Anger and division among loyalists over the Northern Ireland protocol
The guns are still packed away, but the threat is there
THE GOOD FRIDAY AGREEMENT of 1998 brought peace to Northern Ireland after 30 years of bloodshed. But rather than removing the gun from society, it pushed it out of view. Thanks to Brexit, and a new border in the Irish Sea to which the British government agreed in order to avoid a hard one on the island of Ireland, the threat of violence has re-emerged.
Earlier this month the Loyalist Communities Council (LCC) wrote to Boris Johnson saying that its members were withdrawing their support for the 1998 agreement. Red tape and checks on goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, they said, “undermines the basis on which the Combined Loyalist Military Command agreed their 1994 ceasefire”.
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline "A polite threat"
Britain March 13th 2021
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- The royal interview puts racism in Britain back in the spotlight
- Britain will drift from Europe, but not very far
- The cost of Brexit becomes apparent
- Anger and division among loyalists over the Northern Ireland protocol
- Two conservative upstarts aim to disrupt British TV news
- Less barley, more deer: how covid-19 is changing rural Britain
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