Anti protocol rallies are a focal point for peaceful rejection of Irish Sea border

The anti protocol rallies have been an important focal point for expressing peaceful discontent over the Irish Sea border.

Last night was the latest such event, after a parade in Lurgan.

Critics of the gatherings have tried a range of tactics, from downplaying the numbers of people attending to accusing the organisers of implicitly threatening violence.

The latter point is unfair. Unionists have been admirably restrained after the repeated references to the violence that could flow from any visible strengthening of the international frontier that already exists at the Irish border.

When Leo Varadkar in 2018 showed EU politicians a report of an IRA attack on a customs post during the Troubles, it was met with a typically mute response from the UK. British ministers and envoys should have been lobbying ever since as to the real history of Troubles terrorism.

A 2018 Queen’s University study found that only 20% of nationalists would find CCTV at the land border “impossible to accept” and only 10% would support the vandalising them. Yet Theresa May set in motion the idea that not so much as a camera would ever be placed there, before Boris Johnson gave Dublin-EU even more in the protocol.

The rallies against that betrayal have been an expression of the unionist rejection of the sea border. But far more important will be a large vote for unionist candidates in May, and voting right down the ticket to maximise seats.