A LOYALIST activist and commentator will be one of the speakers at tonight’s (Wednesday, August 25) Anti-Northern Ireland Protocol Rally in Enniskillen.
Jamie Bryson is one of the invited speakers to tonight’s rally which will occur before a parade around Enniskillen. Other speakers included TUV Leader and North Antrim MLA Jim Allister, and John Yates, a Belfast based Protestant Unionist Loyalist (PUL) representative.
The rally will be held at Derrychara Link Road, and then a parade around Enniskillen town to and from Enniskillen Castle car park. The Parades Commission have been notified of the event and the event was organised by the Combined Loyalists Flute Band.
The organisers have notified the Parades Commission of an expected 500 participants and 500 supporters and informed the Parades Commission that events would end by 11pm.
Mr. Bryson spoke to The Impartial Reporter before tonight’s events. A native of Donaghadee, he was asked by one of the organisers from the group Combined Loyalists Fermanagh to speak at the event.
Mr. Bryson said: “I was approached by the organisers and asked to attend, and I am very happy to do so and support their protest in their area.
“I am happy to go anywhere to support fellow members of the Loyalist and Unionist community protesting a just and legitimate cause.
“I think the protocol fundamentally alters the Union and it is the Union-dismantling-protocol, because actually, the fundamental stone of the Act of Union has been by implication repealed.”
Continuing, Mr. Bryson spoke on the issue of changing the constitution of the Union. He said: “If you can amend the very constitutional cornerstone of the Union without consent and you can hand law-making powers over to a foreign jurisdiction without consent, then, of course, the same law-making powers, without consent, can be handed over to Dublin, and everything else about the Union could be changed beyond essentially the formal handing over of the deed.”
One of the reasons this rally was held was due to anger felt by some in the Loyalist community, he said.
Mr. Bryson continued: “People feel angry and they have a fundamental right to protest, and it is a just and legitimate cause that they are protesting.
“I think we are in a situation that is worse than the Anglo-Irish Agreement, and this [Northern Ireland Protocol] does more damage to the Union. The only surprise to me is there hasn’t been a greater explosion of anger across the entire province.”
Looking ahead to the rally, Mr Bryson said of his speech: “I’ll be emphasising that the Protocol is an outworking of the Belfast Agreement, and the Belfast Agreement has failed the Unionist and Loyalist community.
“The only way to arrest this decline of the Union – which has been set in motion since 1998 – is to cut the knock, and to collapse the institutions of the Belfast Agreement, and go back to the table and try and find a balanced agreement that respects both communities, rather than a process which is all about incrementally dismantling the Union.