Loyalists object to proposed new housing estate for Catholics in Poleglass, west Belfast.
Poleglass lies eleven kilometres from Belfast city and surrounded by green fields. Two thousand new houses are designated for this area, where mainly Catholic families will move to from their overcrowded housing in the city centre.
Loyalists in the locality are firmly opposed to the development, which will back onto the nearby Twinbrook housing estate. Although planned as a model community in cross-community housing in the 1960s, sectarian tensions resulted in Protestants moving out, and now Twinbrook is home only to Catholics.
Free Presbyterian minister and Democratic Unionist Party member Reverend William Beattie is leading the campaign to prevent the estate going ahead. He argues that it will result in the local council,
Handing this area over to the gunmen
Alliance Party Alderman John Cousins disagrees with Reverend William Beattie. He believes that provision of housing is the important issue here.
Do you stop everything? And allow the gunmen in fact to dictate the rate of development and the rate of improvement of people’s living standards?
For people living in dilapidated houses in west Belfast however, a move to better accommodation cannot come quickly enough. Mrs McCartney is the mother of four teenagers and lives in a two bedroom house in Lucknow Street which is damp, draughty and has only an outside toilet,
This is a slum area.
There have been questions around support for Reverend William Beattie's opposition to the Poleglass development, as the large numbers predicted by him to attend marches never materialised. John Cousins believes that the majority of people in Northern Ireland want to move forward,
They realise that it’s in all their best interests whether protestant or catholic to live and work together.
The most recent demonstration organised by the Poleglass Action Group was planned as a peaceful one, but an RTÉ camera crew were kicked and threatened. The organisers did not welcome the presence of the British Army.
This episode of ‘Frontline’ was broadcast on 16 October 1978.
'Frontline' was an investigative report and analysis programme on issues of the day from Brian Farrell, Michael Heney, Forbes McFall and Michael Ryan.
