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'Take a Hint - Move Out' ........... A Student told a Permanent Working Class Holyland Resident
I am a Protestant woman from North Belfast, whose partner is a Catholic from the Short Strand. The Holylands is one of the only neutral working class housing executive areas available to mixed religion working class families. My neighbour was also a Protestant woman whose partner was a Catholic from the Lower Ormeau. My other neighbour was a Catholic from the Whiterock whose ex-partner is a Protestant from East Belfast. One of the other families' mother was from the Lower Falls and her ex-partner was a Protestant from Portadown. Some of the other permanent resident families are ex-students from the countryside who've setttled in the Holylands with their kids for many years. The Holylands is one of the first multi-cultural working class areas in Belfast, whose permanent residents' tolerance to mixed religion partnerships, all races and even students is renowned. I was forced out of the area in 1999 at the start of the private landlord HMO's conversion (housing multiple occupiers where landlords converted 2 up, 2 down terraces to 8 bedroom rat infested health and safety disasters) invasion. Students had me arrested on mistaken malicious 'possession of firearms and threats to kill' charges. At the time I was a parent governor of the local primary school. The Holylands is a unique and tolerant area. On the street where I lived there were permanent resident Protestant pensioners and the families of ex-INLA men. We all lived side by side without any sectarian aggro and we all helped each other out and looked out for each other. For the authorities to allow a tiny minority of anti-social students to force permanent residents out and destroy the unique cultural make-up of the area would be a real loss to everyone. Why has the problem of anti social student behaviour been allowed to go unchecked and escalate? The only reason I can think of is that once the last Housing Executive/Housing Association/Permanent Resident family is forced out - big time property developers will move in and raze the whole area to the ground to create another exclusive, faceless, characterless, cold yuppie zone like the areas along the Lisburn Road, which won't be welcoming to students either.
Slugger O'Toole Discussion |
Thursday November 25, 2004 17:22
by hilda ogden
From The Newswire: After a recent Spotlight programme highlighting some of the anti-social behaviour practised by some students in the Holylands was broadcast - students organised a protest in the Holylands to tell their Mummies and Daddies that 'No we're not really misbehaving going wild and spending your money on e's and booze'. Where then would students like permanent Holyland residents to move to? 
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Comments (29 of 29)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29I watched a news report on the Northern Irish news tonight(Newsline), which reported about trouble in the Holyand estate... there was atleast 500 hundreds students milling about on the street, police thankfully staying back but saying it was a potential riot situation, that the students were drunk, only five minutes into the report did they explain why the students were out there last night, the local students had been causing a nuisance in the area... being drunk on the streets at night, etc and again only later did it say that the students were demonstrating against their protrayal in a spotlight programme about students terrorising a neighbourhood or some such. a local said 'we have to live here when these people move on in a couple of years'... a student said 'a few drunk people at night is the least of the problems round here'... to me it seemed like different groups butting heads, but the above suggest other wise and also both groups have a common problem?
This sounds like a tragedy. From Hilda's account the Holylands seems to have been an ideal place whose tenants should have been applauded and even subsidised as an ideal community that fostered tolerance and where people could live peacefully with their neighbours despite differences of background, culture etc. What a pity that such a place should be wrecked by anyone and what a shame if students do the wrecking.
At this distance (Dublin) there seems to be a lot of work yet to do before the Troubles in Belfast are over. What is Peace if it doesn't include the freedom to sleep at night.
Could I appeal to the student body to say No to the apparent lack of consideration for others that, (if the reports are true) , is happening in this area.
No human being should be forced out of a home by the carelessnes, the rudeness or the bullying of crowds whether they be students or others.
It's time for some hard and deep thinking.
Well three things actually:
One - was while the Spotlight crew were interviewing the students, several came over to the camera and shouted up the RA and Sinn Fein. Does Sinn Fein have any reps in this area? Are they doing anything on the ground. (Honest question - I really don't know).
Two - The cops seemed very reluctant to get involved. Is one and two related.
Three - The silence of QUB student reps. Remarkable really.l
Yes, we do. His name is Alex Maskey and he was present on the ground trying to defuse the situation.
How do you defuse it by solely taking one side? The students arent 100% to blame for this but Maskey condemned them. Some of the blame lies on local lumpen residents who object to the fact that some students are openly gay.
one more thing about the tv report, the College su rep they interviewed seemed to totally dis the students who were out that night, people shes supposed to represent? and from the guardian article "The area is dominated by student houses. Some 80% of residents are students at Queen's University Belfast, Ulster University and several local colleges." hilda complains about the original local residents being forced out of their area, but 80% of the origianl local residents must also be landlords....???
"Some of the blame lies on local lumpen residents who object to the fact that some students are openly gay."
That's a very lame answer. Did you watch the Spotlight programme or seen other news reports on this subject? You've got to be joking mate.
The causes of this problem are manyfold; such and unregulated dense population of students, inadequate provision by some landlords, intolerant and inconsiderate people on both sides and alcohol.
PC - house is sold, house is bought by landlord and rented, most landlords I have experience of appear to run a buisness where they own lots of properties and rent them...as this process of anti-social behaviour goes on more and more people move out, either selling their houses if they are house owners (which then only landlords are likely to buy - due to the problems), or renting elsewhere, and the new tenants are students, as no one else will move in, cause of the anti-social behaviour.
Excerpt: "Another interesting and so far unreported fact about this crisis is that almost all of them come from Catholic, national rural redoubts of Northern Ireland. They are by and large clannish; they stick together and hang around with friends they have known since primary school in rural towns, villages and hamlets across the North. Socially they rarely mix with outsiders, either from the city or beyond Ireland, and hardly ever with their peers across the sectarian divide.
Nine times out of 10 you instinctively rush to defend the younger generation when they come under fire from politicians, community leaders and their elders over drinking, revelling and general debauchery. But the student protests in the Holy Lands are light years from Paris '68 or the civil rights marches against the old Stormont regime. Last week's demonstrations were the antithesis of those revolutionaries who challenged real repression and discrimination. Rather, they represented a new form of hedonistic nihilism, which shows no regard for the welfare of others outside of their own privileged, featherbedded clique. Hence long-term res idents were threatened, spat at and told the area they lived in all their lives no longer belonged to them. "
thanks for the correction there... terry I was trying to raise a point about how the landlords weren't mentioned at all, threw it in the wrong direction though...
I agree with some of what has been said so far concerning students coming in wreking the place, apart from the fact that they only stay for a couple of years and then fuck off home leaving the local residents to deal with the problems. However as has been suggested, the root cause of the problem is poor planning procedures which results in overcrowding and scum landlords. The students and residents have more that unites them than divides them!
People who grumble about "anti-social behaviour" have a complete lack of any sense of proportion. The real problem here is bigotry. For instance, I've just read on BBC that the university is introducing new rules to expel students for actions off campus!!! This is an interference in individuals' lives which amounts to an attempt to control the ENTIRE life of each student - a reinforcement of the trend to turn all life-time into work-time. It should be a basic principle of all progressives and radicals that university bosses, factory bosses, office bosses, have no business interfering in lives beyond the workplace (a basic principle which also, in its relationship to benefit claimants and workers, affects "permanent residents" too). Yet this blatant attack on privacy and civil liberties is made to seem legitimate cos it is linked to "anti-social" hysteria!!! Even the sell-out scum in the student union have supported this fascistic measure by the university bosses!!!
It is often the case that so-called "anti-social" acts are simply unfortunate effects of the coexistence of different ways of life. Students everywhere in Ireland, the UK and Europe have a tendency to let off steam by clubbing and drinking. What are the "residents" proposing - that students have NO way to relieve the stress of exams? That people with an attachment to dance music and parties, must be indoctrinated to love Frank Sinatra instead?
I am reminded here on Deleuze on nomads versus sedentarism. The residents claim ontological priority because they are settled, whereas the students appear to them as a "war machine" and are discredited for their nomadism and their looser relationship to time, place and social position. Yet, this "anti-sociality" is simply the result of a fetishism of the sedentary position, and a resultant ontological privilege which defines out of existence any possibility of dialogue. On this occasion it is students who are the victims of conformist rhetoric. In other cases, it is homeless people, sex workers, drug users, travellers, immigrants. And make no mistake - people die because of the crackdown mentality. Prostitutes forced underground, who take more risks. Homeless people who die of hunger and exposure. Refugees deported to their deaths.
The "residents" might get more sympathy from students if they stopped running to the enemies of freedom, the bourgeois media dn the pigs, whenever they get in an argument with a student. Resource-use conflicts are always difficult to resolve, and are rendered insoluble when fetishisers of norms insist on concealing others' claims by labelling them as "anti-social". Such labelling turns the acts in question, from being unfortunate side-effects of a way of life, into being a matter of principle for those concerned, a symbol of their defiance of conformity. This amplifies the "deviance". Any resolution of social problems depends in the first and last instance on a refusal of the bigoted discourse of "social" versus "anti-social", and a celebration of nomadism and molecularity for their very potential to undermine repressive fixity.
Over the past year or so I have been ashamed to actually admit I am a student, when Ive seen the actions of fellow students in the Holylands in recent years. The point has been raised that the majority of students causing trouble seem to be from the rural areas of NI. Maybe it's because I grew up on the Ormeau Road and share a house with other people from Belfast but it seems like the rural students are completely clueless on how to act in such a populated area.
These students form "country" towns seem to treat the Hloylands as if it is an area built specifically for students. There's Tyrone flags hanging on the Lamp posts, people playing hurley at 3 or 4 am. Living on University Avenue for the last 2 years I get to see and hear it almost every week night. It's great during the summer or on some weekends when they all go home, it's like a different area, far more peaceful.
I think maybe it's time for QUB or UOU to build cheaper more affordable halls for students from these areas or the Holylands will continue to deteriorate. I think it's also sad that the height of student protest in NI has came to a bunch of morons protesting outside an old lady's house because a programme made them look bad, boo hoo.
Lets get the point out to all the residents in the Holylands area. The Holylands is a temporary residential area for students. I can't imagine why any normal human being who is trying to raise a family or have a job even consider in living the Holylands. I believe the permanent residents are the ones to blame. There love to stir things up and when things go wrong they always blame it on the students. I was involved in one particular incident with a next door neighbour last year and he was always moaning, making things up to the universities about our behaviour. He was once caught out, when he accused us of having loud music and parties on a Wednesday night. That particular Wednesday night the house was vacant as we had attended a funeral service at home. He was found out and wriggled his way out of it. So I say let the students get on with living their 3/4 years of fun and study and not worrying about upsetting their so-called quiet neighbours.
The Holylands is a temporary residential area for students. I can't imagine why any normal human being who is trying to raise a family or have a job even consider in living the Holylands. very strange opinion that
A note to all the student residents in the Holylands: Have a good time and don't worry about your neighbours. After all you will be the ones that come out with the proper jobs and when you graduate you can get a proper house and not have to worry about students having good nights out.
A note to all the other residents: Get your heads checked and stop moaning. If you choose to live in the holylands you have chosen to listen to the students have a good time while you can't. Live by the sword...
Its interesting to read how the holyland is such a tolerant and mixed belfast area and yet read the people from the same area hate on all these 'drunken moron culchie students'.
Whilst I would be tempted to use words often heard to describe our multi-cultural neighbours I simply would like to make a point about the area.
I have been a student in the holyland for the last 3 years and it has been the most exciting and enjoyable time of my life to date. Yes I am from a rural area and yes I do enjoy the company of friends that i have known since I was a 11 years old. (Sorry if that is a crime eeekkk) But i have also had the chance to meet numerous people from the city and people from other rural areas throughout the country.
Why dont the residents protest about the beatings students receive while walking home from a night out? Why dont they kick up stink about the amount of student houses that are robbed at weekends when they are vacant? Or how about the young female students who are often sexually assaulted? Are these not far more serious issues to deal with in the area rather than the fact that students hang out football flags, drink, sing, dance and god forbid stick together in our 'clannish groups'? It would seem these full time residents were never young, never drank, were never wild in their youth and were always perfect citizens of society who constantly complain about 'these clannish culchie drunken students.'
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From researching a recent documentary on the Holylands I've discovered there to be a great sympathy towards the students by the residents. the residents committee said that for students being boxed in like animals into sub standard housing, the result can expectedly be animalistic behaviour.
There isn't simply two sides to the argument. I found a lot of comments by students and residents where along the same lines. both sides believed wardens were needed. both sides say its a minority problem. both sides complain about the noisy students. both sides believe the planning authorities have been reckless. both sides hate the filth on the streets and the constant construction work.
In fact, I found that most students in the area were more annoyed and angry than the residents who have in part accepted it over the years.
As one resident said. Student's (and young people in general) don't realise that when they're coming down a street shouting, there are a couple of dozen more groups coming down after them doing the same. collectively this has an effect of chinese water torture.
Residents don't expect saintly behaviour but they would appreciate some respect.... final year students who are up early studying are demanding the same respect.
The situation is not the hate filled sensationalist situation that some areas of the media has made it out to be.
"The Holylands is a temporary residential area for students. I can't imagine why any normal human being who is trying to raise a family or have a job even consider in living the Holylands." - i'll tell you why, because some of us have to make our own way in this world and cant afford to pay £600 a month for a swanky apartment in the bass buildings! and don't have mummy and daddy to pay for it for us!
i work in a good job, i pay my rent and i happen to rent in the holylands. i live here because its convienient to the city centre and i'd much rather live here than on the donegal road and get my living room window shot at because the guy next door happens to be a drug dealer and the marksman sent to do him in happens to get the frigging address wrong!
ive lived here for 4 years now (2 of which i was a student myself!) and i have never experienced a more peaceful atmosphere than the holylands around july. because there is no crazed beer fiends wandering the streets in the wee small hours, banging windows, damaging cars, ringing doorbells looking for a "parrrrty hey!" and no screeching miread and orla's wailing like banshees because their mate emer has stormed off in a huff because someone slagged her GAA top during a night out in renshaws!
there is two houses in my street with elderly disabled residents who have lived in the houses their whole lives, they have district nurses who go in to look after them and i have lost count of the times i have seen some drunk mountain man deciding it would be a great idea to break the window wipers off the nurses cars.
there is also a fold at the bottom of our street which houses a number of elderly residents who are victimised by drunkards banging on their windows and kicking in their doors.
"...They are by and large clannish; they stick together and hang around with friends they have known since primary school in rural towns, villages and hamlets across the North. Socially they rarely mix with outsiders, either from the city or beyond Ireland, and hardly ever with their peers across the sectarian divide."
This was most evident on St Patricks day where a large number of students in our street were all completely intoxicated by 11am, had their pals from home all up for a night in "the big smoke" and were by 11:30 setting bins on fire in the street while singing sectarian songs like "f**k your union jack we will take our country back!". I was targetted in the street for not wearing green and had beer cans thrown at me while trying to go out my front door! After running back inside a large group of students began kicking my flat door and shouting abuse. "burn the orange bitch out!" among other things. I have NEVER in all my life experianced sectarianism directed at myself. I from nether a catholic or protestant.background and yet because i was not wearing green I was automatically assumed to be kicking with the other foot!
"..you will be the ones that come out with the proper jobs and when you graduate you can get a proper house and not have to worry about students having good nights out."
I take it from that comment you havent graduated yet?
Alot of my friends who have graduated with degree's in IT and Business as well as Law and others have been working in call centres and still living in student digs for the last 2 years because they cant get "proper" jobs.
I never went to university. I went the other way and recieved vocational qualifications and went on to do an HND in IT and got myself a job with a large IT company based on my skills and experiance. I worked damn hard to get where I am, and I never took out a student loan or asked a mummy and daddy to pay for my fees. I worked hard and I never had time to go yahooing around the streets at night so how in the world do the degree students (the socalled smart ones) manage it?!
And as for buying a "proper" house, its next to impossible to get a mortgage unless you have a "proper" job and have a good credit history.. bet you regret spending that student loan on booze now!
"Why dont the residents protest about the beatings students receive while walking home from a night out?".."Or how about the young female students who are often sexually assaulted? " - yes because its only "students" who get beatings on the way home and because its only female "students" who get sexually assaulted.. but in all fairness walking around at night, on your own, stinking drunk is like putting a large light above your head saying "MUG ME I'M AN EASY TARGET!"
I say a load of townies should go down and invade tyrone and armagh and declare it as "..a temporary residential area for townies" and force out the permanent residents and see how they like it!
..or another solution would be to build a university down in tyrone so that they wouldnt have an excuse to come up to the city in the first place!
I'm a student, yet it amazes me that so many of my 'peers' continue to act like 5yr olds released for breaktime. I lived in the heart of all the action of the Holylands last year and I couldn't wait to leave!
Doing a course that is 9-5, Mon-Fri, I didn't have much time for partying - and the odd time I did, I kept the partying to the nightclub. I was tortured by shouting/screaming/singing at all hours. I was woken up by my car alarm going off numerous times during the night because some people think its fun to break off windscreen wipers or side-view mirrors.
However, on some occasions, I was surprised at the behaviour of some of the local residents. One family, who had been forced to move from a clannish part of belfast repeatedly abused me and my housemates, for something as trivial as the noise of our stairs. We witnessed them attacking students who lived opposite with baseball bats and bottles. Their son had graffiti'd every wall near us, and not to mention the drink-fuelled domestics that would happen in the early hours of the morning.
We complained to the police, who knew all about these people, but nothing was done. Yet, my housemates -all girls-were investigated by Queens because someone (a stranger) rang our doorbell - the person had been seen urinating in the street at 5am. this was nothing to do with us! as for peeing in the street...I'd safely bet at least 90% of the male population have done it at least once! undesirable, but not anti-social!
I have to say though, the bad behavior of the students far outweighs that of the residents. People shouldn't leave their homes because some immature brat thinks they have a right to drunken anti-social activities. They wouldn't do it at home, so why should they do it here?
But, even if the parents knew that their kids were doing this, i don't think they would do much about it....its not on their doorstep!
Community wardens are a good idea, and police should be more strict and actually DO something....how about arrests for "drunk and disorderly", "harrassment", "criminal damage".it happens anywhere else. Maybe CCTV at areas known to be hotspots...
Students at other UK universities don't act like it......
It's nice to hear from a real student for a change. One who actually studies and aspires to be more than a drunken nuiscence!
Your right, it DOESNT happen at other universities to the same degree as it does in Belfast. My friend Clare is going into her 2nd year at uni in dundee, her first year like most students was spent in halls. 1st year students are actively encouraged to stay in halls for their first year. Fair point that students deserve to get freedom away from their parents when they go to university but at least in halls they get freedom with a certain amount of dicipline!
If your in halls acting like a d*ckhead then your peers will soon let you know about it and chances are you'll treat them with the same amount of respect you would expect yourself.
on radio ulster's talkback programme today
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/networks/ulster/aod.shtml?ulster/tb_thu
Strange how a self-confessed highly educated woman thinks that someone who walks home on their own while drunk might as well have a sign saying 'MUG ME IM AN EASY TARGET'. So a woman being sexually assaulted in the Holyland isn't really a problem because they should know better not to walk home on there own while drunk? Students who get drunk and cause damage to properties in the holyland are morons as are every other person that does this but its equally dim just to say its a 'class' issue when its really just an age issue. Young people have been getting drunk and causing trouble since alcohol was invented!! So what is really expected when you cram 1000's of them in an area with a few residents?? The Holylands is an expensive area to rent a house because its in demand by students. There are so many other areas to rent housing of a higher quality and at a lower rate in Belfast. When I graduate and begin working I will certainily not contemplate renting in the Holyland. Why? Because its a STUDENT area!! And Students are drunk and noisy! Some people might disagree with that and say that it used to be a lovely mixed multi-cultural area but its not anymore and thats just the way it is. The way I see it is that the residents who own a house in the holyland are sitting on an asset worth considerably more than what its was when they first bought it. To me that would be a financial success. But some people prefer to hang around reminiscing about the good old days when the holyland was free from 'culchie students', when this area was once a beautiful fairlyland of mixed religion.
As for cars being vandalised. Damage is known to be caused to both student and resident cars by drunks on the street (which by the way isn't unique to the holyland area) and this is not acceptable. But who steals these cars in the holyland?? I have seen cars being broken into and stolen on two separate occasions and it was certainly not students doing this. But this again is not a real issue. Instead everyone would rather discuss the fact that students dare possess cars 'bought by their mammys and daddys'.
Now you can dismiss my opinion if you must, but having been through the holylands since i was a mere seven years old when my brother, a non-student for clarification, right through to today I have seen many changes to the holylands, but very few by way of change of people living there.
Yes, as with all areas of Belfast, it has a wide range of residents, from Asians to Americans, and students to residents who were born and bred there. For me nothing much has changed. In the late 80's the University Area was busting from the seams with Students from all social backgrounds, all intent on having a good time while enjoying a rich social scene. This hasn't changed, in fact for me only two things have changed, opening hours and the amount of people who can enjoy the chance of gaining a university education.
OK, I admit, I have never lived there myself, but many a weekend has been spent staying in the holylands, and not always after having enjoyed too much of the black stuff. Its a dangerous place, but in comparison with student areas in Coventry and Glasgow, again two citys with housing for students much like that in the Holylands, Belfast is merely a playground. I have no reservations in admitting to being totally petrified by what I seen in Glasgow in particular, but one thing stood out for me, and that was how the community gathered round to resolve key social issues such as vandalism and assaults.
Students have little money, after living as a student for 4 years i'm currently £10k in debt and thats 3 years after graduating, they can only afford to live in areas like the holyland, its often not a concious choice but a choice of need. You cannot look down on them for that. They're young and in some cases stupid, but you cannot tar every student with the same brush. If we did that with every student, our economy would be a wreck.
Talk and resolve. Get on like proper adults and not crying kids.
It has to be hightlighted that the situation is much better now. I have a few friends that have been on the receiving end of the university's internal discipline committee. The community safety wardens are getting the right results to UoU/QUB , but to be honest I think its an absolute violation of student rights for UoU/QUB to internally discipline them for their behaviour outside College. This is a job for the police - why aren't there Police patrols? UoU/QUB are not accountable to anyone regarding this,and I've heard of quite a number of bizzare cases of injustice regarding the rulings of the UoU/QUB disciplinary committee where students have been almost kicked out for being blamed for something that they have not done.
The time has come to treat all students as adults, and in that case come under the mercy of the police rather that the Nanny University rules. If the students are doing something illegal then the police should arrest them. If they are not doing something illegal then the students have every right to do what they are doing - its as simple as that!
Students do not wear a sign on their heads proclaiming to be students of UoU/QUB - they do not therefore represent the university at any time outside of the university. Does anyone have any real insight into the legality of the both UoU's and QUB's internal discipline?
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