A recent survey in Northern Ireland is said to have produced
an “alarming” increase in the number of Protestants
who feel the Belfast Agreement and everything that has flowed
from it has been to their detriment.
Is anyone really surprised? Equality agenda has meant gross
inequality as far as Protestants and Unionists are concerned.
In every area of society and all its aspects, Protestants
have been the losers, and Roman Catholics gainers.
Protestants are now told they can only fly the Union Flag
on certain designated days. To be accepted into the Police
Service of Northern Ireland, they can only get in if there
is an equal number of Roman Catholic applicants.
Orange parades are not only increasingly re-routed, but in
many cases those that do take place are subjected to harassment
by ‘Concerned Residents’ and their noisy Sinn Fein
supporters. Traditional Orange parades along routes like the
Crumlin and Springfield Roads are subjected to attacks and
to provocative verbal abuse.
In Co. Fermanagh, leading Ulster Unionist Sam Foster told
how an Orange church parade in Newtownbutler was subjected
to vile and objectionable language from nationalist protesters.
And Protestants living in many enclaves are now being subjected
to intense intimidation and attack. Protestant families living
in the Suffolk estate in West Belfast experienced this is
the run up to the Twelfth and it was the same in Deerpark
Road in the Oldpark.
Yet, large sections of the media reported that it was Roman
Catholics in the Deepark-Cliftondene areas that were under
attack – a report vehemently denied by Protestant residents.
Even in overwhelmingly Protestant East Belfast, it was intense
pressure from the Short Strand which led to the exodus of
loyalist families from the Cluan Place area.
What annoys many Protestants too is the fact that when an
attack takes place on Roman Catholics, these are spotlighted
and given immense media, especially radio and television coverage.
No decent person complains about wrongdoing being spotlighted.
But when Protestants are often attacked, the media either
ignores it, or seeks to downplay the incident or to go overboard
to present a ‘balanced’ report.
Some years ago the Orange Standard reported an instance in
which a young Protestant woman lost her baby through a miscarriage
when her home was attacked on the Springfield Road. When a
local paper was contacted, it ignored the story after a Roman
Catholic journalist has claimed that the incident could not
have taken place because the woman was not enough weeks pregnant
to have a miscarriage. That allegation was proved unfounded
and medical evidence provided to show the woman has lost her
baby.
But the paper concerned did not report the incident, the
excuse the next time being that the incident had happened
months before and the story was no longer active.
Yet, today, the media almost daily is carrying stories alleging
R.U.C. or army collusion with loyalist paramilitaries in killings
carried out up to 20 years ago.
There is a sustained campaign of vilification going on, and
Protestants feel this has been facilitated and encouraged
by the Belfast Agreement. Protestants, more than any other
section of the population, suffered from the 30 years of terrorism.
The statistics of murders and explosions proves this, yet
today the only calls for inquiries and for ‘exposures’
by the media comes when nationalists have been the victims.
What about the 100 plus murders of Protestants in Co. Fermanagh
and the ethnic cleansing along the border? Or the killings
of so many Protestants in South Armagh and the forcing out
of Presbyterian farmers, some of whom moved to Scotland to
settle?
It has been silence, but as nationalists clamour for inquiries
to be carried out into examples of injustice, more and more
Protestants are calling for the atrocities carried out against
their population to be spotlighted and the perpetrators and
their allies exposed.
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