The North Down region has attracted the attention of the media these days for nefarious reasons. Two groups with historical names of pro-British loyalism have clashed over control of territory for their drug business, in the small town of Newtownards. Thirty families have had to leave their neighborhood.
Billy Hutchinson, who was a member of the Ulster Volunteer Force paramilitary organization and participated as a representative of the Popular Unionist Party in the Good Friday Agreement negotiations, believes that the bad drift of these groups attacking alleged IRA members or simple residents of Catholic neighborhoods is due to the British government.
Unlike the IRA, the loyalists announced their ceasefire expressing “abject remorse” for their crimes. But they were not awarded. “Tony Blair gave the republicans everything they wanted,” according to Hutchinson, in statements to the ‘Sunday World’. “But he didn’t help the loyalists transition and they split into drug-trafficking mafias.”
Loyalism is a working-class unionism, which was fueled to violence by the apocalyptic preaching of a Presbyterian reverend, Ian Paisley. In Newtownards, the poorer neighborhoods are adorned with murals commemorating the reign of Elizabeth II. The only statue in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento is dedicated to a local military hero.
Blair ‘Paddy’ Maine was one of the most effective and violent soldiers in the history of the British Army. Lawyer, international rugby player and poet, he was one of the founders of the Special Air Service, commandos that infiltrated German lines in North Africa. He was decorated by the governments of Belgium and France.
At ten in the morning there are no shops open. The only movement is that of families going to their churches, abundant in the main street. An octogenarian man with luminous eyes and a clean face goes to the small ‘hall’ of the Reformed Presbyterian Church. He believes that the Good Friday Agreement was good for Northern Ireland.
“The two communities came together to understand their positions,” he says. But then he points out: «Reporters like you tend to say that the difference is between Catholics and Protestants, but I say nationalists and unionists, because there are Catholics who are unionists. It’s an important distinction about religion and politics.”
He was an official and hopes that there will be an agreement to restore autonomy. The problem, according to him, is that “the Brexit agreement was imperfect and the then Prime Minister (Boris Johnson) said offhand that there would be no border controls.” He says goodbye giving a beautiful little book of the ‘New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs’.
voter flight
The Down North unionist has a moderate tradition. The constituency always voted for the Ulster Unionist Party, that of the establishment, that of David Trimble, decimated in the process following his signing of the 1998 Agreement. The ‘paisleytas’ had no presence until recently and Sinn Féin, associated with the IRA, did not even field candidates.
Bangor is the most important city. An old domestic tourist destination with a marina for the enjoyment of a population that doubled in the years of violence. Policemen, civil servants, middle-class people, they fled from insecure Belfast to the east, to Holywood or Bangor. They travel every day to the capital in trains of the Auxiliary Railway Company (CAF).
The end of the violence and the persistent tensions of the autonomous governments dominated by the most sectarian parties, the DUP and Sinn Féin, has caused another flight, that of the Down North voters. In 2019, for the first time in the history of the constituency, they elected a candidate who is not from a unionist party, but from the agnostic Alianza.
Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, current leader of the DUP, knows about leaks. He was a member of Trimble’s moderate unionism before the 1998 Agreement, but joined Paisley, who considered it a betrayal. He advocated for Brexit and rejects its current consequences for the region. His entanglement makes the future of the government system created twenty-five years ago uncertain.