Thought for the Week: That of God

Ian Kirk-Smith reflects on a powerful experience

by Ian Kirk-Smith 2nd May 2014

In 2003 I spent over a year and a half making a film, for BBC Northern Ireland, about a working class Loyalist estate in west Belfast – Springmartin – half way up a mountain overlooking the city. The Catholic Ardoyne was a few hundred yards away. A sixteen-foot high wall separated the two communities: the Peace Line. Almost every family in the area had suffered, in some way, in the troubles. During that time thirteen people had been shot on the Springmartin and nearby Highfield estates. It was a heartland of Loyalist paramilitaries.