Peacewalls 50 — Peacewall Archive
▻http://www.peacewall-archive.net/peacewalls-50
At 4.30pm on Wednesday, 10th of September, 1969, British Army Engineers, escorted by the 2nd Grenadier Guards, started work on what became known as the ‘peaceline’ in two locations in West Belfast. Working from either end of a line on a map “determined by a representative body from the city hall”, the engineers emplaced pickets drilled into the road surface, and then unrolled coils of barbed wire between the pickets to create a linear barrier and thereby sever connections between the Falls and the Shankill areas of Belfast.
This action was a response to a meeting held the previous day at Stormont Castle, where the Prime Minister Chichester-Clarke had met with his Joint Security Committee. The conclusions from the meeting minuted that:
“A peace line was to be established to separate physically the Falls and the Shankill communities. Initially this would take the form of a temporary barbed wire fence which would be manned by the Army and the Police. The actual line of fence would be decided in consultations with the Belfast Corporation. It was agreed that there should be no question of the peace line becoming permanent although it was acknowledged that the barriers might have to be strengthened in some locations.”