WHAT IS GOING ON IN NORTHERN IRELAND

I will explain the recent rioting including
the context behind the growing tensions in the province.
As usual with Northern Ireland I will warn that people have very different perspectives on politics here, please do your own research

Unionists are people who support staying in the United Kingdom, Nationalists support joining the north with the south in a united Ireland. Since the end of March, there has been unrest on a near-nightly basis, mainly in unionist areas of a number of towns and cities.

The rioting has largely seen loyalist youths throwing bricks, fireworks and petrol bombs at lines of police vehicles.

On Wednesday night the fighting escalated into sectarian clashes over peace wall in west Belfast that divides loyalist communities from nationalist communities

Parts of Northern Ireland are split along sectarian lines, 23 years after a peace deal largely ended Northern Ireland's Troubles which lasted almost 30 years and cost the lives of more than 3,500 people. That conflict was ended by the Good Friday Agreement

The Good Friday Agreement is at the heart of the current crisis, it kept NI in the United Kingdom but contained a number of provisons. One of which was a promise to no change of the consitutional status without the approval of the people of Northern Ireland

Brexit has cracked open a range of issues including the avoidance of a hard border, North–South cooperation, citizenship, and the CTA. Anyone born in NI, and thus entitled to an Irish passport by the Good Friday Agreement, will also be able to retain EU citizenship after Brexit

Unionist leaders have linked the violence to simmering loyalist tensions over the Irish Sea border imposed as a result of the UK-EU Brexit deal.

The new trading border is the result of the Northern Ireland Protocol, introduced to avoid the need for a hard border on the island.

The protocol means Northern Ireland remains in the EU single market for goods, so products being moved from Great Britain to Northern Ireland undergo EU import procedures. Unionists say the protocol damages trade and threatens Northern Ireland's place in the UK

In March, a group which includes representatives of loyalist paramilitaries wrote to Boris Johnson to withdraw its support for the Good Friday Agreement, the 1998 deal that effectively ended the Troubles.

The Loyalist Communities Council said it was temporarily withdrawing its backing because of concerns about the protocol. Mounting pressure from a number of paramilitary groups suggests they are endorcing sectarian mobs to begin violance again on these grounds

Some unionist leaders have attributed the violence to the decision not to prosecute leaders of the republican Sinn Féin party for breaching Covid regulations at the funeral of a former IRA intelligence chief last June.
Bobby Storey's funeral drew 2,000 mourners

- including DFM Michelle O'Neill - at a time when strict Covid restrictions were still in place, limiting the number of people who could gather in public.
Some have accused police of double standards after the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) said there would be no prosecutions.

The Police believe the recent violance is connected to a recent crackdown on the activies of the UDA, a loyalist paramilitary organisation.
The South East Antrim UDA is one of Northern Ireland's largest paramilitary gangs.

According to a recent MI5-police intelligence assessment the gang "has access to arms" and is "heavily involved in drugs supply, community coercion, intimidation and other criminality".

Again there is a link to the changing consitututional status of the UK here

Even more recent, last November Assistant CC Mark McEwan had warned about "organised gangs involved in smuggling and people trafficking would cross the border into NI if security tightens in GB ports."

So where does that leave us? The growing loyalist disatisfaction with the agreement will not lead to it being repealed. That leaves loyalists to take out sectarian inclinations out on the catholic Nationalist minority. It is a perceieved existential threat to the Union

This will be met by a responce from the Republican community, especially as the police back out from the situation and lose control of the situation. Democractic political options are shrinking due to a backdrop of growing sectarian brinkmanship