Belfast petrol bombs, too, are a Brussels problem!

A disturbing sight has returned to the Northern Ireland cities of Belfast and Derry, reminding mainland Brits of the three decades from 1969 when riots and bouts of terrorism marked the sectarian strife of “the Troubles.” Almost every night since March 30, cars and coaches have been set alight, and youths — directed by loyalist paramilitary godfathers-turned-gangsters — have hurled petrol bombs. Close to 90 police officers have been injured.
The clashes followed a decision by Northern Ireland’s justice
authorities not to prosecute 24 Sinn Fein politicians who last year attended a funeral for an IRA man, in defiance of Covid restrictions. Protestants loyal to the Union
with Britain complained of an
egregious example of “two-tier” policing favoring Catholic nationalists, while a crackdown on drug-dealing gangs associated with the loyalist paramilitaries has heightened tensions.
Some intractable political problems are resolved by benign neglect, a favoured tactic of Prime Minister Boris Johnson when he can get away with it. But this formula seldom works in Northern Ireland. Conflicts that are allowed to fester there have a way of erupting into violence.
Post-Covid, Johnson has two major challenges. First he has to smooth post-Brexit trade arrangements, and second he needs to settle the uneasy Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Scottish independence appears the more immediate threat but he neglects Northern Ireland at his peril. The prime minister is in natural sympathy with many British mainlanders who are bored by the province’s religious and nationalist quarrels and hope they will somehow go away. But they won’t.
A hundred years ago this May, Northern Ireland was created to accommodate Protestant unionists who resisted joining a majority Catholic state when Ireland won its independence from the British Empire. Nobody had wanted this solution, not even the Protestants. The province was then left to its own devices by politicians in London until anti-Catholic discrimination incubated the terrorist outrages of the Troubles 50 years later. Only a sustained effort by politicians in the UK, Ireland and the US halted a conflict that cost 3,500 lives.
The imperfect but hard fought Good Friday Agreement of 1998 got the gunmen on both sides to put down their weapons. Ireland gave up its constitutional claim to the North and the UK promised that if the people of the province voted to leave the Union that was their right. Nationalists and unionists would share power.
The border with the south would be open. Tony Blair rightly saw the peace deal as one of his greatest achievements, although honours were shared all around. Compromise and grinding attention to detail secured the agreement.
Now a renewed effort to pour oil on troubled waters needs to be made by London and Dublin. US President Joe Biden will give support. But Brussels must be part of the equation, too.
By summer it will be the traditional marching season in Northern Ireland, when annual parades by Protestants often spill over into sectarian violence.

—Bloomberg