Last week’s rioting in Northern Ireland caught the attention of the world. The spectre of people setting fire to buses, hurling petrol bombs and engaging in running battles with the police in Belfast brought back disturbing memories of the violence associated with “the Troubles”, the conflict that scarred the region for 30 years between the late 1960s and late 1990s.
Perhaps the most depressing element of this story is that the protagonists were largely teenagers, from loyalist (unionist) communities – those who want Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom. These youths are often referred to as “ceasefire babies” – that is, children born after the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 was enacted, putting an end to the violence.
A range of factors has been mooted in explaining the renewed surge in tensions. The most commonly cited reason is the unhappiness of the unionist community with the Northern Ireland Protocol attached to the Brexit agreement. That agreement provided for Northern Ireland to remain in the customs union and single market of the European Union while protecting its constitutional status as part of the United Kingdom.
Despite continued reassurances from UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson that there would be no disruption of trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland after Brexit, the first quarter of the year has seen significant new barriers to trade emerge. Many unionists feel betrayed by London as the “Irish sea border”, which Johnson promised would never materialise, is now an active presence in their lives. That sense of anger and frustration is being felt in the streets. It may be somewhat inchoate and even exaggerated but it is nevertheless palpable across unionist communities.
At the same time, nationalists led by Sinn Féin, the leading Irish republican party, are talking up the prospects of achieving a united Ireland and demanding a “border poll” (referendum) within the near future. A broader conversation on what a united Ireland might look like is under way in both the north and in the Republic of Ireland and this has had the predictable effect of instilling anxiety in unionist communities.
Brexit has thus brought the return of a familiar, and for many unwelcome, form of “identity politics” to Northern Ireland, one that has proved extremely unsettling to a still-fragile political and constitutional order.
Where the Good Friday Agreement accommodated both British and Irish identities within a broader consociational political framework, Brexit has encouraged a revival of identity polarisation, interpreted as a zero-sum game where a “win” for nationalists is perceived as a “loss” for unionists.
And within unionist communities, there is an especially strong feeling, encouraged by political leaders, that nationalists are winning every battle and are closer to achieving a united Ireland than ever before. For example, the prospect of an Irish Language Act, which would give the Irish language equal status to English in Northern Ireland, is presented not just as a win for nationalists but as a further nail in the coffin of cultural and political unionism. This comes at a time when political demography is pointing, tentatively, for the first time towards a nationalist majority in Northern Ireland.
Many commentators have pointed out that the young people rioting have little or any knowledge of the Brexit Protocol and associated constitutional issues. Rather they point to specific factors within some loyalist communities to explain the febrile atmosphere on the streets.
For one thing, these communities have experienced little or no “peace dividend” over the last 23 years. Poverty and deprivation linked to educational under-achievement and high unemployment scars both nationalist and loyalist areas of Belfast. These are “sites of grinding, multigenerational poverty”, according to Professor Colin Coulter, who has spent almost three decades studying these communities. The neighbourhoods that were the most deprived during the Troubles remain the most deprived areas within Northern Ireland.
Within some loyalist areas, however, these problems are compounded by the menacing presence of paramilitary gangs engaged in drug dealing and various forms of extortion and racketeering. Recent successes enjoyed by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) in cracking down on some of these groups are cited as one reason for the confrontation with police.
