The Week: Troubles Ahead

RIGHT now, the focus in Northern Ireland is on the Protestant loyalist opposition to British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s vaunted peace agreement. It is the loyalists who feel most threatened. They have exploded in violence, most horrifically with the recent bombing that claimed the lives of three Catholic children. And in both the May 22 referendum and the June 25 elections for the new Northern Ireland Assembly, only a bare majority of Protestants supported the new framework—compared to 90 per cent of Catholic voters. Nevertheless, it is Catholics who have the most to lose from the peace agreement.

Granted, that’s not how any of the parties involved see it now. Both Protestant unionists and Catholic nationalists immediately perceived that the agreement weakened the Union by creating all-Ireland bodies. That is why almost half the Protestant electorate rejected it outright, despite the intense efforts to sell it by Blair, the Irish government, and President Clinton.

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Martin Sieff

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RIGHT now, the focus in Northern Ireland is on the Protestant loyalist opposition to British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s vaunted peace agreement. It is the loyalists who feel most threatened. They have exploded in violence, most horrifically with the recent bombing that claimed the lives of three Catholic children. And in both the May 22 referendum and the June 25 elections for the new Northern Ireland Assembly, only a bare majority of Protestants supported the new framework—compared to 90 per cent of Catholic voters. Nevertheless, it is Catholics who have the most to lose from the peace agreement.

Granted, that’s not how any of the parties involved see it now. Both Protestant unionists and Catholic nationalists immediately perceived that the agreement weakened the Union by creating all-Ireland bodies. That is why almost half the Protestant electorate rejected it outright, despite the intense efforts to sell it by Blair, the Irish government, and President Clinton.