I mean can you blame them? The people rioting are working class folk that are probably their neighbors, friends and family. Arresting them would make them social pariahs and they’re all stuck in the same boat.
It's been years since I've been in Northern Ireland, but my understanding is that a lot of the PSNI still follow the old RUC practice of only living in certain areas, and often in specific housing estates. They get additional grants (something which the UDR and RUC used to abuse massively) to help with secure accomodation.
There's still a lot of housing in Northern Ireland that's behind the wire either on army camps or on secure goverment sites. There's even a massive golf club behind the wire. In places like Adergrove there are a lot former army housing estates that for some reason got refubished before the army left, that have people that are supposedly facing security risks living in them.
That's not the case for all the PSNI, but in general they get told where they can and can't live, and they also have to agree to massive parts of Northern Ireland either being out of bounds or needing permission to visit.
I also wouldn't neccessarily believe that the PSNI are working classs. Working class communities in Northern Ireland live side by side with the paramilitaries. So simply being from a certain postcode makes someone a security risk. I don't know how it breaks down but I'm willing to bet that a lot of the PSNI come from fairly affluent backgrounds from families that had the means to keep their distance from the troubles. Hence why they're hanging back and just trying to maintain a cordon with water cannons, these aren't really their communities and they're just looking to get through their shift..
Fun fact it's actually far easier for someone from a republican background to join the British Army than it is for someone from a loyalist background.
I would be very interested to see how NI politicians react in the coming days, one option is that they will simply demand more money from the UK and Ireland, at the other extreme they'll be worried about potential upstart political parties replacing them, and so will start to put the screws to migrants to force them to the mainland UK and ROI. They do have a lot of ways of doing this. NI government is dysfuncional because Loyalists, Republicans and various leftie woke types are all in government together, however if they get a consensus across sectarian lines they have a lot of power.
Also has anyone heard how Keffals is getting on?
