The disturbances in Northern Ireland recall the early days of the Troubles, over half a century ago

Social distancing and the “rule of six”, it is fair to say, were not much on the minds of those who took to the streets of Belfast to riot over the past week or so. Those involved were seized of more emotionally visceral feelings, young people apparently goaded on by paramilitary gangs.

The current disturbances have something of the feel of the early days during the last round of the Troubles, over half a century ago. A bus torched; missiles, fireworks and petrol bombs lobbed at the police; semi-spontaneous marching bands; a car driven into the euphemistically-named “peace wall” that divides Catholics and Protestants... and the same platitudinous condemnations of violence emanating from the politicians in Stormont, meeting in emergency session.

As the Good Friday Agreement nears its inauspicious 23rd birthday, it is a timely reminder that the peace that has mostly held in the province is no less fragile than it was when the politicians and the paramilitaries decided the stalemated war was over back in the 1990s.

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As ever, comparatively minor, but symbolically charged, incidents can spiral and threaten to escalate out of control. A few years ago the Northern Ireland executive collapsed because of a massive blunder in running a heat and power scheme. Before that, it spent five years in abeyance because of a theoretical argument about what putting terrorist weapons “beyond use” actually meant.

Only the massive effort put into making it work by Ian Paisley (senior) and Martin McGuinness made the executive work properly. They formed a weirdly jolly partnership – and their credentials dating back to the dawn of the Troubles meant that their unnatural alliance could never be challenged. Sadly, their successors are neither so brave nor so skilful.

The 1998 peace agreement has enjoyed wide, but not deep, support over the years. Factions on both sides always regarded it as a sellout and a betrayal, and centuries of mistrust and resentment were never going to be dissipated for good just because Tony Blair felt “the hand of history” resting on his shoulder.

So it has proved. A ceremonial funeral and rally for an IRA terrorist is bad enough for Unionists to stomach, but the fact that it was held during lockdown – and with the apparent tacit consent of the Police Service of Northern Ireland – has especially enraged Unionists, who sense favouritism, rightly or not.

The first minister and Democratic Unionist leader Arlene Foster, whose father was shot and almost murdered by the IRA, was so incensed by the event that she has called on the chief constable to quit, but to no avail. Such a move would need to be approved by the secretary of state, Brandon Lewis, and he has rightly shown no inclination to up the ante.

As with the more peaceful but problematic policing of demonstrations in Britain, confusing and conflicting human rights laws and Covid rules have left the police in an invidious position. Lewis seems to understand that, but Foster and her friends are not so sympathetic.

The genuinely troublesome and costly post-Brexit barriers to trade from Great Britain to Northern Ireland have actually annoyed all parties in Northern Ireland, because of their indiscriminate economic impact. Were it not for the British government’s desperate and illegal suspension of parts of the EU-UK Northern Ireland protocol, these problems would be set to intensify still further as grace periods come to an end in the coming months.

Few in Northern Ireland regard the new arrangements as heavenly. But for Unionists, the establishment of a trade border between the six counties and the rest of the UK is especially offensive. They always opposed the protocol, and they have a justifiable grievance against Boris Johnson, who time and again told them to their faces at their own party conference and elsewhere that no such economic barriers would or could be established by a British premier – still less a Tory one, still less him.

He told them to send the forms to Downing Street so he could personally bin them. It was not, of, course, the first time that Johnson played fast and loose over Brexit – he was after all prepared to mislead the Queen – but it is never a good idea for an Englishman to let down Ulster.

The rioting, then, comes from a sense of betrayal on the part of loyalists against the very people – the Conservative and Unionist Party – who purport to be their friends and allies.

What is an indignant loyalist to do when the institutions traditionally supposed to protect their Britishness – the police, the Unionist leadership in Stormont and a Tory government – fail them?

The answer is supposed to be to trust in the power sharing executive, but Foster seems unable to handle their demands; increasingly violent, panicked and irrational as they are becoming. Sometimes, she winds them up by attacking the police, but then asks them to calm down and go home.

Sinn Fein is unwisely unrepentant about its recent public mourning of a man who was the IRA’s head of intelligence – hardly an ambassador for peace. They pushed their luck a little too far. They must have known the risks of inflaming their fellow citizens: what did Gerry Adams and Michelle O’Neill imagine would happen?

The immediate danger is that the street loyalists turn their destructive attentions away from police Land Rovers and hijacked buses, and instead target their violence against those running the border controls at Larne, and then go on to take their little war to republicans and their interests, which will naturally provoke violence in return. Once started, such sectarian violence is difficult to tame. The power-sharing executive would probably not long survive such a descent into disorder, and with it what is left of the peace process.

Once again in Northern Ireland, the mainstream politicians finds themselves outflanked by the fringes on both sides – the Loyalist Communities Council and various republican continuity groups – and normal democratic processes collapse.

There are always plenty of provocations and excuses for trouble, often as not whenever some doleful anniversary is marked: 1690, 1916, 1972... yet Brexit has conjured up some dangerous fresh ones, battles that invite combatants in the “here and now” to win a victory.

It should never be forgotten that Northern Ireland voted to Remain in the EU, no doubt because the people who live there had the good sense to see what might be around the corner.