Belfast burns again, or so the headlines would have you believe. Last night’s unrest has left residents shaken and the British government scrambling to promise a security review. But let us not pretend this is a surprise.
We are witnessing a cyclical return to the sectarian tensions that have always lurked beneath the surface of Northern Irish society. The peace process, for all its noble intentions, merely papered over the cracks. Now the paper is alight.
The government’s pledge to ‘review’ security is a familiar refrain, one that echoes the appeasement strategies of the late Roman Empire, where barbarians were bought off only to return with greater demands. The question we must ask is not whether order will be restored, but whether the underlying rot of communal identity politics can ever be excised. Or are we destined to repeat the tragedies of Belfast’s past, trapped in a cycle of violence and vacillation?
The answer, as ever, lies in the courage to confront uncomfortable truths. But courage, like civility, is in short supply in this decadent age.
