What have young Loyalists learned from their elders? That violence works! Or more so the threat of violence works to get their way whenever diplomacy or politics fails. Well, that’s what Joel Keys seems to claim. Joel Keys, from Taughmonagh in South Belfast, was arrested during rioting in Sandy Row in North Belfast, before which he seems to have never been heard of. However, he seems to have been inducted into the ranks of the Loyalist Communities Council as late as Monday the 17th of May.
Mr. Keys has made some waves in the past few days. The 19-year-old Loyalist Communities Council representative was rolled out to the Westminster Northern Ireland Affairs Committee on Wednesday 19th of May, two days after being inducted into the LCC, where he proclaimed to none other than Simon Hoare MP, the chair of the committee, that violence to oppose the NI Protocol was “not off the table”. Hoare responded by describing Keys comments as “incredibly worrying and dispiriting”. In fact, Simon Hoare was so taken aback by Joel Keys assertions that he was actually stunned into silence for a few moments.
Ultimately, Mr. Keys is too young to remember the ‘violence’ he speaks of. People in this country speak of it as ‘the bad old days’ when there was death day and daily, when the sound of gunfire rang out from street corners and bomb blasts rocked the buildings in towns and cities across the North…and the South. Does Mr. Keys and by extension the LCC really want to regress back to those days? Is Mr. Keys really a microcosm of Loyalist youth today? I have more than a slight inkling, that Mr. Keys’ insight into Loyalism is based on the teachings of some senior Loyalist paramilitaries and dare I suggest, one Jamie Bryson who has suggested such actions as tearing down Stormont and recreating the Ulster Workers Council Strike, not to mention violence on the streets. Yet strangely, neither he nor Mr. keys can specify who said violence would be aimed at. Who exactly would Loyalists be visiting violence on if violence were their preferred choice of action?
Mr. Keys enquired on a radio show, Radio Uladh, Evening Extra I believe, hypothetically of course, what people would expect if, and I quote, “IRA men took over the place?” obviously attempting to justify further his support for violence. Oh, please Joel, do grow up, the IRA are gone and ain’t coming back and anyone in their right mind knows it. Loyalists and Unionists, for decades waxed poetic about the IRA, Republicans and Nationalists and how armed struggle didn’t work, how it was terrorism and so on and so forth. If nothing else, it accentuates just how little Mr. Keys understands about the violence he so enthusiastically refers to. If Mr. Keys fancies himself as an MLA and believes in democracy, as per his own assertions on his Twitter page, he’ll need to articulate further why he feels violence should not be ‘taken off the table’ in a time when our very peace was built on the foundations of paramilitaries leaving the stage and destroying their weapons…well, the IRA did at least.
The LCC has unfurled Joel Keys like another flag as a way to entice the Loyalist youth to the cause of opposing the NI Protocol and let’s be honest here, anything else the LCC want him to stand for or oppose. What better way to garner the support of the Loyalist youth than to place such a young man in front of a Westminster committee and then put him before the media where he has been forced to account for his words. Words, which seem to have gone down like a lead balloon with anyone who knew anything about or experienced the ‘bad old days’.
It seems the ‘bad old days’ are all Loyalism, old and young, have to hold on to. That Joel Keys made the statement he did, shows once again a failure of political Unionism and is a symptom of the fact the British Government has failed to force Loyalist paramilitaries to decommission and disband properly, instead opting to pay them millions upon millions of pounds to essentially carry on doing as they please. Nearly 25 years after they were supposed to decommission, Loyalist paramilitaries are still armed and now threatening violence on…someone. It just goes to show who exactly desires peace.
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