Sir, – Reading your headline: “PSNI use water cannon against Belfast anti-immigration rioters” (June 11th) generates a profound sense of deja vu.
The headlines remain depressingly predictable regardless of the year. Irish Times archives, from each of the past 10 years, reveal the same exhausting patterns of street violence: petrol bombs, stone throwing, burnt-out vehicles, injured PSNI officers and significant damage costing millions.
It is only the excuses for rioting that change from sectarian violence at parades to Brexit to anti-immigration and racist agitation.
As the decades pass, civil unrest seems to pass down from one generation to the next, proving, gloomily, that the more things change, the more they remain the same. – Yours, etc,
RM Block
HUGH BRENNAN,
Bray,
Co Wicklow.
