Northern Ireland’s Loyalists Lose Patience: Is the Peace Process Threatened?

Famously inattentive to detail, Boris Johnson will have known little about the Loyalist Communities Council (LCC) before they wrote to him this week. The loyalist heartlands in working class districts of Belfast, Portadown and Londonderry are some distance from the north London streets where the Prime Minister is at home socially, culturally, and politically. Where the Conservatives have a concern about the union of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, it has been focused on addressing the problem of Scottish separatism. With Welsh nationalism primarily rooted in language over politics, the Prime Minister’s fractious Union Unit at No.10 was expected to spend its time opposing the Scottish National Party. This week however, Ulster has returned to the agenda.

The LCC brings together representatives of the former loyalist paramilitary groups who supported the peace process - the Ulster Defence Association, Ulster Volunteer Force and Red Hand Commando. That peace process led to the eventual Good Friday Agreement between the British and Irish governments, endorsed by referendums on both sides of the Irish border. The agreement established an assembly at Stormont (which has worked only in fits and starts since) guaranteed the existing constitutional position of Northern Ireland unless changed by consent, and delivered the release of imprisoned loyalist and republican paramilitaries.

The years since have not necessarily been kind to those loyalists who put down the gun. Their political parties have never replicated the success of the IRA’s political wing, Sinn Fein. Many loyalist communities resemble those in ‘left behind’ towns on the mainland – there are significant problems with crime, drugs and family breakdown. In some areas these trends are getting worse – the loyalist town of Coleraine saw 14 gun attacks connected to drugs in 2020 – none in 2019. Despite a degree of economic progress, social divisions evident in the troubles continue. Over a decade ago, when I interviewed Professor Richard English, then at Queen’s University Belfast, he commented ‘the communities loyalist paramilitaries come from – they don’t send their children to Queen’s.’

If internally loyalism faces significant challenges, politically there is some evidence of a rallying cry on constitutional matters. Unionist voters were divided over Brexit, although it was supported by the largest political grouping, the Democratic Unionist Party. As in England, social class seems to have been a determinant feature – working class unionist voters tended to support leave, more middle-class unionist voters, to remain. What is bringing loyalists together now and forms the thrust of the LCC’s letter to the Prime Minister, is opposition to the Northern Ireland protocol, agreed by the United Kingdom and European Union (EU) in the Brexit negotiations.

The EU was not a signatory to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, and played little or no part in the peace process. But as the new Ireland north and south experienced cross border initiatives and generous EU funding, republican attitudes towards Brussels began to shift. Sinn Fein in particular flipped their position in recent years from staunch opposition to the European project, to open support. The need to respect a key aspect of the 1998 agreement – the removal of military installations and border posts between the Republic and Northern Ireland – became a recurring theme in both Sinn Fein and the Irish government’s lobbying in the run up to Brexit. Yet how could the European Union maintain the purity of its single market without border checks, somewhere, between the Irish Republic and the UK?

As David Campbell of the LCC states ‘we entirely understand the strong representations from Irish nationalists that there should be no hard border on the island of Ireland.’ The Northern Ireland protocol ‘solves’ this question by instead placing a border in the Irish sea – between Britain and Northern Ireland. That is a deal breaker for loyalists, as it creates barriers for goods, services and people between Northern Ireland and the British mainland. Campbell insists the protocol ‘gives effect to the Irish nationalist position at the expense of the unionist position.’

It is the next section of the loyalist intervention which ought to cause concern across Britain and Ireland. The LCC declares that the Northern Ireland protocol undermines the 1994 loyalist ceasefire and their later support for the Belfast agreement. Campbell goes on to inform the Prime Minister ‘I have been instructed to advise you that the loyalist groupings are herewith withdrawing their support for the Belfast agreement and its institutions’.

There appears no threat or desire to return to the gun attacks and bombings that dominated the years 1969 – 1994. But Northern Ireland’s loyalists are once again uniting, against what they see as a threat to the union. And that is a problem for Boris Johnson.