Thread by @Macerty

Democracy or intimidation? They did it in 1912 against Home Rule and again in November, 1985 against the Anglo-Irish agreement with coincidentally over 100,000 attending the rally at Belfast City Hall. Now NI loyalists are banging the drums of division and strife once again!

https://twitter.com/darranmarshall/status/1357709672858451972

The Irish government’s foreign affairs minister, Simon Coveney has reiterated what Margaret Thatcher said at the time of the protests against the AIA. There will be no change to the NI protocol as ‘it is an international agreement’ between Ireland and Britain as much as the EU.

Yet NI loyalists don’t seem to get the message or learn the lessons of the past that political intransigence doesn’t win friends in Westminster, Dublin or the US and these are friends they cannot afford to rub the wrong way if they hope to further their cause.

Instead of becoming engaged with an all-Ireland economy and new political institutions, NI loyalists want to turn the clock back to 1912 and dig their heels in on vetoing any attempt to accommodate the increasingly diverse or pluralist nature of Northern Irish society.

Their badge of Britishness is little more than an excuse to deny nationalists a rights based society that caters for recognition of the Irish Language, power sharing based not on size of party electoral vote but on a rotational basis for offices of first & deputy first minister

Any fears around unionists being denied or having their cultural identity diminished as a result of any change around the current constitutional arrangements within the U.K. is being deliberately hyped up by loyalist leaders and a dangerous false narrative promoted in its place.

Such false narratives include unionists being discriminated against in any new Ireland where nationalists would be in a majority. That has simply not happened in the 26 counties or ROI since its creation as an Irish state in 1922.

There is absolutely no firm evidence that Protestants as a clearly defined community or group, have been discriminated against during the decades of the influence of the Catholic Church in Southern Ireland in education and right to practice their denominational christian faith.

With the declining attendance at churches and the dissolution of the link between church and state in the ROI, Northern Ireland loyalists cannot use the old stick of ‘Home Rule is Rome Rule’ to rally unionists to its banner of a Protestant NI for a Protestant people.

Instead they’ve resorted to stereotyping Northern Irish identity and tagging it all under the labels of British or Irish, not both. NI loyalists are deliberately attempting to polarise the communities in N. Ireland in order to exert control over them and their choice of identity

Control and its favourite weapon, intimidation of ‘the other side’ has been brought out of the dusty cupboard once again and polished up with a brand new take on a tiresome old jaded theme of ‘Britishness’.

Instead of Rome meddling in NI affairs, the newly perceived threat to the union has been recast along with a brand new cast of Eurocrats as a result of the N. Ireland Protocol and the new enemy...the EU.

The DUP and loyalist paramilitary groups are forging a new alliance around this theme of the dark side of the EU in order to save face over backing Brexit in the first place against the will of the majority of NI voters.

Loyalists and the DUP have been thrown a lifeline or ripe instrument for propaganda over the recent hasty invoking of article 16 by EU officials in relation to the availability of vaccines row which the DUP and loyalists are trying to inflate for their own agenda.

No doubt they will milk it for all its worth but one inescapable truth stares them in the face that runs counter to any idea of an EU as the villain and that is that NI has been the beneficiary of huge funding by the EU for a whole range of community and infrastructural projects.

It was not the EU that brought about Brexit but a toxic deal between the then British PM, Theresa May and the DUP. The same DUP continued to betray the will of the people of NI in another deal with Boris Johnson that also impacted on loyalist communities as much as nationalists.

Therefore any betrayal must be placed at the door of the DUP & Boris Johnson, their ‘British’ Prime Minister. Being British these days rather than Irish or European doesn’t appear to be paying and not worth all the banging on about that loyalists or the DUP would have us think.

It’s time for discussion not confrontation over how best to protect NI interests from a ruthless and incompetent government at Westminster first and foremost! Inclusive dialogue not threats and a calm atmosphere of unity before division is needed right now.

@threadreaderapp please #unroll thanks