Recent events have once again laid bare the deep-rooted hypocrisy in how political expression is policed in the north of Ireland.
The contrast could not be starker. On one side, peaceful political expression is met with arrests, charges and suppression. On the other hand, displays by Loyalist death squads are openly tolerated, even facilitated. Loyalist parades, complete with faux-military uniforms and banners commemorating sectarian killers, are escorted through city centres, given exposure on television and rubber-stamped by the Parades Commission.
Lasair Dhearg policing spokesperson Pádraic McCoitir said, “The PSNI call themselves an impartial police force, but it’s actions show that the bias of the RUC has gone nowhere. While thousands watched UVF gangsters roaming the streets of Belfast under the cover of the Orange Order, the PSNI priority was to confiscate a mural due to be erected in memory of IRA volunteer Kevin Hannaway. In recent weeks, a 74 year old woman was manhandled by cops and bundled into the back of a van for the apparently terrible crime of wearing a t-shirt showing solidarity with those trying to combat genocide in Gaza.”
Arrests like these are not just petty acts of political policing—it’s a message: some causes will be crushed, others will be protected.
The hypocrisy doesn’t stop at parades. Just last month, rather than address the obviously serious health concerns around large piles of asbestos at the foot of a bonfire, the Unionist death squads instead threatened “serious disorder” if anyone tried to prevent the burning of the bonfire. Rather than treating this as the terrorist threat it is, the PSNI declared a “major incident” and quickly backed down. Had any republican group issued such a threat the consequences are would be crushing – dawn raids, arrests, alongside MI5, cops and loyalist political pundits clamouring for an increase in the ‘terrorism’ threat levels.
What we are seeing is not a failure of oversight or a few bad decisions — it’s a structural double standard. When unionist and loyalist symbols of violence appear, they are defended as ‘culture’, ‘heritage’, an expression of their pride in ‘Britishness’. Genuine attempts to express pride in a revolutionary history of Irish Republicanism, much less Socialist Republicanism, are quickly shut down and criminalised.
Pádraic finished by saying, “The PSNI’s project to present itself as a “neutral” service has failed. This is policing shaped by the same old political reality: one community is to be managed, the other indulged. And until that truth is confronted, the idea of equal treatment under the law here will remain a fiction.”
