Loyalist anger fuelled by a cocktail of social decline and sectarianism

THE rioting which erupted in Belfast last weekend was depressingly predictable.

For many years now it has been apparent that disillusionment in working class Protestant areas was the weak point in the spine of the peace process. There is a risk that if these pressure points snap, the entire peace process could be paralysed.

Predictably, too, there has been an angry blame game about who carries most responsibility for both the long-term and immediate circumstances which triggered the events of Saturday afternoon and subsequent nights. Most loyalist and unionist opinion has blamed the British government. They claim the "one-sided" peace process and repeated concessions to Sinn Féin-IRA have caused disillusionment in the rioting areas.

For many of us here in the Republic it is hard to comprehend unionists' deep sense of insecurity. We are somewhat bemused as to how they have convinced themselves the peace process is one-sided. Blaming the British government for their identity crisis strikes us as very strange.

As I look at it, unionists and loyalists have never had so much to be secure about.

In the last decade or so the IRA, having been beaten to a standstill, was compelled to end its campaign of violence. Over the same period the electorate of the Republic has met one of unionism's repeated demands by dropping the objectionable constitutional 'Articles 2 and 3' the territorial claim on Northern Ireland and copperfastening the principle of no unity without consent.

Republicans have been compelled to accept that the progress of their aspiration to a united Ireland is now in reality subject to the democratic veto of the unionist majority. Sinn Féin has been required to contest elections within the mechanics of British rule, has taken seats in a Stormont assembly, and even temporarily participated in a Stormont administration. Even the simplistic assumption that Catholic nationalism would breed its way to a united Ireland has been displaced by the cold statistical realities of the most recent census.

In fact, the main reason why Sinn Féin has raised the volume of its rhetoric about a united Ireland, with the launch of its Make Partition History campaign, is precisely because the North's position within Britain is both de jure and de facto stronger than ever. Sinn Féin knows this to be the reality it is only unionism and loyalism that cannot see it. Instead, unionist leadership of all classes and all shades of orange has managed to convince itself and its population that they have suffered only defeats. Far from being more comfortable in their position they see threats everywhere.

They've done it again in recent weeks. Additional concessions in the form of disbandment and decommissioning are currently being wrung from the IRA by the impact of public opinion in the nationalist community in the North, in the Republic and in America in response to the Northern Bank robbery and the McCartney murder. However, even at what should be a moment of celebration for them, unionism and loyalism have found something to be defeated about.

The announcements about dismantling largely redundant military observation towers and the winding down of the Royal Irish Regiment (RIR) have dwarfed all unionist thinking on the best response to the changed circumstances which will operate if the IRA statement is delivered on. In response to these announcements, one of the few proportionate voices on the Protestant side was that of the Iraq war commander and orator, Tim Collins, who argued that the Protestant community should see the fact that the RIR was no longer necessary as confirmation that the IRA has been forced to disband.

Also feeding frustration and disillusionment in loyalism has been the manner in which they have convinced themselves that some of the concessions in the Good Friday Agreement have operated to their disadvantage.

It is, for example, very hard to take the suggestion from some commentators, said to have an insight into loyalist thinking, that the release of IRA prisoners under the terms of the agreement has contributed to resentment in loyalist communities. The reality is that the prisoners' release deal in the agreement was insisted on as much by loyalist politicians as it was by Sinn Féin. Under its terms loyalist killers have also been released. Some of them are folk heroes in the very loyalist housing estates which were the scene for last weekend's rioting. Many of them were responsible for acts as horrific as those committed by the Shankill bomber Seán Kelly.

WHERE loyalist anger can more justifiably be directed at the British government has been its failure to address the economic and educational problems of some of these areas.

The last 15 years have seen the near complete collapse of the North's traditional manufacturing base. Much of this was concentrated in Belfast with Harland and Woolf, the most prominent (but not the only example). These industries employed tens of thousands of men in Protestant working class areas. They brought employment opportunity which mitigated against the need for an emphasis on continuing education. In Belfast, as in much of western Europe, these heavy manufacturing jobs have disappeared and few employment opportunities have taken their place. The next generation have had even less educational opportunity than their parents. Any discussion with representatives of these areas quickly turns to complaints about the state of their schools and limited educational opportunity.

The years of peace have been a time of economic growth with a dramatic reduction in unemployment rates across the North. However, because of their previous dependence on heavy manufacturing industries, and a lack of capacity and support to diversify their labour pool, some Protestant working class neighbourhoods in Belfast have suffered significant economic reverses. This leaves a dangerous cocktail of social decline with a sectarian edge.

The last decade has also seen many of these communities face an even greater threat from within, and in particular from within loyalist paramilitaries organisations through which drug warlords have cannibalised their own communities and then warred violently over the remaining turf.

It doesn't help that the Protestant working class has not been politically mobilised in anything like the same way that the nationalist working class has been by Sinn Féin. In some pockets most potential voters are not even registered. Even those who were mobilised in recent elections opted for the DUP which has been displacing loyalist parties like the UVF-linked PUP and closing off any room for electoral impact by the UDA-linked Ulster Political Research Group.

Even amid the recent madness, however, there were signs of hope. Some people within these communities and even within the UVF, the UDA and their political associates worked to ease tensions. While British policy has something to answer for in failing to address economic and educational disadvantage in these areas, the loyalist sense of insecurity is not the British Government's fault.

Addressing that problem is a challenge for unionism and loyalism itself.