If the campaign to reopen the Ulster Canal succeeds, it would represent a symbolic social investment that goes beyond pure politics and economics, writes Tarka Leslie-King
During a recent attic search for a much-needed but obscure document, I stumbled across a pamphlet dated 1908 written by my grandfather, Sir Shane Leslie. It carried a passionate cry for furtherance of the land reform principles buried within the then newly introduced Wyndham Act which, in some aspects, could be viewed as an early precursor to the recently published National Development Plan. The latter contains one particular proposal, an idea for reopening the Ulster Canal. This is really the revamp of a privately financed socio-economic initiative implemented in 1839, more as a necessary regional employment stimulant than as a viable commercial venture.
Limited investment capital dictated shortcomings in lock construction and a reliable water supply but, even with these inherent difficulties, the waterway survived for 93 years, finally being de-watered and abandoned as the debilitating effects of partition took hold. The fact that the canal's route twisted backwards and forwards across the newly established inter-state Border ran counter to the political concepts of topographical and social division being implemented in Dublin and Belfast.
Within a decade of 1908, Shane Leslie would be deeply involved in Irish politics, particularly in furthering links with the American intelligentsia. Through his close friendship with Hazel Lavery, he was able to stand in the shadows at Cromwell Place while the Treaty of 1922 was hammered out. However, the partitioning of Ulster was a development he could never come to terms with and, in many ways, it broke his political heart.
In the 1950s he would take me for long walks through the woods of our home in Co Monaghan, which coincidentally bordered Co Armagh on one side, with the county boundary, and now international frontier, being defined by a bog drain. Sometimes we would venture over to see our neighbours at Tynan Abbey, which involved crossing the two-foot Border ditch and, almost beside it, the empty bed of the defunct Ulster Canal. Every time we approached the tow-path of the overgrown one-time thoroughfare, my grandfather would be reminded of the social life he had witnessed existing on the ribbon of water when it was an active commercial artery. Its demise and visible slide into dereliction clearly reflected community disintegration farther afield.
In 1994 research began to try and identify ways of rebuilding the regional rural economy of mid-Ulster. By 1998 an intergovernmental feasibility study focusing on the possibility of reopening the Ulster Canal had been carried out and made public. The report found that the public expense of reopening it as a complement to the island's existing active waterways would be recoverable over a 20-year period, and that such a move would be a way of regenerating the economy of mid-Ulster.
Another factor discussed was that reopening the waterway would underpin the promotion of Lough Neagh by the Northern Ireland Tourist Board. The lake, which covers 224 square miles, is a giant natural asset, but it is presently inaccessible by water from active southern river and canal networks, though navigational links exist to the Irish Sea, the Atlantic and Belfast Lough. However, if the lake is to be realistically reinstated as a sustainable recreational venue, the historic connection to the South via the Ulster Canal, reopened in its entirety, is a fundamental requirement.
The canal was first dug to open up this strategic link and, originally, also answered a transport and employment need but, today, it has an altogether different and much wider role to play in the development of Ulster's future.
For the last 10 years or more, furious lobbying has been undertaken by individuals and working groups such as the Inland Waterways Association of Ireland to try and have the Ulster canal re-opened. There are those who wish to see an expansion of the island's waterway network, others who are interested in restoring Victorian industrial heritage, others who are striving to further the present peace initiative and looking for a large-scale symbolic flagship project with which to mark achievement to date, and many more who can visualise a new future of some sort in it for themselves. This effort has not gone unnoticed by the powers-that-be, and the concept of repeating the social investment initiative taken back in the 1830s has been subject of much debate in Downing Street, Dublin Castle and Stormont. Funding bodies such as the European Investment Bank have voiced optimism advising on political criteria required for funding to be forthcoming and Waterways Ireland, a cross-Border body created under the Belfast Agreement, has been asked to prepare to undertake the restoration task.
PRICEWATERHOUSECOOPERS recently produced a socio-economic analysis on instruction from the Blackwater Regional Partnership (Armagh, Tyrone and Monaghan county councils) which stated there was an identifiable loss being incurred to the regional tourism industry by not having the canal open. The report's concluding suggestion concerning the creation of a 12-mile-wide "canal zone" along the 45-mile length of the waterway is also not being discarded lightly as a method of focusing sensitive, minimum-impact development towards neglected and forgotten but beautiful countryside.
The Ulster canal is being written in as an integral part of the path ahead. Forty years ago, the then prime minister of northern Ireland, Lord O'Neill, and his Republican counterpart, Seán Lemass, responded to the 1963 IRA ceasefire and disbandment by entering into exploratory talks on bridge-building possibilities between the two island economies. Their efforts foundered, but the growing need to combat emerging globalisation and foreign competition pressures dictates a renewed focus on diversification towards marketing of Ulster's natural assets for recreational purposes and expansion of its tourist industry.
THE REOPENING OF the Ulster canal will dramatically change the image of mid-Ulster bringing it forward from the early 19th century, when it last received any significant investment, to the 21st century becoming, at minimal cost, a dramatic symbol of sustainable urban and rural economic renewal. This point has been proved time and again in the UK and the chief executive of British Waterways, Robin Evans, stated at Enniskillen in 2003 that if the Ulster Canal had been located in England it would have been reopened long ago as a rural economic driver. He went on to state: "Once the decision to reopen is made, the task should be tackled in its entirety and kept within a four-year time frame. Otherwise management stagnation and financial over-run will rapidly appear."
The Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Éamon Ó Cuív, has recently stated his intention to start by reopening the stretch of canal that runs between Lough Erne and Clones, Co Monaghan. A possible navigable passage from Lough Neagh to Blackwatertown in Co Armagh is also envisaged. However, direct rule junior minister Angela Smith's letter from her office in the UK department of culture, arts and leisure to the British-Irish Interparliamentary Body in November 2004 stated clearly that any piecemeal approach towards restoration of the derelict waterway without a plan for the entire project would not be supported by central government and reinforced the point made by British Waterways management.
There is no other initiative in existence so fundamentally sound and capable of achieving quite so much economically, going quite so far in providing hope locally, restoring civic pride regionally, and all for such a small and eventually recoverable cost. However, as these deliverable aspects of the project are realised by various bodies politic, north and south of the Border, the commercial and financial implications should not be allowed to eclipse the need for local community involvement to be incorporated as implementation rolls forward.
The canal therefore needs to be viewed not just as an economic venture or as a political fix, but equally as an overdue "social investment" uniquely capable of calmly and finally laying to rest the ghosts of the province's turbulent past.
Tarka Leslie-King is president of the Ulster Waterways Group