly Protestant and accused of sectarianism and police brutality. The campaign was also violently opposed by loyalists, who said it was a republican front.

Increasing tensions led to the August 1969 riots and the deployment of British troops, in what became the British Army's longest operation. "Peace walls" were built in some areas to keep the two communities apart.

Some Catholics initially welcomed the British Army as a more neutral force than the RUC, but soon came to see it as hostile and biased, particularly after Bloody Sunday in 1972.[39]

By the way: although this is often pointed to as an example of religion being evil, that ignores the nuances of what was going on, especially the movement of various Christian groups to stop the violence. Betty Williams won a Nobel Peace prize for her efforts to unite believers, which alas failed because of sectarian strife against the group.

The conflict continued on and off for years, 

Ironically, the conflict was finally settled officially in the mid 1990s with the help of Bill Clinton... for which he should have won a Nobel Peace prize but didn't.

as to the claim it was about religion:

Jimmy Breslin once quipped that it was not about religion, but it was the "catholic atheists fighting against the protestant atheists".... here he points out the anti Irish prejudice that was behind the troubles:

..

.an older movie that discusses the basis of the "troubles" is Bloody Sunday: about the 1972 Derry Massacre.

     

So yes, I enjoyed Belfast, but if you are not aware of the backstory, you are missing the point: That it is not just about a boy growing up, or Catholics vs the protestant hatred of Ireland: it is about the ability of a boy doing normal boy things despite the trouble around him, and about the dilemma of families who are faced with the choice to flee the violence or stay where they have ties with family and friends.

Now, take the story and change the location to El Salvador, or Lebanon, or Iraq or central Africa, and you can see why people who do have homes and jobs are desperatly seeking to migrate to safer areas. And this also explains why one family member will often migrate, get a job and then get the rest of their family to join them.