RISING TEMPERATURES
In late September 2021, the four main unionist parties issued a joint declaration against the protocol, claiming that it damaged the economic and constitutional status of the North within the UK. Jeffrey Donaldson and Doug Beattie were joined by TUV leader and MP Jim Allister, and Billy Hutchinson of the PUP, a councillor in Belfast City Council.
‘The Irish Sea border must go. … It undermines the union and is costing Northern Ireland £850 million a year,’ Donaldson said at Stormont, where the four leaders appeared in a video message that accompanied the statement. UUP leader Doug Beattie asserted that the protocol ‘undermines the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement’ while Allister said that removing the protocol is the imperative for anyone ‘who wishes to oppose the all-Ireland that the protocol is seeking to design’. According to Belfast Live, Hutchinson claimed that the ‘British government tore up the Act of Union and also the Belfast Agreement. In doing this they diluted our Britishness’.
Although the protocol was the pretext for the display of unionist unity, it was clear that the impending Assembly elections of May 2022, and the prospect of a Sinn Féin first minister at Stormont, were also exercising the party leaders. It was also inevitable that the joint declaration would revive tensions over the protocol among some loyalists, prompting concerns among nationalists and within the Irish government about the prospect of renewed street violence.
In a detailed analysis of the protocol in the Irish Times a day earlier, Donaldson and Allister insisted that it had ‘ripped up’ all the guarantees contained in the Belfast Agreement. They wrote:
A central pillar of the agreement is that it would be wrong to make any change in the status of Northern Ireland, save with the consent of the majority of its people. This consent principle was central to assuring both unionists and nationalists that the future direction of Northern Ireland would be decided democratically and not by force or coercion. However, the protocol has introduced seismic changes in the constitutional position of Northern Ireland.
The two leaders claimed that the UK government has admitted in court that the passing of the European Withdrawal Act, and in particular the protocol section of that act, ‘impliedly repealed’ article six of the Act of Union 1800 and removed the principal benefit of the union: namely the guarantee of unimpeded trade between the countries that make up the UK.
Donaldson and Allister asserted that, as a result of the protocol:
60 per cent of the laws governing our economy will be made in Brussels not in Belfast or London. They must be implemented without any discussion let alone possibility of amendment by either the Assembly or the Westminster parliament.
If they are not implemented and applied in Northern Ireland then the European Court of Justice [ECJ] is empowered to punish the UK and impose whatever sanctions it decides, making the ECJ a supreme court for Northern Ireland.
They referred to the UK government’s command paper, Northern Ireland Protocol: the way forward, which was presented to Westminster in July 2021 and that recognised the need to replace the protocol. The two party leaders continued:
time is running out on the October 1st deadline when the full force of EU barriers to trade between Britain and Northern Ireland are due to be put into force. Time is also running out politically.
In light of this, unionists cannot continue to operate structures set up to provide for co-operation between Northern Ireland and the Republic when the more vital relationship with the rest of our own country is being smashed. We believe we would be failing in our duty to the people of Northern Ireland if we were to continue to operate the North/South bodies set up under the Belfast Agreement while our links to the UK are being ripped apart.
They also claimed that their efforts to remove the protocol had helped to restrain more extreme elements of unionism:
The reason why the unrest has not spilled over into greater disorder is due to the work which we, our parties and community workers, have been doing to prevent it. We have no desire to see rioting in our streets, young people getting criminal records and damaging headlines across the world resulting in a flight of investment from our already-damaged economy.
Both politicians had opposed the GFA: it had prompted Donaldson to leave the UUP in 2004 and Allister to depart the DUP in 2007 over its agreement to share power with Sinn Féin. Speaking at the Balmoral Agricultural Show days before the joint declaration, Allister said that he would prefer a return to direct rule from Westminster than living with a Sinn Féin first minister in the Assembly at Stormont.
The perception of a pan-unionist offensive in the face of the protocol was dented when UUP leader Doug Beattie made it clear that his support for the initiative did not imply a potential pact in any future election. Indeed, Beattie had previously informed some of his closest supporters that his appearance with the other unionist leaders at the bonfire in north Belfast in July was to deflect any suggestion by the other parties that he was less than enthusiastic about the protocol protests. For the same reason, they suggested, he signed the joint declaration. However, Beattie did make a clear distinction between positive and negative unionism when he clarified his position on the election pact issue in the Belfast Telegraph on 25 September 2021, in advance of the Stormont launch of the anti-protocol alliance:
As a political party we are confident in our pro-Union message. It is for others to ask if they wish to vote for positive unionism or negative unionism, to vote for a vision for the people of Northern Ireland focused on the future or a backward protectionist, power-driven vision focused on self-preservation. If it is the former, then the vote will be for the Ulster Unionist Party and a Northern Ireland confident with its place within the United Kingdom.
Notwithstanding the nuances of the inter-unionist relationships, David Frost ensured that the heat was maintained under the protocol issue when he declared, almost on a weekly basis, that the British government was close to triggering Article 16 of the NI protocol, which would lead to a renegotiation of its terms with the EU. He also echoed the unionist insistence that the ECJ should have no part to play in the administration of the law in the North, even though it is the ultimate arbiter of any trade dispute within the EU common trade area.
In early October, Frost said he intended to send new legal texts to the EU to support his proposed changes to the protocol, which would eliminate the majority of checks and certification requirements on goods made in the UK coming into the North and remove the enforcement role of the ECJ.
The Labour Party MP and shadow NI secretary of state, Louise Haigh, accused Frost of inflaming tensions by discrediting a deal he had himself negotiated. ‘Tory Ministers should show some responsibility,’ she said, ‘and do what businesses across Northern Ireland have been telling them for months – get round the table and negotiate a veterinary agreement to help lower the barriers they created down the Irish Sea.’
Meanwhile, Maroš Šefčovič and his officials had assiduously engaged with business, farming and community interests in the North to establish the precise nature of their objections to the protocol in a move which led to a complete overhaul of its provisions.
In mid-October, Šefčovič surprised both the objectors within unionism and the UK government by eliminating 80 per cent of the checks on food and other items and some 50 per cent of customs requirements on goods entering the North and associated with the protocol. ‘We have completely turned our rules upside down and inside out,’ Šefčovič was quoted in the Irish Times as saying. ‘If I’m talking about 80 per cent reduction in checks, about half of the customs formalities to be reduced, about express lanes, about all really bespoke solutions, I think that it’s quite obvious that we are really doing our utmost. And I hope that this will be reciprocated by our UK partners.’
The proposals included a change to EU law to allow medicines to continue to be distributed from British hubs, special exceptions to allow fresh meat goods deemed to be important to ‘national identity’, and formal structures to involve stakeholders and authorities in the North in overseeing the arrangements.
The solution offered by the EU effectively ended most checks on goods moving from the UK to supermarkets shelves in the North, while half of previous customs formalities were abandoned. The solution was welcomed by the Irish government and non-unionist parties, but Donaldson described them, on Mydup.com, as unsustainable ‘short-term fixes’. He said, ‘Short-term fixes that reduce checks and potentially give the appearance of easements compared to the current time will not of themselves solve the problem of divergence within the United Kingdom.’
The ECJ also remained an issue for Donaldson, even though the UK government and unionists had accepted its jurisdiction when the protocol was first agreed.
For many observers, including in the Irish government, both the DUP and Frost appeared determined to maintain the tensions surrounding the protocol and to encourage the small but vocal street protests by some loyalist groups in east Belfast, Newtownabbey and other parts of the North. By threatening to collapse the executive if the protocol was not removed in its present form, and warning of the dangers of unrest, Donaldson was also placing himself in a potentially compromised position if, and when, Boris Johnson altered course.
As Alex Kane wrote of Donaldson in the Irish Times in October 2021:
He is the third DUP leader this year and opinion polls have his party at its lowest level of support in almost 30 years. He needs to take control of the unionist agenda if he is to survive, and that has meant provoking a showdown with Johnson and threatening possible collapse and lengthy instability. His problem, of course, is that Johnson has let down (although party representatives prefer the term ‘betrayed’) the DUP twice since he became prime minister. The protocol is primarily his doing: pushed through to ‘get Brexit done’.
But triggering Article 16 of the protocol – which is what Donaldson wants him to do – would bring nothing but a huge confrontation with the EU, which is the very last thing Johnson wants right now, not least because vast swathes of the regenerated English nationalism which delivered election victory for him two years ago don’t actually give a stuff about Northern Ireland.
Noting that the appearance by unionist leaders at fringe events of the recent Conservative Party conference did not appear to excite middle England, and that the protocol went unmentioned in Johnson’s speech, Kane concluded:
I think the feeling in UK government circles is there is no real appetite across unionism for a fight with the government, especially one it has no guarantee of winning. Yes, there are clearly elements of unionism and loyalism very unhappy with the protocol, but it’s very unlikely they have the numbers or the strategy for a long period of protest. Johnson, I reckon, believes unionism will finally learn to live with the protocol, albeit with a few changes to help businesses.
Community worker Tommy Winstone felt there was little appetite among working-class unionists for street protests against the protocol. Those taking place were small, and any violence that erupted was largely unorganised, although he maintained that social media was used to bring young people on to the streets, as happened in Lanark Way at Easter:
Honestly, social media, Facebook, that’s what done it. This year was pretty quiet, a couple of incidents have happened around Lanark Way, and at the end of the day there was a bus burnt. But sure, there’s been thousands of buses burnt here over the years.
There was no organisation behind it, for want of a better explanation. Those people who were connected to organisations were on the street trying to quell some of it. The tabloids were asking, ‘Why are the people of influence not doing something?’ Well, they all were. They don’t want it; people don’t want it. Is there some people behind it? Probably.
Jamie Bryson had shared platforms with Jim Allister at the more recent public rallies against the protocol and was involved several years ago in demonstrations over restrictions on the flying of the Union Jack. Bryson has been identified in the media as a key loyalist organiser of the protests. Winstone said:
I think Jamie is his own worst enemy sometimes. Jamie is a capable guy if he could be stuck to doing one thing. He’s a bright kid but I think the problem with Jamie, is he wants the finger in a whole lot of different pies and people would use him.
According to Winstone, among those using the protests for their own benefit are a group of criminals and drug dealers calling themselves the East Belfast UVF but who are not affiliated with the paramilitary group:
I think there’s a lot of people that were once connected to the UVF [but] are now involved in criminality … [in] criminal gangs. People [previously] within the UVF have told the police that. The police say, ‘Well, why don’t you do something about it?’ Well, what would the UVF do about it? Go and shoot them? And then what? It’s up to the powers that be to take them out. Like, everybody knows who they are … but they’re still doing it. You have it in your own place with the Kinahans and the Hutches. Everybody knows who they are, but they’re still doing it.
Winstone said many people suspect that the PSNI does not interfere with some of these criminals as they are ‘touts’, or police informants – but that he is not so sure. ‘Touting what?’ he said. ‘There’s no paramilitary activity going on so if they’re touting anything, they’re touting on each other. That’s how the police get their information … but then [the police should] do something about it. Let the people see that you’re going to do something about it.’
Winstone has little faith in Jim Allister or the DUP to resolve the problems in the Shankill community where his Northern Ireland Alternatives office is located. He was not impressed by the image of the TUV and other unionist leaders standing with his former UVF colleague, Billy Hutchinson, at Stormont to launch their joint declaration against the protocol. Neither did he accept a statement by his former co-accused, Hutchinson, that the killing of two young Catholic workers, for which they were both jailed in the early 1970s, helped to prevent a united Ireland and that he had no regrets.
It’s bullshit. I have regrets. Sometimes, you have to understand that people play to a crowd; people play to the lowest common denominator all the time because they think they have to. I’m me. My past is 50 years ago. I don’t want to keep living there. I want to look forward. I want to give opportunities to young people to look forward and move forward. Hence the work that we do across the divide. I went to prison nearly 50 years ago and the Falls Road was there, and the Shankill Road was there, and it’s still the same. Same people living there, maybe some have moved on, but it’s the same communities. I’d say 50 years from now it won’t be the same communities.
He also has little confidence in the LCC, purportedly the voice of the loyalist paramilitaries that are no longer active, and even less in its chair David Campbell. ‘Some of them [the LCC] are doing it genuinely wanting to make things better,’ said Winstone. ‘I think they’ve backed the wrong horse, if I’m being honest, with David Campbell. If they’re doing things, they should be doing things off their own back.’
In November 2021, Campbell, a dairy farmer in county Antrim, was appointed by agriculture minister Edwin Poots to the board of the Agri-food & Biosciences Institute (Afbi). SDLP MLA Patsy McGlone told the Irish News that the appointment was ‘baffling’ and that he was ‘incredulous’ that Campbell had not declared his political activity, as required by guidelines for those taking up such posts.
Winstone was even more dismissive of the unionist politicians of the DUP and TUV who come to collect the votes of people in his community but do nothing for them. On top of that, the DUP were, in his view, sucked into supporting the protocol without realising that it led to a watered-down version of the UK. He said:
The DUP gets sucked into something and I think they were left short. They believed all that Boris was telling them and we all know that Boris can tell lies and prove it. He’s absolutely fantastic at it. But I know this from whatever shade you’re coming from, unionism will never accept this protocol and will do all in their power to get rid of it. People in unionist communities were really pissed off with the DUP and I think they’re in for a good awakening. People tend to knee-jerk react here. We don’t vote for the party of our choice, we vote to keep people out here. But I think that’s starting to maybe change a little bit.
I am very critical of the DUP. They accused the Ulster Unionists of being big-house unionists – the fur-coat brigade basically – and [that] they were a working-class party coming up, but now they’ve turned that completely. They are now the fur-coat brigade; they don’t get down and dirty; they don’t engage with ‘loyalists’ for want of a better term, they pay lip service a lot of the time.
They are frightened that working-class loyalist communities are doing things for themselves because they think that it’s maybe a movement to take over from them. Talking to many people that are in this type of work, they’re sick with the politics, they’re interested in community and helping with development of community. I think certain individuals within the DUP see well-meaning loyalist community workers as a threat to their livelihoods.
Now Donaldson and Allister are seeking cover from former loyalist activists like Hutchinson and the PUP to join with them in the battle against the protocol. ‘They all met up in the Shankill so many years ago,’ Winstone said, ‘and Allister wouldn’t sit at the table with some people because they were ex-prisoners or whatever. I think it still bothers him. He’s a politician, you know what I mean? He can stomach it when it suits him.’
Asked about claims by some Sinn Féin councillors that they’re seeing an increase in the members of the loyalist working-class community coming to their clinics to deal with fundamental issues like housing and poverty, Winstone is not surprised:
Yeah, I know people who’ve done it. It’s practical stuff and I think people do it for their own reasons obviously. Maybe they’re not getting any help from their own local councillors. Most Sinn Féin councillors, and now probably MLAs, have come up through the street politics. Most of our politicians are career politicians, they’ve come from universities. They haven’t really got down and dirty; they haven’t got into the street politics. With the odd exception of the odd councillor here and there but they’re few and far between.
Yet despite the work NIA and its counterparts across the North are doing, there are still groups of young people taking to the streets to riot. On 1 November 2021, just after the end of October deadline set by Donaldson and others for the removal of the protocol, a bus was hijacked in a loyalist area of Newtownards, County Down. Then, on 3 November, street violence erupted on the two nights following a loyalist protest against the protocol in the Shankill Road, close to Winstone’s office. Some of the loyalist protestors sought to engage in fighting with nationalist youths at a community interface on the Springfield Road in west Belfast. This followed reports by community leaders in the nationalist community that loyalists, over previous weeks, were entering the area and seeking to provoke young people into a row. On 7 November, a bus was set alight after four men jumped on board and ordered passengers off near the loyalist Rathcoole estate in Newtownabbey, north of Belfast.
The protests, however, were minor compared to earlier in the year. As the end of the first year of the protocol approached, it became apparent that many in the wider unionist business community recognised the longer-term benefits of remaining in the EU customs and trade area. Political unionism, and the DUP in particular, was also seeking a way to retreat with dignity from their campaign against the protocol when they saw that a compromise between the British government and the EU was a more likely outcome. Going to war over a trade dispute was not an option.