Once an IRA stronghold and one of the most violent parts of the city. How has it changed today?

The Royal Victoria Hospital was considered one of the best hospitals for treatment of gunshot wounds, particularly in treating gunshot wounds to the knee, which was how the IRA in West Belfast meted out its punishments for anti-social behaviour.
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Now in the 1970s and particularly at the start of the 1980s, this road and many of the other roads off the Falls, were not just a venue for occasional trouble, but were consistently in turmoil. Indeed, for the residents of West Belfast this meant that it became impossible to use public transport, as bus services on these routes were immediately cancelled at the slightest hint of civil disturbance. In fact, it was often the hijacking and burning of a bus that signalled the start of another bout of unrest here. The company, Ulsterbus, lost many of its fleet in attempting to serve the people of West Belfast.
It was for that reason that local people, in times of trouble on the road, began to offer lifts to their neighbours to and from the town in their cars - those that had cars. As time went on people paid for these journeys, until the car owners eventually traded their cars for London style black taxis, and that is, in a nutshell, how the Falls Taxi association came into being.
We visit at the junction of Falls, Grosvenor and Springfield roads and see from an old photograph that this was a particular flashpoint. And as I mentioned, this kind of scene was by no means unique during this period, and the devastation caused on each occasion was massive. Even after a clear up, of a scene such as this, which in some cases went on for days, the tarmac will have melted, and paving stones will have been broken up by mobs of kids to use as missiles to throw at the British Soldiers. On one occasion during one of the most violent riots in the 80s, during the Hunger Strikes at the Maze Prison, the steel lampposts were even cut down and thrown across the road. This area of west Belfast was ungovernable and could only be entered by Police or British army in helicopters or armoured vehicles. The violence became regular, normalised and was mobilised at any attempt by the army to search houses or to make their presence felt in the area.
The sirens that we hear nowadays are ambulances whisking people into the Royal Victoria to be treated for illness, rather than gunshots or plastic bullet injuries.
As we head back up to the crossroads we can see one of the Glider buses. Belfast’s current transport pride. How things have changed, it would have been unthinkable during the troubles to run a new state of the art transport system up this road.
Further up the Falls Road a bit we can see what was once an old presbyterian church. It nowadays is at the epicentre of a thriving Gaelic speaking community in west Belfast. This modernised building is now the Cultúrlann, a bookstore, café, theatre and meeting place for Irish… and none Irish speakers.
Then we visit Beechmount Avenue, or what is more commonly known now as RPG Avenue, a street named after a deadly rocked propelled grenade launcher that was standard weaponry for the Provisional IRA.
Outside what was once Beechmount Leisure Centre, it’s very easy to recall a very different environment, one where pointed guns were part of every day life (see pic). The leisure centre closed down in 2008 and is now the campus of the Meanscoil Feirste, Belfast’s only secondary level Irish-medium school, again testament to the importance of the Falls Road as an Irish speaking region. This school was founded in 1991 with 9 pupils. In 2022 it had 850 and 65 teachers.
Across the road here we have the James Connelly visitor centre, housed in what would once have been two old town houses. Now its got a smart new front façade and greets visitors from all over the world.
We’re going to finish our journey where the Falls Road meets the Andersonstown Road and the Glen Road. This was the site of the notorious Andy Town Road Police Station. A building immortalised in that news footage you may remember after the peace agreement, where carloads of republicans drove past waving tricolours. The fact that a huge piece of military infrastructure like that has now totally disappeared says everything you need to know about how the falls road has changed in the last 25 years.