We must renounce our united Ireland dream

The smug, ‘holier than thou’ mutterings of nationalists regarding the recent loyalist rioting ignores the fact that our dream of a united Ireland is the fundamental cause of the conflict.

The rioters may be deprived, uneducated and unemployed, but they know, in their bones, that our dream is their nightmare. They rightly fear that they will eventually be subsumed by us, nationalists, their hated enemy.

They riot to show that they will not go quietly. Unless we, as nationalists, renounce our desire for a united Ireland (or until an overwhelming majority of Unionists requests it), there can never be peace between the two tribes who share this island.