We need to face down the minority

YOU can say what’s happening in the North is due to a disaffected Loyalist working class, or recreational rioters, or good old fashioned thugs, but what does seem to be clear is that they constitute a minority: the vast majority of citizens in Northern Ireland are trying to go about their business as far as possible and stay out of the way of trouble until it all blows over.

Yet despite this, a small, noisy and violent group have managed to send the political system into convulsions, mainly because of the threat that this wave of riots could drag the North back to the bad old days.

By any measure it is profoundly undemocratic, yet this is not the only instance on this island where the majority are rendered timid by a small mob prepared to play outside the normal rules of debate.