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.
Those so determined to limit the use of the union flag — still the flag of the great majority in the North no matter what anyone says — cannot pretend that they are blameless either. Anyone with a modicum of political or cultural empathy would have anticipated that limiting the use of the flag would provoke the response we are sadly watching unfold. And what, in the greater scheme of things, has been or might be achieved by this? Surely it would have served the much-vaunted parity-of-esteem principle better if a symbol of nationalism was used along with the union flag to acknowledge both sectors of that community rather than veto the flag representing the majority? That after nearly 20 years of relative peace we are still obliged to talk in terms of two communities is in its own way a failure.
The suggestion from Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams in recent days that his party will shortly launch a campaign for a border poll on a united Ireland will do little to foster the kind of harmony and trust that might have precluded the violence of recent weeks either.
Confirming that Unionist politicians, including DUP first minister Peter Robinson, insisted there could be no justification for such a referendum, they cited polls that suggest a sizeable majority in the North want to maintain Northern Ireland’s link with Britain.
Mr Adams is aware of the response to limiting the use of the union flag, a relatively minor step in the grand scheme of things. He must have considered, too, what kind of a response a vote for a united Ireland, or even holding such a poll, would provoke. Such a poll may eventually be appropriate but that an issue as remote as a flag fluttering on a pole should lead to such violence suggests that Sinn Féin’s referendum proposal is premature and dangerously provocative.
If the Loyalist protest planned for Dublin next weekend is not allowed to proceed unhindered and peacefully then the division generated by the flag riots in Belfast and Sinn Féin’s unwise proposal has the capacity to assume a dangerous momentum.