A tale of two cities: regional imbalance worsening in North

The Good Friday Agreement was signed on April 10, 1998. 25 years later, statistics indicate regional imbalance is actually worsening in the North, to the detriment of Derry.

Speaking to Derry Now, Garbhán Downey and Conal McFeely, members of the Derry University Group, argued the focus for the next 25 years must be on regenerating Derry and the border areas.

“It was,” they said, “time to reverse a century of ‘east coast first’ policies”.

Derry University Group billboard outlining disparities between Derry and Belfast.

According to Garbhán Downey the tale of two cities, of Derry versus Belfast, needed to end abruptly “for all our sakes”.

He added: “Given the particular new opportunities open to the North West, there is an immediate responsibility on all of us, Derry, Belfast, Dublin, London and Brussels, to redress the systemic neglect and depredation of this region together.

“We do this by enacting enduring social, economic and infrastructural programmes which will ensure our region’s growth and prosperity. We must target directly the regional imbalance that is smothering Derry and overheating Belfast.

“We start by building our own university as a fulcrum of our new North West society, a university we must run ourselves, independent of Belfast, to service the needs of our community, seize the opportunities open to us, and help this city restore its voice and plan its future.

“There is a tremendous opportunity today for the border regions in Ireland, and for Derry in particular.  Derry is currently the only major city on this island, and, indeed, in Europe, with immediate, unfettered access to both the EU and the UK,” said Garbhán Downey.

Mr Downey described Derry’s city, land and sea boundaries, as effectively  “invisible to and invisible from” its Irish and British neighbours. 

He said: “Over the past 25 years, the hard border has dissolved to the point that Derry and North Donegal are becoming a single identifiable unit.

“This is a region primed and ready. Our talent pool is massive; our schools and Further Education provision is among the best on these islands. It is safe and welcoming, with much lower levels of crime than the two capitals. Accommodation, childcare, entertainment and transport all cost substantially less than in the island’s bigger conurbations.

“For all that, Stormont has not worked for Derry, with the post-1998 version proving almost as inequitable as the pre-1972 model.”

Conal McFeely said that Derry’s contribution to Ireland’s civil rights movement, to reconciliation and to the peace process and the building of our new shared society, was “immeasurable”. 

“And yet our share of the ‘peace dividend’, as we highlighted in a series of billboards across the North West last year, has been risible,” he added.

“While Belfast’s economy soared, Derry’s actually regressed to pre-1998 levels. 

“Household incomes in Derry are half of those in Belfast; indices for poverty and poor health in the North West are among the worst on the island; and the latest census figures released this month show that Derry/Strabane has the highest levels of unemployment, and the highest percentage of people with no qualifications, of any NI district.

“Unless addressed, Derry/ Strabane’s population is projected to drop by 5,000 (to 145,000) by 2041 while, by way of contrast, Belfast’s development plan envisages building 50,000 new homes there by 2035.

“The recent opening of a new university campus in Belfast instead of Derry, which has been waiting 60 years for its promised facility, has left Belfast now hosting almost 80 percent of NI’s entire university student population. In comparison, London has 21% of England’s university students, Edinburgh has 25% of Scotland’s, Cardiff 33% of Wales’, and Dublin has 40% of Ireland’s,” said Conal McFeely.

Mr McFeely said Belfast’s self-styled ambition to become a ‘nation city’ was in danger of killing the thing it loves. 

“The city is already oversaturated and well on its way to overheating. 

“It is struggling to provide basic amenities, from housing to parking to sewage. Anyone who has attempted to drive across Belfast between the hours of 2pm and 7pm (or equally during the morning rush hour), knows just how choked it has become.

“None of this happened by accident and, unfortunately for Derry, policy decisions, taken both recently and decades ago, to develop Belfast and east of the Bann, first, foremost and only, have had ongoing and massive repercussions for this region.

That is not to excuse in any way our current generation of representatives, civil servants and developers, who have deliberately, or by negligence, allowed this tradition to progress,” said Conal McFeely.

Garbhán Downey said the Belfast agenda had changed very little from Partition to power-sharing.

He added: “To achieve a meaningful culture-shift, it is imperative we acknowledge, stop and reverse this Belfast primacy, which has permeated every level of NI government and society over the past century.

“Two examples from Frank Curran’s 1986 history, ‘Derry: Countdown to Disaster’ (preface by John Hume) show how political decisions made in the second half of the 20th century led to generations of disadvantage for the North West.

“The first pertains to the decision by the then Minister for Development, William Craig, to insist on building the doomed new city of Craigavon, so as to divert money essential to large-scale development in Derry. 

“Curran recounts how in 1965, the leading English town planner Geoffrey Copcutt resigned from Stormont’s Craigavon Development Team, stating: ‘The fate of Londonderry in the post-war years is one of the signs by which posterity will judge us.

“One of the best hopes for prosperity in the North is the swift expansion of university facilities and the presence of an additional centre of learning at Derry could complement the range of facilities open to potential development. Derry by 1984 should be a city with a population of 150,000. And with its beautiful hinterland and freedom from pollution it could be known as the city in a playground,’” highlighted Garbhán Downey.

According to the Derry University Group advocates, Derry’s population in 1984 was 97,000 and it was anything but a city in a playground.  

Frank Curran also reported that in 1965, John Hume himself highlighted how Stormont’s opposition to Derry development was having long-term consequences. 

In a speech to the New Ireland Society, Hume stated: “We feel we are being suffocated. The government plans a population increase of 197,000 east of the Bann by 1981. On the other hand, the Registrar General’s Office estimated an increase in the population of Northern Ireland in those same years of 196,000. 

“The implications are obvious. These plans imply massive movement of population on an unprecedented scale from west to east to ensure fulfilment.”

“Couple this with rail and dock closures, gerrymandering and the denial of a university,” said Conal McFeely, “and Derry’s stagnation was ensured.”

“The corralling of virtually all university places in Belfast is the 21st-century version of these policies. 

“And it will have the same long-term consequences for Derry, albeit the manoeuvring was completed with greater stealth and connivance, and with cross-party (Belfast) consent.”