Left: After a break for the funeral of the Duke Of Edinburgh, the Loyalist Communities Council has resumed its protest of Brexit with a banner campaign (Irish News). The banner seems to be offering viewers the choice of one of four affiliations (“Europe – UK – USA – Ireland – choose one or the other! It’s your decision!) but the “correct” answer is at the bottom (and in the faded background of the Covenant): “Ulster is British and this we will always maintain!” even though “Political leaders are not listening!” (including, perhaps, Arlene Foster and the DUP.) The Belfast Agreement (Good Friday Agreement) allows people in Northern Ireland to identify themselves as Irish, British, or both.

Right: “Peace or protocol – it’s your decision”, aimed at Leo Varadkar on the day that he again became Taoiseach (Irish Times) and repeating his words back to him from a speech in 2018: “The possibility of a return to violence is very real”. At that meeting, Varadkar was anticipating violence by anti-Agreement republicans in response to customs posts on the Ireland-Northern Ireland border, and brought a newspaper describing the death of four customs officials, two lorry drivers, and three IRA volunteers at a Monaghan post in 1972 (BelTel).

The authors of this poster are not known, but the parallel statement (mutatis mutandis) would be that anti-Protocol agents – perhaps the “young loyalists” that the UVF “can no longer contain” (UK Daily; see also RTÉ from November) – might return to acts of violence such as the 1974 “Dublin & Monaghan Bombings” that killed 33 people – in the background of the poster is part of a photograph (included below) of bomb damage in Talbot Street – if the Protocol’s “Irish Sea border” is not removed.

Ballysillan Road and (below) Oakmount Drive (near Mount Vernon), north Belfast.

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2022 Paddy Duffy
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