The Great Awakening? The Belfast Flag Protests and Protestant/Unionist/Loyalist Counter-memory in Northern Ireland

Abstract

This article examines the protest movement that surfaced as a result of the decision taken by Belfast City Council to remove the Union flag from Belfast City Hall in December 2012. This article examines why the issue conflagrated as it did and led to a mobilisation within working-class Protestant/Unionist/Loyalist (PUL) communities on the issue. Examining the flag protests within the context of more general PUL disaffection with the Good Friday Agreement and its associated peace process, this article looks at the flag protests as an avenue for disaffected PUL communities to assert a new counter-memory that challenges not only the ‘other’ but also those within the leadership of political Unionism who are said to have used PUL communities during the conflict only to abandon them in the post-conflict transition. This article concludes by examining the future potential of the new political movement born out of the flag protests and the avenues open to it to challenge the hegemonic position of traditional Unionism that has left PUL communities behind as Northern Ireland progresses in transition out of political conflict.

Acknowledgement

PhD Candidate at the Transitional Justice Institute, University of Ulster. The author wishes to thank Dr Kris Brown of the TJI for his insightful comments on the original draft of this article and to the peer reviewers who also provided insightful comments on the same draft. The author can be contacted via [email protected]

Notes

1. Statistics show that of the 10 most socio-economically deprived wards in Northern Ireland, the majority of these are found in Nationalist areas or areas with a Nationalist majority. This is not to suggest that PUL communities are not also adversely affected by socio-economic deprivation, but it does dispel the myth that socio-economic deprivation occurs on a sectarian basis.

2. The TUV is another anti-GFA political party that was set up in opposition to the DUP decision to enter power-sharing institutions with Sinn Fein. Furthermore, two prominent defectors from the UUP have signalled their intent to set up a new political party also. While not necessarily anti-GFA, the intention of these two MLAs to set up yet another Unionist party shows the competition within post-conflict Unionism outside of ‘traditional’ political Unionism. The Protestant Coalition is therefore neither alone nor novel in trying to represent PUL communities outside the confines of the ‘big two’ within Unionism.