Why do so many of the north’s most contentious disputes keep returning to the same working-class communities?

Whether the issue is flags, bonfires, the Protocol, immigration or this summer’s racist violence, the geography is strikingly familiar.

This year’s headlines about the Moygashel bonfire are only the latest reminder that the same communities repeatedly become the places where wider political and cultural anxieties find expression.

That should concern all of us, not because it excuses what has happened, but because it raises an uncomfortable question: why?

Noel Doran: The Jeffrey Donaldson I saw in south Down

Noel Doran: The DUP has sat on RTÉ’s sofa before – why not again on Kielty’s Late Late Show?

These communities are not there by accident. Deindustrialisation, educational underachievement, poor health, insecure employment, the long shadow of paramilitary control, and the reality that, despite a peace process that has built more peaceful and connected communities, a small but significant cohort remains exceptionally difficult to engage, have all contributed to an environment in which grievance can be exploited.

That does not excuse hatred. Racism must be named, sectarianism must be named, and violence must be named.

But condemning these behaviours is not the same as understanding why they repeatedly emerge in the same places.

We should also question a society where difference is so readily portrayed as offensive.

Sometimes it is the colour of someone’s skin, their accent, religion or country of origin that is treated as a reason for suspicion. In other........

© The Irish News