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Loyalist march outside Belfast city hall
Loyalists protest outside Belfast city hall over council's decision to restrict the number of days the union flag is flown. Photograph: Peter Muhly/AFP/Getty Images
Loyalists protest outside Belfast city hall over council's decision to restrict the number of days the union flag is flown. Photograph: Peter Muhly/AFP/Getty Images

Belfast union flag dispute is lightning rod for loyalist disaffection

This article is more than 11 years old
Small-scale protest in Northern Ireland escalates to month of violence with fears disruption will spread south of the border

After a month of violent protests that left more than 40 police officers injured, dozens of rioters arrested, live rounds being fired on the streets of Belfast, politicians' offices torched and now the prospect of the home of Northern Ireland's first minister being picketed, the union flag dispute has become a lightning rod for widespread loyalist disaffection with the political process.

A spontaneous protest movement about Belfast city council's decision in early December to restrict the number of days the union flag flies above city hall has morphed into a wider organisation whose actions, its opponents claim, are destabilising Northern Ireland.

Now, as the smoke clears from the battlegrounds of the dispute, especially in working class east Belfast, alienated loyalists are threatening to take their protests south of the border. The newly constituted Ulster People's Forum will hold a protest rally outside the Irish parliament next Saturday, as well as a series of demonstrations close to one of the most unstable sectarian interfaces in Belfast.

A loyalist working class/underclass disconnected from the mainstream unionist parties has established a movement that has become a fresh focus for many other grievances ranging from social deprivation, poor educational attainment to the alleged maltreatment of unionist victims of the Troubles. Some of its demands are wildly unrealistic, such as the reintroduction of direct rule and the suspension of devolution.

The leaders emerging range from a former soldier who sells Nazi uniforms from a shop in Carrickfergus to veteran loyalists previously lukewarm about their paramilitary leadership's support for the peace process and the Good Friday agreement.

Many of the protests that later turned violent have been organised on an ad hoc basis through social media. The "foot soldiers" of the disorder are mostly young men and teenagers wearing the uniform of hoodie and football scarf wrapped around face as they confront police lines. And while some loyalist paramilitaries have been in the vanguard, such as members of the Ulster Volunteer Force in east Belfast, the leaders of that group and the Ulster Defence Association have been unprepared for the depth of anger in their communities.

Leading figures in the UVF have said they are concerned that extreme, anti-ceasefire elements, including loyalists with connections to the far right, are trying to exploit the flag issue.

Victims campaigner and Ulster People's Forum spokesman Willie Frazer said three coaches would take 150 people to Dublin this weekend. "We will be challenging the Irish government to change its flag flying policy and stop flying the tricolour 365 days per year over the Dáil. If nationalists insist we can't do this in Belfast, in our capital, then there should be full equality on this island. They should take down their flag."

Frazer added that among those coming to Dublin would be unionist victims of the IRA during the Troubles.

"They are coming down to tell the taoiseach, Enda Kenny, and his government that they have reneged on their promise to meet and listen to them, to hear their concerns about collusion between the Irish state and the IRA."

He also confirmed that the nascent protest movement would be targeting the home of Northern Ireland's first minister and Democratic Unionist leader, Peter Robinson.

"When the idea that we march on Peter Robinson's home was raised at a meeting of the Ulster People's Forum last week in Newtownards it was met with wild cheering. There is a lot of pressure on to picket Robinson's home, to make it clear to him on his doorstep that he is letting the loyalist, Protestant people down," added Frazer.

He claimed that there had been meetings about the flag dispute from Enniskillen in the west to Bangor in the east. But the movement's critics believe their hardline rhetoric is enabling dissident republicans to portray themselves as defenders of embattled nationalists and Catholics worried about loyalist attacks.

The trouble continued last night, as loyalists attacked police in east Belfast on a fourth consecutive night of violence linked to the flag dispute.

Riot squad officers separated a mob of loyalist youths gathered at Castlereagh Street from a group of nationalists from the Catholic Short Strand district.

Fireworks and other missiles were hurled at police during the disorder, which broke out about 9pm, although it was not on the same scale as the trouble over three previous nights.

The Dublin protest contains both danger and heavy irony: the Continuity IRA has warned loyalists to stay away from the Irish capital this weekend; the demonstrators are arriving in a state that itself has lost its economic sovereignty to the IMF and EU and where there is little sympathy for the international image of Ireland portrayed by the northern protests.

A number of planned loyalist demonstrations close to a sectarian divide in east Belfast alongside ongoing violence are also in danger of "creating fresh space for republican dissident terrorists", according the MP for the area. Naomi Long, the Alliance MP who has been the subject of death threats because of her party's role in the Belfast city council flag vote, was responding to reports that republican opponents of the peace process have offered to "defend" the Catholic enclave of Short Strand as sectarian tensions heighten in the east of the city.

Following 72 hours of street disorder since last Thursday culminating in gunfire being directed at police lines on Saturday evening along the Newtonards Road, Long said the increasingly sectarian nature of the protests was "enabling dissident republicans to offer themselves as defenders of their people".

"There are reflections here of 1969 and 1970 when people feeling under threat unfortunately looked towards paramilitary groups to defend them. Today those behind these supposedly peaceful loyalists protests ought to realise they are in danger of creating a new space for the republican dissidents to thrive, to claim they can defend people in, say, the Short Strand from loyalists even though people there support the peace process and the political settlement. They [the protestors] are enabling republican dissidents to thrive.

"In addition, these protests and riots are draining away police resources from the fight against dissident republican terrorism. In the middle of all this trouble we had a dissident republican attempt to murder a police officer and his family in my constituency. So not only are these protests gifting the dissidents a chance to recruit they are diverting police time and resources away from countering the threat from the new IRA, Continuity IRA and so on."

Long and her party have been under fire since the flag dispute erupted in early December. The Alliance party secured a compromise at Belfast city hall allowing the union flag to be flown atop the council building on 17 designated days. Sinn Féin and the SDLP wanted to do away with the union flag altogether but Alliance, which holds the balance of powerin Belfast, succeeded with its motion. This was not enough for hardline loyalists, though, and what began as a reactionary protest has now assumed far more threatening overtones.

More on this story

More on this story

  • Belfast peace protesters rally against union flag violence

  • Belfast: 'It's not just the flag. They want to take everything British away'

  • Belfast riots lead to questioning of police tactics over flag dispute

  • Belfast police and protesters clash in more loyalist rioting

  • Belfast braced for 'Operation Standstill' by loyalist protesters

  • Belfast riots unacceptable, says Labour's Northern Ireland spokesman

  • Northern Ireland's first minister urges unionists to solve flag row peacefully

  • Northern Ireland police release riots video of community centre break-in

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