Belfast can trace its origins to a fort complex in 3000 BC, but it was really the Plantation of Ulster policies adopted by the British Government in the 17 th century, that established Belfast as a town. This imitative planted Scottish and English Protestants in the area at the mouth of the Lagan River. This led to an immediate increase in trading activity as these people arrived with a solid work ethic and a desire to succeed.

Ironically, this action sowed the seeds of what was to become of the worlds most bitter religious wars between Catholic and Protestant. The civil rights marches starting in 1969 were prompted by the dominance of the Protestant majority over the Roman Catholic minority, which denied them many basic rights and was akin to apartheid being practised right across the social strata. Access to civil service jobs was denied to Catholics, though not by any official approval and in all walks of life, suppression of Catholic rights was rife.

The suppression of the Catholic people created a crescendo of violence throughout Northern Ireland, known as the Troubles, with Belfast particularly affected. The Provisional Irish Republican Army came to life as military protectors and enforcers of the Catholic case and fight from rule by Britain. On the Protestant side, military organizations such as the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), evolved to into terrorists organizati