Letter: Critics of this week's disorder in Northern Ireland need to examine if they have contributed to a mentality that allows people to justify violence
A letter from R G McDowell:
The recent violence in Belfast is horrendous particularly where it involves attacks on individuals homes which must be a terrifying experience.
Some of the critics, however, do need to examine if they have contributed to a mentality that allows people to justify violence. For many years now, that portion of Northern Ireland’s population who consider themselves to be British have been second-class citizens.
When we had a UK-wide referendum in which some areas of the UK had more leave voters and some areas had more remain voters the overall UK outcome was that wisely or unwisely the UK as a whole would leave the European Union. That vote was never respected in Northern Ireland.
Much of the reason for that was that pro-EU parties and the Irish government refused to accept the consequence of having an international border on the island of Ireland.
Nobody particularly wanted a hard border but if ways couldn’t be found to implement it then the democratic outcome was the border is where it is and it changes if an NI referendum says it does. No such poll was taken and Northern Ireland’s constitutional position was effectively compromised into a form of joint authority with the introduction of an Irish Sea border.
In addition to using the EU’s economic strength the Irish taoiseach in 2018 had warned that there could be a return to terrorist violence if the Irish government didn’t get its way.
Most pro-EU parties in NI seemed happy to take the political outcome of an Irish Sea border that was obtained via these kind of threats.
This effectively destroyed the Good Friday Agreement and made unionists the losers.
I would argue the whole basis of our present governmental arrangement in which unionist leaders had been bullied back into an executive which is forced to implement an Irish Sea border is based on violence or the threat of violence having been rewarded at the expense of implementing a democratic UK-wide vote.
The present violence can’t be justified but its easy to see how young men, particularly in loyalist areas, might look at the actions of the two governments and think that violence works when it suits them.
They need a better example from the two governments.
Mr R G McDowell, Belfast BT5