Outlawed armed groups continue to operate as criminal drug gangs and still exert influence in working-class communities. Poverty and unemployment remain high and sectarian divides have not healed. Two decades after the Good Friday peace accord, concrete “peace walls” still separate working-class Catholic and Protestant areas of Belfast. The coronavirus pandemic has added new layers of economic damage, education disruptions and lockdown-induced boredom to the mix. the knot of problems may prove difficult to resolve. “These are areas of multiple deprivation with the sense of not much to lose,” Katy Hayward, a professor of politics at Queen’s University Belfast, said. “And when (people) are mobilized by social media telling them ‘Enough is enough, now is the time to defend Ulster,’ then many of them — too many — respond to that.”
Jill Lawless, ‘What is behind the latest unrest in N Ireland?’, Associated Press