In the summer of 1689, a frigate from King William III’s navy, the HMS Dartmouth, sailed into the mouth of the River Foyle accompanied by three merchant ships. It was heading toward the besieged city of Londonderry. As the warship engaged batteries on the shore, one of the commercial vessels, the Mountjoy, rammed a boom that the enemy had built to block the river. 

With the help of sailors from a navy longboat, and at the cost of the life of the Mountjoy’s captain, Michael Browning, the barrier was broken and the convoy delivered life-saving food to the city’s people. That operation effectively ended 105 days of siege by the Jacobite army, which killed as many as 7,000 of Derry’s citizens.

Last Saturday, as they do every year, thousands of members of Apprentice Boys clubs marched through Londonderry to celebrate its relief. Alongside the ‘shutting of the gates’ ceremony, which remembers thirteen apprentices who locked the city’s gates in the face of James’s troops, the event has become a symbol of Ulster unionists’ defiance against attempts to extinguish their British identity. 

Relative tolerance for some forms of disorder is unlikely to make for a less divided, more peaceful society

The parade, though, has also become something of a model for Northern Ireland’s ‘loyal orders’, when it comes to managing community relations. During the 1990s, Irish republicans worked assiduously, often through ‘concerned residents’ bodies, to create annual flashpoints at Drumcree and other unionist marches in Northern Ireland. 

It looked like the same would happen in Londonderry, but the Apprentice Boys engaged in painstaking dialogue with other local groups that eventually avoided that outcome. This year, once again, the march took place without incident, while drawing larger crowds and more participants than ever before.  

In contrast, on the same evening, ahead of a controversial bonfire, nationalist youths in the Bogside area pelted police officers with fireworks, petrol bombs and other missiles, causing ten injuries, but prompting just one arrest.  

The local MP, Colum Eastwood, described the disorder as ‘recreational rioting’ and claimed it was orchestrated by ‘dissident republicans’. That political comeback, like the coverage from the media and even the response from the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), contrasted starkly with the reaction to anti-immigration violence earlier in the week.

Then, the courts in Belfast quickly, and quite properly, charged rioters with a range of public order offences. The PSNI’s Chief Constable, Jon Boutcher, called for ‘maximum sentences’ for those who “scare our communities and incite hatred.”  For example, he highlighted a fifteen year old boy, who had appeared at court, “charged with four counts of riot, possession of a petrol bomb and three counts of possession of an offensive weapon in a public place.” Other defendants were accused of ‘inciting hatred’ and sending ‘grossly offensive’ messages. 

That was decisive policing. But why, in Northern Ireland, as in the rest of the UK, do some forms of street violence seem to inspire shock and horror, while others are treated almost as routine? 

In an article in the Irish News last week, the columnist, Newton Emerson, argued that the PSNI was constrained by the ‘human rights architecture’ that has been constructed around policing in the province. In June, when the force ordered attenuated energy projectiles (AEPs) and spit hoods for riot situations, they were criticised by rights activists and Amnesty International described the purchases as ‘deeply disturbing’. However, when these missiles were subsequently used to contain anti-immigration disorder, Emerson pointed out, Amnesty and similar groups remained silent

“Like everyone else,” he concluded, “its response to the policing of riots may vary.”

That is certainly true of the political reaction to disorder. In Northern Ireland, the Stormont Assembly was recalled from its summer recess so that MLAs could bloviate about the recent trouble. They passed a motion condemning anti-immigration violence before returning to their sun-loungers, but a unionist amendment emphasising the right to peaceful protest was defeated. 

It’s unlikely that Ulster’s representatives will rouse themselves again to debate Irish republican disorder in Londonderry. For nationalists and so-called progressives, who together effectively dominate Northern Ireland’s devolved government, one set of rioters is assumed to be fired up by prejudice and race hate, while the other is made up of misguided youths engaged in some mid-summer hijinks. 

In the rest of the UK, the trouble on our streets has revealed similarly inconsistent attitudes. The prime minister earned the nickname ‘two tier Keir’, thanks to the perceived contrast between his government’s treatment of migration protesters and its lenient approach to machete wielding Islamists and pro-Palestine rioters.

The authorities’ threats to prosecute people for social media posts on migration, if they were deemed to have inflamed violence, were particularly chilling. 

In a court in Belfast yesterday, in connection to the riots, a man was charged with, “possessing written material intended or likely to stir up hatred or arouse fear.” A defence lawyer described this literature as a ‘religious tract’ that was available freely online.

If some street violence is treated routinely as if it was worse than others, it seems that certain forms of communication and debate are regarded as worse than rioting. 

While the threat of ten-year sentences is, for the time being, supposed to be persuading potential trouble-makers to stay at home, relative tolerance for some forms of disorder is unlikely to make for a less divided, more peaceful society. Neither, ultimately, is stifling open debate about immigration, integration and multi-culturalism and forcing it underground.