Tensions in Northern Ireland: Stability threatened?

Audio 02:32

Tensions have been mounting for several months within the Unionist community because of the Northern Irish protocol, this consequence of Brexit which places a border between the province and the rest of the United Kingdom.

A cut to the unity of the country for the unionist representatives.

© AFP / Paul Faith

By: Bruno Daroux Follow

6 mins

Can the violent clashes that have erupted in recent days in Northern Ireland between Catholics and Protestants, especially in Belfast, jeopardize the stability that Northern Ireland has known for more than twenty years?

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The answer is potentially yes, even if these incidents over the past few days, on both sides of the Catholic and Protestant districts of Belfast, the northern Irish capital, are, violent as they may have been, only the manifestation of a few hundreds of radicalized and worried young people.

What is reassuring is that the political parties of the two Northern Irish communities condemned the violence and promoted democratic debate to overcome differences.

So are British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his Irish counterpart.

Because if this violence continues, it could call into question the fragile balance on which the British Province has been living since the peace agreement of April 10, 1998.

This "

Good Friday agreement"

, as it is called, had almost ended. thirty years of "troubles" as they said at the time between Catholic Republicans, favorable to the attachment of their province to the Republic of Ireland, mainly grouped behind the IRA, the Irish Republican Army, and the Protestant unionists, fiercely attached maintaining Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom.

► To read also: Violence in Northern Ireland: a new thorn in the side of Boris Johnson

A pacification that took time

Even if it grants a large autonomy to the Province, it will be necessary to wait another nine years to witness a real political pacification between the two camps - it is in 2007 that the Saint Andrews agreement allows a cohabitation between a Unionist Prime Minister and a Republican Deputy Prime Minister.

In 2016, during the referendum on Brexit, voters in the province clearly voted in favor of staying in the European Union, with 56% of the votes cast.

Even as the main Unionist party, aligned with the London Conservatives, called for Brexit.

Consequences of Brexit

And the paradox today is that it is the Unionists especially who have been very upset against the concrete consequences of Brexit since the beginning of the year.

They who see themselves above all as the British accuse London of having betrayed them with what is called the Northern Irish protocol.

This text, to avoid the return of a land border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, which would undermine the Good Friday agreement, provides that all goods from Great Britain are subject to customs checks on arrival at ports in Northern Ireland.

► See also: Northern Ireland: Brexit again a source of tension

This exasperates the Unionists, who explain not without reason that there is now a

de facto

border

between Great Britain and Northern Ireland… in the Irish Sea.

And that therefore their future within the British Crown is threatened.

Ultimately, the demands to reunite Northern Ireland with Ireland will come to the fore.

It is this identity tension which is expressed all the more strongly today as little by little the Republican Catholics are becoming the majority in the province.

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