Irish Examiner view: Alarm over youth disorder in North

Children as young as 12 arrested for anti-protocol rioting

Anti Northern Ireland Protocol protesters were warned by police that they face prosecution for staging the protest at Lanark Way in the Shankill area of west Belfast. Picture: Alan Lewis/Photopress

IT is alarming to note that children as young as 12 have been arrested for anti-protocol rioting in Northern Ireland. 

Two boys have been arrested following disorder in Belfast after a rally against the protocol. Up to 100 youths attacked police following a rally. Police were attacked with missiles and fireworks close to a peace line in Belfast on Wednesday evening.

Opposition to the protocol that has created trade barriers between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK was a factor behind rioting that flared in several loyalist areas in April. 

Earlier this week, a bus was burnt out in Newtownards in an attack linked to loyalist opposition to the protocol.

The police believe that adults are orchestrating the riots. 

If that is, indeed, the case, cynics might conclude that this is the kind of anti-social behaviour that will give Prime Minister Boris Johnson the excuse he is looking for to trigger Article 16 of the protocol, putting it into suspension.

Article 16 operates as an emergency brake in the protocol, allowing either side to suspend its operations because of serious "economic, societal or environmental difficulties" that are liable to persist. The DUP and other unionists opposed to the deal signed by Johnson last December say it is limiting trade between Britain and the North.

The economic disruption caused by the protocol has not prompted Johnson to trigger Article 16 but the danger is that social disruption could.