Weakness, hypocrisy and moral confusion in attitudes and responses to the BlackLivesMatter rally in Belfast

While shops face ruin and have not even got a reopening date, or an indication that the two metre distancing rule will be relaxed (to the far more manageable World Health Organisation recommended one metre), police closed the heart of Northern Ireland’s capital city for a protest on a death in the US. Social distancing was flagrantly ignored.

The event was held to remember George Floyd in Minnesota. His vile and shocking killing must be explained in a thorough investigation. It is also going to go to a criminal trial. But that is not the issue as to what happened yesterday.

Across the western world, crowds have been prohibited, from rock concerts to sporting events. Even in Sweden, which has taken the most liberal approach to social distancing, gatherings of more than 50 people have been banned.

Yet in Northern Ireland if an event has a particular political slant, it seems to be OK.

Several republican funerals have been allowed to ignore guidelines, while other grieving people stuck to them. Yet the PSNI have got tough with easy targets, such as closing roads to stop people go to the north coast in good weather for exercise, many of whom were families.

The Belfast protestors wore masks but if that makes it OK, then people should be allowed to go to shops in masks.

What is Sinn Fein’s view on yesterday’s rally? It both has influence in radical circles and has demanded tougher lockdown the whole way through this crisis.

In part to please them, the easing of key planks of lockdown now are timed with the Republic, including hotels, which will have to wait until a week after Northern Ireland’s July holiday to re-open.

For much of lockdown, vivid moments of hypocrisy such as the Dominic Cummings breach have been met with political and enforcement weakness, while obedient people and businesses abide by, and shoulder the burden of, rules.

In Northern Ireland, those rules will not be eased until all key Stormont parties, whatever their agenda, agree that they can be.

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