In West Belfast, the gates of the ‘peace wall’ dividing the Protestant and Catholic neighbourhoods remain shuttered from dusk until dawn. ‘We now have terrorists in government,’ says a unionist resident, referring to the recently elected Sinn Fein First Minister. ‘We’re going backwards.’
Twenty-five years on from the peace agreement, tensions are rising. In February, the High Court in Belfast ruled that the UK’s recent Troubles Act breaches the European Convention on Human Rights. Specifically, the controversial 2023 Act grants conditional immunity from prosecution for Troubles-era crimes. But a successful case brought by the Act’s opponents – mostly family of victims of loyalist violence – has seen the immunity clause deemed unconstitutional and likely to hinder, not help reconciliation. ‘It’s just the British government trying to cover up their crimes in Ireland,’ says historian and former IRA member Jack Duffin of the Act.
