Belfast Pubs, Punk and Gentrification ft. Fearghus Roulston

Cursed Objects

We are back with another brand new episode, another very special guest, the brilliant Fearghus Roulston, and another fascinating assembly of some very Cursed Objects subjects – histories of conflict, conviviality, getting pissed, listening to punk and misremembering our own lives and favourite counter-cultural spaces.

Fearghus wants to make it clear he is not a “Punkademic”, but that it’s fine if other people are. Drawing on his fascinating oral history work on the Belfast punk scene, we start with a pack of cards, a set of pubs, and the internationalism of the Titanic Museum. We discuss gentrification and tourism in Belfast since the Good Friday Agreement – pacification by Guinness? – “defensive planning”, defensive pubs, international Irish pubs, luxury hotels and student housing.

How does history get cleaned up for international capitalism? Can tourism embed peace, and can peace embed tourism? What happens when a city designs a version of itself just for the tourist gaze? What gets fetishised, or turned into tourist souvenirs?

Why are we all so emotionally drawn to these stories of unity and progress coming through sub-cultures? Fearghus has the answers: “Max Weber says that politics is drilling through hard boards, and I guess it’s nice to imagine change as not involving drilling through hard boards – as something that can happen in the back room of a pub.”

Fearghus Roulston is a history lecturer at Strathclyde in Glasgow. He’s working on a new book on temporality and the legacy of the Troubles. His last book, Belfast Punk and the Troubles: An Oral History, is available to buy here https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526182463/

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