samantha hawley: it's only a jump across the water from great britain to no, but some wayst's like traveling back in time. after more than 20 years of relative peace, tensions have broken out again. violence not seen for decades is back on the streets. northern ireland should be celebrating its centenary as part of the united kingdom, but people are angry.

they were promised the brexit wouldn't hurt them. male: we will protect our precious union between great britain and northern ireland. samantha: but when the republic of ireland stayed part of europe, a customs border had to be put in place. unexpectedly, that's included northern ireland anit's infuriated the loca who are loyal to britain. samantha: i'm in the middle of the irish sea, and i've just crossed a new sea border that splits northern ireland from the rest of the country. it's come about because of brexit, and it's this border that could plunge northern ireland back into violent conflict.

samantha: the new border came with a shock. customs checks are causing havoc with delays and soaring costs. the truckies are fed up. male: the paperwork trail is very hard. on several occasions just because of a paperwork glitch, we're having to wait hours. samantha: it's a choke on the economy. male: they have actually no idea how they fix this. samantha: but it's nothoke just hurting people's pockets. it's wounded their pride. and there are more protests expected against what's being called the british betrayal. samantha: but the biggest trouble is in belfast, and that's where we're going to really go and discover how the people in belfast are feeling right now. ♪♪♪

samantha: i've arrived while this old industrial city isn covid shut down, and today it's eerily quiet, but i'm heading to the northern suburbs where there's a parade. it's marching season for the protestants of northern ireland. the cloughfern young conquerors are celebrating their british identity. they've descended from british colonization four centuries ago. i arranged to meet brian kerr, a community worker here. brian kerr: the band and the marching fraternity is a major part in northern ireland. it's part of a cultural identity. it creates a sense of belonging. the bands of sales provide a structure for a lot of young fellows coming through.

it keeps a lot of the young ones off the street, its keeping them away from drugs, keeping away from drink. samantha: this sprawling working class area called rathcoole is one of the biggest public housing estates in the united kingdom. brian: it's an area of social deprivation. we have an awful lot of suicides and mental health issues going on. so the community is working hard to try addressing that. samantha: it suffered murder and mayhem over the decades. in april, violence erupted again here when the sea border left these loyal subjects feeling they were losing their identity. jamie bryson: the union flag obviously is the national flag of our country and it's a very fundamental point of our identity here in northern ireland, you know, because you have to remember that the unionist community in northern ireland has been perpetually under siege almost from the formation

of the state 100 years ago. samantha: ever since the english drew a land border to form northern ireland, catholics in the north have fought against it, wanting a united ireland. protestants have defended it, proud of being a province of the united kingdom. jamie bryson is a staunch loyalist and campaigns to keep the union strong. jamie: and i think all the people standing here tonight can send a very clear message; we are not giving our country up samantha: in late 2012, there were mass protests against a decision to only fly the union flag a few days a year on belfast city hall. jamie: nowhere else in the world would you be denied the right to fly your national flag from your prime civic building. it's almost as if we have to be ashamed of being british citizens, ashamed of our heritage,

and ashamed of our identity. and people in my community have simply had enough of that. samantha: it's a battle they lost. now the imposition of a barrier between here and the rest of the united kingdom has left them feeling cut adrift. jamie: the seeds of that have been sown over two decades with things such as the union flag being torn down. and that has all boiled together into, i suppose, what you could call somewhat of a perfect storm now. samantha: how far are you willing to go to defend that flag? jamie: well, i mean, traditionally, the unionist and loyalists community would go to any length to defend their country. samantha: a century's worth of fighting over the country is memorialized on the walls of the cities. illegal paramilitaries like the protestant ulster volunteer force, or uvf, and the catholic irish republican army, or ira,

plunged the country into a vicious guerrilla war. what's known as the troubles began in the late 1960s. the catholic falls area of belfast was a hotspot. male: the buildings that you can see blazing have been set onire by catlics who are trying to roast out the protestant snipers who've been shooting from the rooftops during the day. paul butler: we considered ourselves freedom fighters taking on new british ru and trying to end partition in ireland. samantha: paul butler joined the ira when he was a teenager. paul: what you're conscious of, you're in a state that well, you're from here and you're irish, but you didn't belong. you're an, kind of like,

outsider and you're discriminated against. samantha: in 1,972, annapproved civil rights march was fired on by british soldiers. male: the shooting had died away in a matter of minutes, but by that time, 13 civilians had been killed. samantha: thirteen catholics were killed in what's known as bloody sunday. ira membership surged. paul butler was sent to jail for 15 years for shooting a policeman when he was just 17. paul: well, i was accused of murdering an ric, constable back in the day, of killing them, but-- and that's what i was sentenced to, and membership of the ira. samantha: barriers called peace walls were erected to keep the two warring tribes apart,

but that didn't stop an explosion of political terror. male: the provisional wing of the ira announced that it had been responsible. and tonight the authorities have little doubt that most, though not all, of today's violence was organized by the illegal protestant ulster volunteer force. billy hutchinson: we were involved in the conflict. so, you know, people were maimed, people were killed and all sorts of things. it wasn't a nice place to be, but that's what happened. samantha: billy hutchinson was a member of the uvf. at 18, he was involved in shooting two catholic workmen. he was jailed for 16 years. billy: people had to take the law into their own hands. not everybody did it, but some of us did. i have no regrets for anything that i did, but what i do have regrets for is every life that was taken during the troubles.

samantha: three and a half thousand people died during the troubles. paul: these are--that's karen daugherty, was a hunger striker. samantha: one of the most hallowed plots in the ira section of the mill town cemetery belongs to ira man bobby sands. his death 40 years ago changed the course of the conflict. sands became an iconic figure after he went on a hunger strike while in jail, and he stood for election to the uk parliament. astonishing many, he won the seat with 30,000 votes. he died a month later from starvation.

his legacy was in convincing republicans that politics was more effective than violence. paul: but the whole thing that awakened in us, something that the way forward was through the electoral politics, if you like. samantha: paul butler emerged from jail to become a politician in the republican sinn fein party. paul: it was a step change in the republican movement then, and he paved the way for where sinn fein is now, and the largest party in ireland in both jurisdictions. samantha: billy hutchinson also took the political path and now leads the progressive unionist party. billy: my present role is a politician, and i will be making sure to the best of my ability that people don't go back to violence. samantha: billy hutchinson helped negotiate the peace settlement signed on good friday in 1998.

tony blair: today i hope that the burden of history cannot long last start to be lifted from our shoulders. samantha: a new optimism swept the country. new businesses sprang up. black cab tours started 10 years ago. danny kearney: good afternoon. samantha: how are you? danny: all good. welcome to belfast. samantha: danny kearney shows tourists the old trouble spots of belfast. danny: you meet a lot of different people. belfast is--it came a long way for the better, but of 14 years here we've had a few problems. hopefully it's just a blip. samantha: once upon a time tourists would never have come here. danny: that's one of the most friendliest cities in the world, but that's our problem. we're friendly to everybody else except ourselves here, you know, so.

samantha: you worried about what you'd say in the last-- danny: of course, because when you grew up in the troubles here, young people don't understand. i'll give you an example. i see my first kill when i was 7 years of age. if you want your children or grandchildren or whatever to go through something they got there, there's something wrong with your head, but again, with staying in the source here, some people just don't want to move on, and that's part of the problem. it's not about religion now. it's about identity. one say want to be british, one say want to be irish, and that's part of our problem, especially in, what would you say, the heartland communities. this is what you call the enter nester wall. it covers differt parts of the world. nelson mandela. it covers the united's history, the likes of hunger strikers. you can see castro on the wall, the british teens together, black and whites who live in peace, turkey's freedom fighters. samantha: it's surprising that what started as teen sheets

across the road in the troubles has ended with around 80 peace walls separating hard-line communities across belfast. samantha: it's big. danny: big wall? samantha: yeah. danny: a lot of people when they do the tours, they say to me, "well, i see. it's just for tourists." and i say to them, "look, it's not for tourists." twenty three years in the peaceful state. these walls are still needed, believe it or not. samantha: it's almost unbelievable, isn't it? danny: you can google this, and some people will tell you the walls are coming down in 2023, 2024. i don't think us will come down on my lifetime, which i think is very sad. samantha: at bombay street, which was the scene of devastation in the troubles, the rebuilt houses sit under protective cages. the catholic falls district sits jammed up against the wall with a loyalist shankill area a stone's throw-away.

i've arranged to meet a community worker at his home on the shankill side. i wanted to find out how much has changed here since the peace. james scosh: hello. samantha: hi, james. how are you? james: not too bad. samantha: good, good. do you mind if i come in? samantha: james scosh and his family bought here because it was affordable, but it's come at a cost. james: obviously there was hope when we seen in the--' 90s when we seen the good friday agreement, but what we've witnessed over the past probably 5 to 10 years pecially is a more divisive dividing political community, and it's about celebrating battles, and celebrating death, celebrating conflict and rebellion. as you can see just behind us we have a pace line dot barrier between two communities. samantha: the government plans to dismantle the peace walls to encourage integration,

but residents fear the communities aren't ready. james: there were barriers there a few years ago. they took down kind of the top part of it just to repair it, and was only dowfor about 4 to 6 weeks. and this area came from something that was quite peaceful to, you know, we were getting cars attked, petrol bombs. it was just like all of a sudden it just erupted, but it showed us a wee bit of a glimpse of what potentially would happen if the barrier was relieved, which is quite sad. james: can you get like batman or? jacob scosh: well, they ate his superhero lucky blocks. samantha: james wants 7-year-old jacob and his other children to feel secure with a good future ahead of them, but the area is mired in problems.

james: it's quite de-cared and there's not a lot of investment in the area. so there's a lot of mental health issues, there's a lot of addiction issues, and with that obviously comes issues. samantha: just along the wall at a hotspot called lanark way, the protest in april against the see border soon evolved into battles between hardline catholics and protestants. james: i had to move my kids away from the area out to their grandparents. and this whole area was completely filled with police and rock air. samantha: in this era of peace, it's the protestants who feel defensive and vulnerable. few on either side in these working-class areas trust the police. james: there's a massive issue against the police

in the area. you know, people are losing confidence, in both communities, with how the policing is being done. samantha: belfast is one of the most dangerous places in the world to police. darren fox: it's armored. we also have perspex glass on the right side, fire match for petrol bomb and masonry, which comes off. the front has a grill which comes up, as you can see. so-- samantha: in the heavily fortified police compound in north belfast, chief inspector darren fox showed me over one of their land rovers. darren: really robust material. feel the-- you'll feel that we have done-- and the doors. samantha: that's pretty fit, isn't it? darren: yeah. samantha: the heavy door. that's for sure. samantha: paramilitaries of both sides have reemerged, and ordinary policing is done against the backdrop of a severe threat.

♪♪♪ samantha: hi, nick. nick williams: how are you? samantha: sergeant nick williams was on duty the night of the lenard gates riots. nick: yeah, that's right. yeah, it was about 3 weeks ago now. yeah. so that's where those two cars hijacked, put on fire and smashed under the gates. samantha: the gates segregate the communities and are locked by police every night, but rioters nearly pried them apart. nick: they couldn't quite get at each other, which is almost that good, but they really toned each other, and in the end there was a lot of police officers injured in the disorder to getting then disordered. it ended up that we had to bring police and they pushed back that direction and that direction at the same time. samantha: incredibly violent, wasn't it? nick: yeah, it was, and wholly unnecessary. it's the worst disorder probably for about 15 years.

samantha: the police are trying to build community trust. nick: young people love talking about police catch. bicycle is the lover. we try to do engagement stuff. we'll have like a football tournament planned that we're organizing with some of the local primary schools. we're going to hold here to get the kids involved. they feel that they own the park, they're not going to wreck it. samantha: but the police service of northern ireland faces entrenched problems. james: there's potential attacks from paramilitary organizations. it's a controlled area. samantha: paramilitaries on both sides are allegedly involved with drugs and crime and roaring disaffected teenagers. james: there's a refusal to see and to learn from the mistakes of the past. you know, we still have active ira and are still bombing and they're still attacking.

how is that moving forward and how is that a new ireland? samantha: the good friday agreement was supposed to reconcile the warring sides, but it's being fractious. at one stage the government collapsed when leaders couldn't get along. i'm heading an hour and a half west to londonderry, where 2 years ago, the peace process suffered its biggest shock. it happened at the creggan estate on derry's outskirts. it's a heavily irish republican neighborhood. the new ira has a foothold here. it formed in 2012 and has not accepted northern ireland or the peace.

in april 2019, police launched raids, looking for weapons and explosives. as police moved in, a protest was hastily organized. niall carson: there's an emboldened hoodie teenager takes aim first with stones and then part of a tree trunk. this thing was going on for, i think, 3 hours before i got there. samantha: it was a night of random gunfire and petrol bombs. news photographer niall carson arrived and set to work. niall: i went up and took these pictures of these guys throwing petrol bombs at the police jeeps. samantha: also at the riot that night was a youngster reporter named lyra mckee.

samantha: so where was she standing? niall: she was standing right beside this jeep here. and the polices opened the footpath here, and the gun man came out from behind this fence and fired across here, very close range, and she was hit. nichola mckee corner: and, of course, being a person who grew up in peacetime, would not have anticipated that standing beside a police vehicle may have posed a danger. samantha: lyra sister in belfast received the call from police. nichola: he said, "oh, there has--there was this disturbance tonight and your sister was injured." and i says, "tell me this. is my sister still alive?" and he said, "i'm really sorry to have to tell you this, but your sister's passed away." and i just screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed

and screamed and screamed. samantha: lyra mckee was only 29 when she was killed. lyra mckee: it's given me a big confidence boost. it showed me what i can do. samantha: that's when she won the journalism-- samantha: she grew up in the peace era and advocated for lgbt rights. she wrote about a new northern ireland that could give people a better life, but it was the old ways of the troubles that killed her. the new ira is small, but violent. it admitted to her murder. they were aiming at police. samantha: who are the new ira? nichola: they are the people who killed my sister. that's who they are. they're criminals who wear a mask of irish republicanism

to try and hide the fact that they're criminals because in some parts of northern ireland into this day unfortunately that sort of belief system gives them legitimacy and credibility within the community. samantha: the gunman has not been caught, and no one from creggan is saying who it is. lyra's family are campaigning for justice. nichola: we want the gun man responsible for killing her, you know, but true justice for the people of creggan and the people of northern ireland would be to get all of those people who are responsible in those criminal activities to get them all off the streets so that eryone is safe going forward.

♪♪♪ samantha: throughout the centuries, the quest for justice in ireland has been hard-fought, and rarely won. now the vision of the future that lyra mckee worked for lives on among other so called peace babies. i met up with anna makary and carl duncan in the old factory area of londonderry. i wanted to know how they see the future. and we talked over at guinness. anna makary: what worries me is seeing people our age who were born on the years of good friday agreement and afterwards. these are the people that are out rioting. and i think that's why we need opportunities because these teenagers and children obviously don't see a future for themselves and the society that north ireland has known.

carl duncan: if we're serious about tackling the root of like power militarism in our society, if we're serious about tackling division, we need to take it head on and hit the root of it and operate the growth of poverty. anna: but i do remain hopeful because i do want to stay here. you know, i--this is where i see myself, but unless the opportunity is build, then people like me, i mean, we're going to have no choice but to try and find somewhere else. samantha: tensions are rising. last week, thousands marched against the sea border. some in masks are suspected uvf paramilitaries. they see the border as another step pushing them into a united ireland. people are bracing for a long, violent summer. billy: boris needs to sort it out. for me, it's a problem around what boris does

and how he sees us and whether we're still part of the uk and whether we still are really true british citizens that we are now, but only time will tell. samantha: meanwhile, age-old discord and division sits unresolved. jamie: we have the ageing political conflict, we have-- we are more divided than ever, and that there's still deep hatred between both communities. nichola: well, i would certainly hope that these issues are ironed out and i also hope that people become brave enough to have the conversations that they need, difficult ones, so that we can finally break free from the chains of the past and create a n, betterons that northern ireland for everyone. ♪♪♪

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