Northern Ireland is a complicated place with a difficult history that has been caught in cycles of violence for what feels like forever. The reasons for it are never one-dimensional and they’re never just about external factors or high level politics.
Throughout my life it’s always followed a pattern: tensions rising, politicians trying to stoke those tensions to maintain their power, sparking point and a release in the form of disruption on the streets. Finally, belated and often cackhanded condemnations by said pol.
It’s against a backdrop of an unfolding Brexit - that was never going to give what the DUP / British govt promised - enduring paramilitary activities, the spark point of an IRA funeral, poor political l’ship, pandemic exhaustion ... It wasn’t inevitable but it was clearly set up.
If you’re not from NI, not familiar with it, or haven’t closely followed what has been unfolding for the past months / years then try to avoid inserting your own take on what is a complicated situation. This isn’t just about a protocol or Brexit but it’s not separate either.
While the local situation creates the circumstances - rioting still isn’t rare in Ni, it just isn’t usually reported much outside - the uncertainties of Brexit are now an enduring backdrop that has reactivated the national question. It’s mishandling does have consequences.
The factors that aren’t always filtering outside of NI is social deprivation (rioting in always in areas that have least benefited from peace); paramilitary (criminal) gangs that haven’t really gone away; long-term recourse to recreational rioting in tense situations.
Ever in the backdrop is a dysfunctional society that it has been politically expedient for both nation-states to ignore while politics is dominated by sectarian head counts. Normalization of a post-conflict society has not included desegregation so two communities are maintained.
At election time sectarianism is whipped up though real and fake crises to ensure two communities are maintained and their most extreme voices are revoted in. In the meantime, peace dividends do not drip down, political corruption is not punished and the cycle continues.
It sometimes feels that these cyclical crisis points are as inevitable as they are stubbornly hard to displace - to put bluntly: it suits too many people and especially political parties for divisions to be maintained and this unhealthy situation to continue.
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