AFP
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News from the NOS•today, 13:41
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Arjen van der Horst
UK correspondent
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Arjen van der Horst
UK correspondent
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Walk along Shankill Road in Belfast and you’ll soon come across a life-sized mural of the late Queen Elizabeth II. In these days a sea of flowers has sprung up there. It is in this area that the most fanatical unionist community is located, which wants to remain part of the UK at all costs. Here they proudly call themselves British through and through.
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The Unionist Protestant community has always had deep ties to the royal family. In many Protestant neighborhoods you will find mural drawings of William III of Orange, seated on horseback.
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At the end of the seventeenth century, the ruler of Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht was the most powerful ruler in Europe. In 1689, after his marriage to the English Princess Mary, he too became the new king of England, Scotland and Ireland.
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In 1690, King stadtholder defeated his Catholic rival James II in the famous Battle of the Boyne in Ireland, which would put a Protestant on the British throne once and for all. Northern Irish Protestants celebrate it every year with Orange Marches on July 12 and affectionately call Willem III their King Billy.
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British oppression
If you walk 200 meters south of Shankill Road, through the steel gates of the meter-high “wall of peace” that separates Belfast’s Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods, you arrive at Falls Road. This is the heart of the pro-Irish republican community. Here they have dreamed of reunification with the Irish Republic for over a hundred years.
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There are no seas of flowers or portraits of the queen on Falls Road. Here Irish flags fly and large murals depict men in balaclavas with AK47s in hand. Residents thus commemorate the decades-long struggle against what many Northern Irish Catholics still have the forces of the imperial crown They see Northern Ireland as a colony occupied by a British ruler.
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For this group of Northern Irish people, the monarch has always been the symbol of oppression. Reactions to Queen Elizabeth’s death have been indifferent in the Catholic neighborhoods of Northern Ireland. At best, you will encounter a polite response, but no wave of sadness.
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Gesture of reconciliation
King Charles is visiting Northern Ireland today as part of his tour to all corners of his kingdom to introduce himself to the people. No doubt he will have mixed feelings about this visit.
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During the day TroublesIn 1979, the civil war that gripped Northern Ireland for decades, the pro-Irish paramilitary IRA blew up a royal yacht off Sligo, West Ireland. The attack killed Lord Mountbatten, Charles’s favorite uncle, with whom he had a close relationship.
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Despite this painful history, Charles’s mother, Elizabeth II, played a role in the peace process following the 1998 Good Friday Accords, which ended the bloody conflict.
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During a visit to Northern Ireland in 2012, he shook hands in reconciliation with Martin McGuinness, who served as Deputy Prime Minister in the Northern Irish government on behalf of the pro-Irish Sinn Féin party. Sinn Féin was known for many years as the political wing of the IRA and McGuinness was the commander of the paramilitary organization in the city of Derry during The Troubles.
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AFP
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Tribute to the late Queen Elizabeth on Shankill Road, Belfast –
The meeting between the Queen and McGuinness had been unimaginable just a few years earlier. The gesture was widely appreciated at the time, even by Catholic Republicans who are usually not fans of the British royal family.
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Commenting on Queen Elizabeth’s death, Sinn Féin’s current leader Michelle O’Neill expressed appreciation for the Queen’s role in the peace process. “Personally, I am deeply grateful for the significant contribution and efforts you have made to promote peace and reconciliation between our two islands.”
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Horror for the trade unionists
It will be interesting to see how the new King Charles behaves. He becomes king at a time of great political instability in Northern Ireland. The Northern Irish have been without a government since April. Pro-British trade unionists refuse to join a coalition government with Sinn Féin, out of anger over the so-called Northern Ireland Protocol to the Brexit deal.
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In that protocol, London and Brussels made agreements on a separate status for Northern Ireland, which will remain with one foot in the European Union. It also means that a customs border has been established between Northern Ireland and the rest of Great Britain, which is anathema to unionists.
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Charles, of course, cannot possibly solve this thorny problem, but he will undoubtedly stretch out and, like his mother, will want to make a gesture of reconciliation.
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