Charles III visits a Northern Ireland under tension

The new British king, Charles IIIcontinued on Tuesday his tour of the four nations that make up the United Kingdom, visiting Northern Ireland where he faces the challenge of establishing a complicated reconciliation and avoiding the secessionist threat.

The Scottish government, which the monarch visited on Monday, intends to move towards calling a new independence referendum, but armed resistance to the Crown ended there centuries ago.

By contrast, in Northern Ireland peace dates back only to 1998 and remains fragile.

Unionists in Northern Ireland professed a reverential devotion to the late Queen Elizabeth II, the basis of their deep attachment to the British crown and the region’s membership of the “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland”. A belonging that since Brexit they feel is more threatened than ever.

Marina Reid, 54, a resident of Shankill Road, a unionist neighborhood in Belfast, points to reports that sparked anger in her community about a group of Republicans who celebrated Elizabeth II’s death with fireworks and songs on Thursday at 96 years.

That says it all about the respect we receive from them in these times of mourning,” he told AFP.

These reports, which are being investigated by Northern Ireland police, are not representative of the general response of the Northern Irish republican community.

“Brave”

“I recognize that she is a brave leader,” Sinn Fein vice-president Michelle O’Neill, who is due to become the region’s new prime minister, said of the late queen.

And he praised “the important contribution that Queen Elizabeth made to achieve peace and reconciliation between the different traditions of our island and between Ireland and Great Britain during the years of the peace process.”

Protestant unionists and Catholic republicans clashed for three decades in a violent conflict that left some 3,500 dead and implicated armed groups from both sides, as well as the British army.

After the Good Friday Peace Agreement of 1998, Sinn Fein, the former political arm of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), gained political legitimacy and in the last regional elections it won the majority in the autonomous regional Parliament for the first time in history.

The peace agreement requires that unionists and republicans share power, so the deputy prime minister should belong to the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).

However, angry at the special provisions negotiated between London and Brussels under Brexit, which impose customs controls between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom, the DUP has been blocking the formation of a government for months.

catholic majority

Charles III met with the political leaders of the region at Hillsborough Castle in south Belfast.

He received respectful condolences from Unionists and Republicans. But, with his ascension to the throne, the latter see their dream of leaving the United Kingdom to reunite with the neighboring Republic of Ireland a little closer.

The King also attended a religious service, designed for Protestants and Catholics as well as other denominations, in which the President, Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Republic of Ireland also participated.

For the first time in its 101-year history, the population of a region that was historically a Protestant stronghold is moving toward a Catholic majority, as the next census is expected to show.

Sinn Fein refuses to recognize the authority of the British monarchy in Northern Ireland and O’Neill was absent from the act of proclamation of the new king in Hillsborough on Sunday.

For their part, “unionists feel destabilized in terms of identity, destabilized about their place in the United Kingdom after Brexit,” Dierdre Heenan, a political scientist at Ulster University, told AFP.

“The queen’s death is another blow to their confidence and identity. Of course they will embrace the new king, but they are aware that this could cause an earthquake” in an already unstable region.