THERE is no doubt the cowardly attack on Ulster Unionist leader Doug Beattie's constituency office was a response to his announcement that he will no longer be attending anti-protocol rallies.
Mr Beattie issued a statement on Sunday warning that the rallies were being "used to raise the temperature in Northern Ireland and adding to tensions that now see a resurgence of UVF activity".
It is a view that would be widely shared – if politically difficult for a unionist leader to voice – and the former army captain deserves praise for taking a principled stand.
The UVF is suspected of being behind the bomb alert on Friday which saw a van driver hijacked at gunpoint and ordered to drive to a peace-building event in north Belfast where Simon Coveney was speaking.
The hoax saw the evacuation of the foreign affairs minister and dozens of others from a community centre beside Holy Cross Church, forced a grieving family to hold a funeral service in a car park, and left the van driver traumatised.
There was widespread political condemnation, including from unionist politicians.
However, just hours later DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson and TUV leader Jim Allister were among speakers at a rally in opposition to the Northern Ireland Protocol which heard loyalist campaigner Jamie Bryson describe Mr Coveney as a "meddling aggressor" and the Irish government as "coming to Northern Ireland and swanning around as if they own the place".
Mr Bryson emphasised the need for protests to be peaceful, but his language was at the very least distasteful given the ordeal suffered by many earlier that day.
Mr Beattie clearly felt he could no longer be part of further rallies with what he described as "blood and thunder rhetoric”.
The attack on his office shortly afterwards only illustrated his point.
While that and other acts of violence have been firmly condemned by Mr Donaldson and Mr Allister, as public representatives they should now be seriously questioning their own involvement in future events.
Mr Donaldson, in particular, has conceded that care needs to be taken over language. The focus of his efforts to change the protocol should surely be in Brussels, not Ballymoney.
Meanwhile, the bomb alert and other violence in recent months raises the spectre of an active and armed UVF seeking to interfere in the democratic process.
This should be a source of enormous concern and immediate attention for police and all politicians as we approach an election and another potentially fraught marching season.
