The political climate in Northern Ireland has always been reflected in its graffiti. In nationalist and unionist areas, slogans and murals commemorating aspects of the Troubles are still common, though the paramilitary emphasis has declined in recent decades. Years ago, a particularly unsettling mural in Derry depicted a skeleton waving a Union Jack, dressed in army fatigues and trampling over dead Catholics on a battlefield. In the background, you could see the Bogside — a republican area of the city — razed to the ground and still burning.
Such provocative imagery may no longer exist, but today’s graffiti is just as revealing as ever. If you wander around the staunchly unionist areas of Belfast and Derry, you will note a few recurring phrases that express the extent of the opposition to the Northern Ireland Protocol. “No Surrender”, which was once the common refrain, has been replaced by “No Irish Sea Border”. With Sinn Féin now the largest political party in the region, and the Catholic population outnumbering Protestants for the first time, whisperings of a united Ireland are growing in volume. Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill has already spoken of a “unity referendum”, and the DUP’s Philip Brett has cautioned against seeing the most recent census as “some sort of mini-referendum on the position of Northern Ireland in the UK”.
At the same time, the graffiti in unionist areas is whispering its own refrains, often more ominous in tone. Just before Christmas last year, the phrase “war is needed” appeared on a gable wall in Newtownards, while port staff in Larne and Belfast were branded “active targets” in graffiti close to the Mourneview Community Centre. Such appalling threats — although the work of dissidents with no mandate from the Protestant community — are the more extreme manifestation of a siege mentality that has persisted since the Troubles. In the Fountain estate, a Protestant area on the largely Catholic west side of Derry’s River Foyle, one mural has remained unaltered for decades. It bears the words “Londonderry West Bank Loyalists Still Under Siege”.
The ongoing political turmoil in Westminster has only exacerbated this sense of uncertainty. Rishi Sunak is said to favour a more conciliatory approach to the Protocol, and has expressed concerns about the “stability of the situation”. His reappointed Northern Ireland Secretary, Chris Heaton-Harris, is currently holding talks at Stormont in an effort to restore the executive before tomorrow’s deadline. If he fails and an election is called, as seems certain, the impasse will surely persist into the new year.
Yet we should be wary of those with the tendency to catastrophise. For the past year, we have seen numerous commentators and politicians raising the spectre of a return to civil unrest. The late David Trimble wrote that the resentments generated by the Protocol could encourage “those who have engaged in past violence to take action again into their own hands”. More recently, Tony Blair has warned that “the issues at the heart of the Protocol have the capability of causing an enlarged trade conflict between the UK and the EU, or undermining the Good Friday Agreement — and quite possibly both”.
Such pessimism may be sincere, but it fails to consider that there are no straightforward solutions to this dispute. Like so many agreements relating to Northern Ireland, the Protocol was always a kind of fudge. Boris Johnson repeatedly used the phrase “over my dead body” when asked about the possibility of a border down the Irish Sea but, as Lord Frost has since admitted, the Government always knew the treaty was “far from perfect”.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
Subscribe