Forget fighting talk, unionist chiefs need to show leadership
Politicians should remember that words can have consequences
IT has been a difficult week for Northern Ireland as violence not seen for many years returned to the streets. While we optimistically hope for strong leadership and calm heads, events of the last few months make that scenario increasingly unlikely.
There are so many agendas at play that picking through them to assess how and why we have ended up at this awful juncture would require a dissertation rather than a column, but what we do know is that political unionism has been moving toward the hardline for some time.
A loss of a political majority at Stormont, demographics changing faster than the architects of the state could have predicted 100 years ago, were all causes of concern long before Brexit came along.
Leaving the EU was always going to place Northern Ireland in an unusual position that required mitigating measures. Experts predicted this but unionism, and specifically the DUP, ignored the warning signs at their own peril.
Those rioting in Sandy Row, Newtownabbey and Derry at the weekend have little interest in the complexities of sanitary and phytosanitary checks at the sea border, but they do know they’re angry, they know because they have been told to be angry by those who helped create the situation we now find ourselves in.
They may not understand the complex trading arrangements contained in the protocol, but they do understand that they have been betrayed by the very British Government that their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents were slavishly loyal to.
Directing anger at the PPS decision not to prosecute 24 members of Sinn Fein, towards the PSNI and specifically the Chief Constable, Simon Byrne, was always a dangerous tactic.
There are sections of loyalism who have been itching to take their opposition to the Brexit arrangements onto the streets.
The events of the last week and verbal attacks on the PSNI will be twisted by those hawks within loyalism as justification for recent events.
Chasing Jim Allister for the hardcore loyalist vote is a dangerous game to play.
It makes the Ulster Unionist Party’s decision to mimic the TUV and DUP tactic and also call on Simon Byrne to resign all the more baffling.
The party has been in a state of seemingly unstoppable decline for many years.
Rather than aim for the moderate unionist vote, they seem determined to fight it out in an already crowded market for the patronage of loyalism.
Come next year’s Assembly election the Alliance Party are likely to sweep up the votes of those within unionism who are horrified by recent events, people who want economic and political stability.
Rather than the UUP focusing on this section of unionism they seem determined to destroy what is left of the party by trying to be a sub-section of the DUP.
Steve Aiken’s disastrous performance on the BBC Nolan show on Friday appeared to show a leader who called for the Chief Constable’s scalp without fully knowing why.
He performed so badly, not because he is a terrible politician or even a poor media performer; he tanked during the interview because he could not explain a policy with any real conviction.
The party blindly followed the DUP and TUV into calling for Mr Byrne’s resignation fearful of the loyalist backlash if they didn’t, rather than standing their ground and having a policy based on proper leadership over populism.
What those elected to represent the people of Northern Ireland, unionist, nationalist or other, must always remember is that words matter, words carry power, the wrong words in the past have cost lives and the right words at the right time have also helped strengthen the peace.
As we head into the summer, I hope that the peace we have enjoyed over the last few years is lasting, a return to the long hot summers of discontent of the past would be economically disastrous as we try and come out of pandemic restrictions.
Indoctrinating a new generation of young people with violent outcomes, 23 years after the Good Friday Agreement, is a shameful indictment on those trusted with nurturing the peace process.
It did political unionism no harm at all to have an angry barking dog in the corner of the room when they were attempting to put pressure on the British Government over the Brexit protocol.
But as we discovered last week, that angry dog is difficult to control when let off the leash.