It seems like a return to the bad old days: Belfast convulsed by eight days of vicious rioting, in which 32 police officers have been injured. For this we can credit the province’s politicians, who wound up the most volatile, fearful and angry elements of Northern Irish Unionism – and are now desperately trying to stuff the genie back in its Orange bottle.
The trouble started when Sinn Fein, who take every opportunity to chip away at the visible symbols of Britishness, triggered a vote to have the Union flag removed from Belfast City Council’s offices. The Alliance Party, the well-meaning anti-sectarian centrists who hold the balance of power, pushed through a compromise that allowed the flag to be flown on designated days. Members of the Unionist parties, who see Alliance as an electoral threat, promptly disseminated leaflets accusing it of treachery – and tut-tutted when mobs began attacking its offices, threatening its representatives and pelting the police with any missiles to hand.
The result was that when Hillary Clinton arrived for the Belfast leg of her lap of honour as Secretary of State, the TV cameras showed threatening mobs and wanton destruction. Hard-line Republicans, still practising the violence that Sinn Fein ultimately abandoned, made their own contribution, in the shape of a pipe bomb in Londonderry.
For her part, Mrs Clinton greeted both Peter Robinson, the DUP First Minister, and Martin McGuinness, his Sinn Fein deputy, with kisses. All made grave statements about violence having no place in today’s Northern Ireland. In London, Theresa Villiers, the Northern Ireland Secretary, gravely informed the Commons that: “There is nothing British about what [the rioters] are doing; they are dishonouring and shaming the flag of our country.”
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