To those who live on the mainland of Britain, the sectarian tensions of Northern Ireland are hard to understand, not because of their complexity, but because of their ability to inflame. This is Westminster’s, rather than Belfast’s, fault. For far too many decades successive British governments have been unwilling to face down the loyalists in all their many manifestations, and read them the riot act.
What should be said is this. When you wish to join a club or a similar organisation, the applicants do not set the rules of the club; they undertake to abide by them. Therefore loyalists need to be told in very tough and uncompromising language, since they understand no other, that loyalty to prejudice and provocation are not qualities recognised as valid for inclusion within the borders of the United Kingdom. Marching through residential areas predominantly occupied by Catholics in order to rub their noses in the consequences of the Protestant victory at the Battle of the Boyne centuries ago, is a calculated insult which would never be permitted on the mainland, any more than the dozens of other ways in which these so called loyalists have chosen to assert themselves in a litany of flagrant and abusive practices and discrimination, which they glorify as their culture.
Loyalist leaders, including agitators and paramilitaries, should be assembled and told that either this culture is at once amended to fall into line with all the practices, customs and laws of the rest of the Kingdom to which they pledge their allegiance, or they will be flung out. A referendum held in the whole of the UK, to cast Ulster to the mercy of Dublin would be carried with ease, if loyalists now setting about provoking the collapse of the peace process through their yobbish demonstrations, flag waving and whatever, succeed in turning the clock back.
Moderate loyalist leaders know that. They need to get busy to restore normality.