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Post by Big Lin on Jan 12, 2013 20:34:45 GMT
www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jan/13/belfast-protest-flag-young-loyalistsHe was also scathing about the Democratic Unionist Party, the major force in unionism in the Northern Ireland Assembly. "They are letting things like this happen in Belfast and are not giving real representation to people like me." Yet any notion that a new unionist political movement is emerging from these month-long protests appears remote. The divisions within the broad unionist family were laid bare at the front gates of City Hall, when Jim Wilson, a loyalist community worker from east Belfast, got into a public altercation with unionist victims' campaigner Willie Frazer. Wilson accused Frazer of "leading us down the road that the IRA wants us to go" in terms of demonstrations linked to the flag change policy. Frazer accused Wilson and fellow loyalists of 15 years of failure since various unionist groups backed the Good Friday Agreement peace deal. On a march from the heart of loyalist east Belfast, where much of the violence of the past 10 days has been concentrated, most of those heading towards City Hall were between their early teens and 20s. Robert Graham, 19, from Bangor, Co Down, said this was his third time marching in from the east of the city to central Belfast. "I want to do my bit to protect our British identity in Ulster," he said, standing beside a relative near a banner denouncing the decision to change the council's flag-flying policy and watched by a line of police officers, some carrying batons. Pressed on how changing that policy to 17 designated days could somehow break the union between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, Graham said: "It's a bit-by-bit thing. Each little bit of Britishness being eroded, constantly. I have friends from Bangor who have served out in Afghanistan in the British Army and they feel exactly the same about the flag." (click on link for full article)
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Post by Big Lin on Jan 12, 2013 20:37:30 GMT
My Dad is a Northern Ireland Protestant from Londonderry and he grew up with the IRA and its campaign of terror that forced him to leave and move to England.
Basically for purely political reasons the Irish Republican imperialists are trying to destroy every vestige of the Orange/Loyalist tradition in Ulster which not only kept it free but in 1688-89 kept the whole of the British Isles free from tyranny.
We should be allowed to celebrate our traditions just as the Catholics and Republicans are theirs but somehow us Prods are an easy target for the pro-Teague lobbyists and it saddens me.
All those deaths in vain during the years of struggle to keep Ulster free!
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