A GROUP of high profile political, policing and religious figures have penned an open letter to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson urging him to act in the wake of recent loyalist violence.
Signatories include four former Secretaries of State Peter Hain, Peter Mandelson, Paul Murphy and Shaun Woodward as well as former PSNI chief constable Hugh Orde and former Archbishop Robin Eames.
In the letter they say they are "extremely worried" that loyalist violence and interface trouble "is a consequence of politics...failing the people of Northern Ireland".
The group has called on both Mr Johnson and Secretary of State Brandon Lewis to "urgently create the space for local politics to regain the initiative".
Police came under sustained and violent attack on both sides of a Belfast peace wall earlier this month following successive nights of violence.
There were loyalist protests at the so-called border in the Irish Sea following Brexit, claiming the Northern Ireland Protocol has undermined the region's place within the UK.
There is also anger at a decision not to prosecute Sinn Féin members for alleged coronavirus regulation breaches at a funeral last year.
Protests - including street violence - paused following the death of the Duke of Edinburgh, but resumed last week.
However there were minor attacks on police in the Sandy Row area of south Belfast on Friday and trouble was reported in Moygashel on Saturday following an un-notified loyalist parade.
The group have warned that "nothing is more dangerous than a political vacuum" and urged the government leaders that they need to "listen and be seen to be listening, not intermittently, as has been the case, but continuously".
"We stress that the peace process did not end with the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement."
They said that while violence is "unacceptable, the fact is that there are grievances, real and perceived, within the broader unionist community and that cannot be ignored by the UK government."
The authors added that: "The lesson of the past 50 years or more is that if there is no forward movement things do not stand still: they fall over.
"It is the responsibility of the UK Government to ensure that does not happen because there is nothing more dangerous than a political vacuum."
