![]() ![]() Here in Northern Ireland, where we have a divided society, it's slightly more acute," said Doug Beattie, leader of the second largest unionist party, the Ulster Unionists, speaking beside a painting of the Queen in his constituency office south west of Belfast. "I think there's not a single country in the world who doesn't latch on to a single symbol to identify themselves and give them a sense of belonging. "For unionists and loyalists the Queen was the symbol of the United Kingdom and their Britishness and they genuinely felt that it was the Queen that gave them their Britishness and they would revere the queen rather than any British government because they felt they had been repeatedly betrayed by British governments, that the queen was the symbol of stability and Britishness," said Brian Feeney, an Irish nationalist columnist. She was also seen as a constant amid perceived betrayals by British governments - from the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985 that gave Dublin a say in Northern Ireland affairs to Boris Johnson's abandonment in 2019 of a pledge to never accept an Irish Sea trade border. Many nationalists expect to soon secure a permanent majority they hope will put huge pressure on the British government to allow a referendum on splitting Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and joining a united Irish state.įor loyalists, the Queen was the final direct link to both the Empire and World War Two victory central to their identity. Sinn Fein, the former political wing of the Irish Republican Army, horrified many loyalists in May by securing the largest number of seats in the regional parliament for the first time. Decades of higher birth rates among mainly Catholic nationalists are ending the Protestant majority baked into the state's formation in 1921. ![]() The Queen's death comes at a difficult time for loyalists and their more moderate unionist allies. The Queen's death has cast a light on how much Northern Ireland has changed since her heyday and how diminished the crown's role might be in the reign of King Charles. Queen for 70 of Northern Ireland's 100-year history and for all of three decades of the "Troubles" in which over 3,000 died in sectarian fighting over the crown's role in northeast Ireland, Elizabeth's image is seared into the psyche here. Loyalists laying flowers by a huge mural of a young Queen Elizabeth in a fiercely British corner of west Belfast described a potent nostalgia and hints of unease at what the new era may hold for some of the monarch's most devoted subjects.Ī few hundred meters away, across steel and concrete "peace walls", Irish nationalists largely shrugged off the death of the woman who transformed from a symbol of British oppression to agent of reconciliation. ![]()
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