The DUP briefly held high political cards between 2017 and 2019 because it kept a minority Conservative government in power at Westminster. But it overplayed its hand catastrophically, put its trust in Boris Johnson’s hand-on-heart promises about rejecting any Irish Sea border, and ended up by accepting the Irish protocol, which was the worst possible option from the unionist point of view.
Graffiti saying “Kill the protocol” began to appear on walls in Protestant districts earlier this year as new regulations on trade between mainland Britain and Northern Ireland were applied. These regulations may not be particularly significant in commercial terms, but they looked like one more very visible wedge splitting the union.
More worrying for the DUP, an opinion poll in February showed it to be well behind Sinn Fein and losing support to the hardline Traditional Unionist Voice. Floundering about and looking desperately for a policy, the DUP turned against the protocol, and is seeking vainly to replace it. But at the same time their leaders – since they head the Northern Ireland Executive – are meant to implement it.
Foster and the DUP fell back on a “dead cat” strategy – making a dramatic gesture to divert attention from their missteps. The result is that Foster is demanding that the head of the police service of Northern Ireland, Simon Byrne, should quit because of the failure to prosecute members of Sinn Fein who allegedly broke Covid-19 restrictions by attending the funeral of IRA leader Bobby Storey last June.
In fact, the decision not to prosecute was taken by the director of the Public Prosecution Service because there was no chance of a successful prosecution. The Covid-19 regulations “had been amended on nine separate occasions” in a short period of time, and nobody quite knew what they were. After protests, this decision is now being reviewed.
Demanding rigorous implementation of the law against opponents while ignoring it oneself is part of the rich political tradition of Northern Ireland. The danger at the moment is that such punching and counter-punching reinforces the impression of Protestants that they are on the losing side and that Sinn Fein and the Republicans are the winners. Ulster unionists have always been quick to claim that they have been betrayed – and this time around they genuinely have been betrayed by Boris Johnson, though a less naïve DUP leadership might have seen this coming a hundred miles away.
Some commentators downplay the significance of the riots by correctly saying that they are orchestrated by UDA and UVF gangs, which are primarily engaged in the drugs business. These gangs have recently come under heavy pressure from the police, with many of their leaders arrested and awaiting trial. But this does not alter the fact that the Protestant working class feel that they gained little from the GFA and, as in the rest of Britain, they have seen the disappearance of well-paid industrial jobs in ship building, engineering and textiles. Many of the riots are taking place in deprived areas with high rates of Covid-19 infection.
Neither a united Ireland nor a sectarian civil war are necessarily around the corner, but Northern Ireland is back as the most dangerous open wound in British political life.
Print
Patrick Cockburn | Radio Free (2021-04-13T08:58:20+00:00) The Return of Northern Ireland as the Most Dangerous Open Wound in British Political Life. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2021/04/13/the-return-of-northern-ireland-as-the-most-dangerous-open-wound-in-british-political-life/
Please log in to upload a file.
There are no updates yet.
Click the Upload button above to add an update.