UK to exit but loyalist protest camp remains in Belfast

This week an attempt to resolve a long-running dispute over a parade past the Ardoyne shops in north Belfast by three Orange Order lodges collapsed just short of the finishing line. So, once again there will be tension and anxiety over the parade on July 12th.

It's not surprising, therefore, that the Brexit vote was not hugely occupying people's minds on either side of the sectarian divide yesterday.

Still, there were some who had definitive views in this part of North Belfast where 20,128 voted Remain and 19,844 opted for Leave.

It was "the self-destructive curse of the English" that resulted in Brexit, said a man in his 60s at Balholm Park, a nationalist area behind the shops. Like others spoken to, he did not want to give his name. He voted Remain.

"It's like Margaret Thatcher. She got rid of the miners, the dockers, you name it, and they still voted her back in again."

Neither was he particularly taken with the parade negotiations which, had they been successful, also would have led to the removal of the nearby Camp Twaddell loyalist protest camp and the nightly mini-parades which have cost millions to police.

“Them people don’t want us to have anything. All they want to do is fly their flags, do their walking, beat drums, kick the Pope, that is all they want.”

He was sure however that unionists and loyalists would be delighted with the vote. “They’re more English than the English.”

He agreed his sterling wouldn't go as far when he holidays in Doochary in Donegal this summer, but said the Leave vote wouldn't make much difference.

Non-voters

A number of people on both sides of the interface said they did not vote in the referendum.

"I think politicians are in it for themselves, always have done, always will do," said Martin Fox, who runs a fruit and vegetables store at the shops.

He said he had lost business due to the parade dispute because loyalists “were told not to come across” to the shops. For “the sake of my business and of my children I would have let them up the road – it would have meant the end of the camp [Twaddell]”.

On Brexit his main concern was the possibility of Border controls. . . “But one way or the other it’s not really going to affect my life.”

On the loyalist Woodvale Road and Twaddell Avenue, a 62-year-old who works in drink and drugs rehabilitation reckoned further progress could be made on the parade. “It’s just a question of knocking heads together and getting people to compromise.”

He voted to leave the EU “because the EU has taken our authority to control our own destiny and our own borders out of our own hands”.

“Borders don’t worry me,” he added, “but immigrants do. And not just in the short term but in terms of the long-term problem of creating ghetto areas in your own country.”

He said the political and economic would settle. “We survived without being in the EU before and there’s no reason why we can’t survive again.”