Protests in the North - It’s time for calm heads to intervene

The flag protests in Belfast have moved from being disheartening and, let’s be honest, slightly embarrassing to being deeply worrying. If the current trend continues decades of work to build peace, hopefully a lasting, island-wide peace, will be threatened, if not undone.

Protests in the North - It’s time for calm heads to intervene

It would be foolish, too, to pretend that any return, even momentarily, to the bad old days of hateful, murderous sectarian violence in the North would not have a negative impact on all of the island.

That terrible prospect behoves all of those who remember the horrors of the not-so-distant past to remind those who may not, and are involved in today’s street violence, of the unacceptable potential of their behaviour. The escalation — four nights of serious rioting, gunfire, UVF involvement, and nearly 50 police officers injured — is a distressing reminder that much remains to be done if the North is ever to become what is recognised as a normal, functioning society. That the violence is rooted in working class Loyalist areas suggests an economic and social aspect as well, the anger almost universal among communities feeling the brunt of today’s recession.

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