Sean F Sheridan

Apparently unionism and loyalism have suddenly become the eternal guardians of peaceful protest, restraint and the rule of law. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of NI knows how selective that version of history is. And this newfound horror at “mobs” gathering on streets is particularly difficult to take seriously from you. You were one of the prominent voices of the loyalist flag-protest FFS , a campaign built around people taking to the streets, demonstrations and road disruption. Some of those protests descended into serious disorder. And let’s talk about Drumcree. When loyalism didn’t get the outcome it wanted, NI didn’t simply witness dignified disagreement. We saw roadblocks, hijacked and burning vehicles, petrol bombs, attacks on police, widespread destruction and even gunfire. In 2000 alone, during protests surrounding Drumcree, RUC figures recorded 288 petrol-bomb incidents, 280 attacks on the security forces, 13 shooting incidents and 88 hijacked vehicles. Fifty-seven RUC officers and five soldiers were injured, while hundreds of vehicles and properties were damaged. People remember roads being brought to a standstill. They remember burning vehicles and barricades. They remember police coming under sustained attack. So spare everyone the fairy tale that loyalism has historically responded to decisions it dislikes with nothing but “great restraint and discipline.” There were occasions when loyalists didn’t merely stand on a road, they helped wreck the place when they didn’t get their way. And here’s the hypocrisy, that history does not make every unionist or loyalist responsible for those actions. You understood perfectly well that individuals were responsible for their own behaviour when protests involved your community. Yet today you take alleged offences by individuals and repeatedly smear an entire nationalist crowd as a “lawbreaking mob”. And now comes the remarkable transformation. After weeks of rhetoric about “Nazi-style” politics, “republican mobs”, “supremacists” and nationalist “hatred”, suddenly everything is about law, dignity, restraint and peaceful protest. It looks remarkably like an attempt to walk back the rhetoric now that the temperature has risen. The internet has receipts. The rhetoric didn’t disappear just because the strategy changed. If somebody commits an offence, investigate them and prosecute them on the evidence. Nobody gets a free pass. But collective guilt cannot suddenly become acceptable because the crowd is nationalist. And perhaps you might consider your own contribution to creating this atmosphere. From the outside, this increasingly looks less like leadership and more like someone who has spent weeks placing himself at the centre of a deeply sensitive dispute, escalating the language and enhancing his own profile in the process. You cannot spend weeks pouring rhetorical petrol on a fire and then arrive dressed as the fire marshal demanding everyone else explain the flames. And perhaps the most revealing words in the entire post are, “It’s time the State…faced them down.” There it is, old mentality that when one community refuses to yield, the State should simply “face them down.” History may be rather less flattering than the heroic role you have written for yourself You may imagine these weeks will record you as some fearless defender of loyalism who stood firm while everyone else surrendered. Others will remember something very different, armchair blogger who inserted himself into a decades-old dispute, relentlessly amplified the most inflammatory rhetoric, turned the temperature up, and then tried to distance himself from the resulting mess by suddenly discovering the language of restraint and the rule of law. That’s not fearless leadership, That’s a cautionary tale about what happens when you get in way over your head The rule of law didn’t suddenly become sacred when the people standing in the road stopped being loyalists.