Northern Ireland’s future depends on unionists keeping country stable

EVERYONE I know was outraged by the arrogance of Sinn Fein’s use of Bobby Storey’s funeral for a show of political strength last summer, when so many families were making difficult sacrifices to avoid spreading Covid.

That our DPP decided not to prosecute anyone is regrettable, but the appalling leadership coming from unionist politicians is making this worse.

Rather than keeping the focus on Sinn Fein (where it belongs), we have unionist politicians blaming the police and falling into the paramilitary trap of saying the police cannot be trusted to fairly police our areas. On Friday and Saturday nights, we saw where this argument leads our community.

The chaos of the DUP’S Brexit fiasco has already destabilised Northern Ireland, with tension being whipped up over the Protocol at a time when were already facing a difficult series of anniversaries.

We will celebrate the centenary of Northern Ireland on May 3, but we should be aware that this is also the centenary of partition and is followed just two days later by the 40th anniversary of Bobby Sands’s hunger strike death, with the anniversaries of the deaths of the other nine hunger strikers scattered across the summer.

With foreign travel unlikely and everyone staying at home this summer, the potential for trouble is obvious.

We in the Protestant and unionist community must think carefully what we want to achieve over the next few months.

Do we benefit from making Northern Ireland less stable with more street protests? Who benefits if we cut off all contact with the PSNI when planning bonfires?

Paramilitaries might prosper by keeping the PSNI out of Protestant estates, but ordinary families won’t benefit from a summer of chaos like the Drumcree summers of 1996-1999.

Our children deserve a peaceful and stable society and it is the job of our politicians to set out how we can achieve this.

A stable Northern Ireland depends on unionism being more focused on winning jobs and winning an eventual border poll. We seem to be on the wrong trajectory.