Maggie Walkie decorated her window with a portrait of the late Queen Elizabeth II, surrounded by two small red crowns with perfectly kitschy white fur. On the wall of her modest little house, in an impressive shambles, between earthenware dogs and yellowed family portraits, she hung a plate from the 1977 Silver Jubilee. In a cupboard, a plate decorated with a portrait of the queen mother rubs shoulders with a platinum jubilee badge from June 2022. But above all, until the chain broke one day, she wore a pendant of Elizabeth II around her neck. “That way she was with me wherever I went. » For this 80-year-old ultraroyalist, the announcement of the death of the sovereign was a shock. “I had to sit down and shed a tear”she explains.
This sadness is much deeper, more political, than the grief expressed by many Britons who go to lay flowers in front of Buckingham Palace. Here in Shankill, a Protestant area of Belfast, Northern Ireland, the Royal Family is more than a symbol and the Queen was more than a ” Grandmother “ collective. It is a subject of struggle.
“Our fight is ‘for Queen and Country’) », recalls Ether Calvert, 67, who came to lay flowers in front of a large mural of Elizabeth II. From the point of view of Unionists – those who want to stay in the United Kingdom – the monarchy is one of the essential links with England; which ensures the maintenance of Northern Ireland within the mother country. Not for nothing that the “enemy” opposite, the nationalist Catholics – they want to be part of Ireland – are called “republicans”.
Under these circumstances, the death of Elizabeth II caused an outpouring of emotion in the Protestant neighborhoods of Northern Ireland. Everywhere, his portraits are exposed to the windows and flags with his effigy float on the lampposts. On Tuesday, September 13, Unionists came in large numbers to receive Charles III in Belfast, first at Hillsborough Castle, in the inner suburbs, then at a memorial mass at St. Anne’s Cathedral, in the city center.
From one district of Belfast to another, a total contrast
The need to celebrate the monarchy is all the stronger as the unionist community is in a bad patch. Brexit, which she supported, created a border for goods sent from Britain to Northern Ireland, within the UK itself. Boris Johnson is considered by many to be a traitor, who abandoned Northern Ireland. “It’s a little hard right now., recognizes Mark Foster, who paid homage to the Queen with her group of flautists in front of the portrait of Elizabeth II. But whatever the mistakes of the British government, there is always the royal family to hang on to. »
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