I’ve always had a soft spot for the Shankill Road, even though it’s hard as nails. One and a half miles of arterial road through a twenty-five-thousand-strong Unionist working-class ghetto. It’s one of the few places you can still buy a pasty, rather than a panini or a panacotta without them looking at you like you’re a fucking space cadet. The Shankill bore the brunt of, and equally was responsible for, some of the worst violence of the Troubles. Paramilitaries ruled it, and they still do, only they’ve transmogrified from Loyalist freedom fighters financing their struggle through robbery, drugs, protection and murder into gangsters who finance their lifestyles through robbery, drugs, protection and murder. They justify their continued existence in the face of widespread peace by occasionally rolling out their flags and yelling about their loyalty to the Queen and the imminent danger of a Republican uprising. Republicans usually oblige by shooting someone. It is the gangster equivalent of fixing the market. It works equally well for both sides.
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