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TERRORISM IN NORTHERN IRELAND33
The political culture and traditions in Northern Ireland, on both Republican and Loyalist extremes of the political spectrum, are so steeped in violence that the Province became a virtual laboratory for deploying protracted terrorism as a weapon within a liberal democratic state. By 1998 over 3,300 had died in 29 years of conflict. From the 'Peep O'Day Boys', the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), the Fenians and the IRA, fresh generations of gunmen have emerged in the North and South. As Conor Cruise O'Brien has remarked:
- Young people in both parts of Ireland have been brought up to think of democracy as part of everyday humdrum existence, but of recourse to violence as something existing on a superior plane, not merely glorious but even sacred. Resort to violence, that is, in conditions resembling those that spurred the Founders into action.
In so far as IRA violence has been directed against the British government since 1970 in order to force a British withdrawal from Ulster and the destruction of the Unionist regime it must be described as a campaign against a liberal democracy: But it must be admitted that, from the establishment of the Unionist regime in Stormont in 1922 to the 1980s, the Northern Catholic minority suffered from political, social and economic discrimination. Moreover, the Special Powers Acts introduced in Ulster in 1922 gave the government sweeping powers to suppress any unwelcome forms of political opposition. The outlawed IRA did attempt a campaign of bombings and attacks on policemen and soldiers in the North from 1956 to 1962, but it was an ignominious failure. The political initiative among the Catholics in the North was taken by the Civil Rights Association in the later 1960s, using non-violent demonstration, petition and political pressure. The IRA was compelled to involve itself in this political work to avoid complete isolation. Apparently blind to the real grievances of the Civil Rights movement, the hardline Unionists interpreted the movement as the front for an IRA conspiracy and revolution. Self-styled 'loyalists' and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) overreacted against Civil Rights marches and demonstrations, while the Revd Ian Paisley whipped up a campaign of anti-Catholic hatred comparable to that of Titus Oates. There is little roon1 for doubt that the hardline Unionists mistook the angry rioting in Londonderry's Bogside in 1969 for a Fenian rising. And the Scarman Tribunal produced abundant evidence of the panic overreaction by the Royal Ulster Constabulary. As the civilian death-toll in the street-fighting rose, the Londonderry and Belfast Catholics began to arm themselves and to look to the IRA as the only available armed Catholic defence organisation. The IRA leadership in Dublin were caught off guard by this escalation into armed conflict. They had, after all, recently swung over to a political strategy in the North. It was the 'Provisional' IRA who then formed and moved in rapidly in 1970 to fill this vacuum.34 Led by hard line 'physical force' men like Sean MacStiofain, the Northern Republicans began to rally to the Provisional organisation because they were ready for military action, and the Provisionals became bitter rivals of the so-called 'Official' Marxist-dominated IRA for the support of Northern Irish Catholics.
It is worth keeping in mind that Belfast is almost ideal terrain for the urban terrorism. It is a city of over 400,000 people, most of whom live in small homes in narrow streets. There are few natural boundaries within the city, and because of its featureless anonymity it is relatively simple forthe terrorist to evade patrols and merge into his surroundings. Much of the property is Victorian or Edwardian, and yards are divided by high walls. There are ideal fields of fire in every street, and countless hiding places for sniping and ambush. Nor is there any shortage of privately held guns, many of them officially registered on the pretext of 'rifle club' membership. Both the Provisionals and the Ulster Defence Association (UDA)35 and the UVF36 have obtained up-to-date arms from abroad. The Provisionals have benefited from considerable financial aid from Republican sympathisers in the United States, and from expropriations and 'donations' within Ulster. They have been able to obtain the highly accurate gas-operated American armalite rifle, made in Japan under licence for theJapanese Self-Defence Force! But the major sources of IRA weapons, including Semtex, AK-47s, and machine-guns, were huge shipments of arms from Libya in the mid 1980s. Certainly the border with the Republic is in constant use by the Provisionals both as a source of arms and ammunition and as an escape route for terrorists. In sum, all these conditions have been conducive to an extraordinarily protracted and bitter ethnic-sectarian feud between the extreme Republicans and the extreme loyalists, and a war of attrition waged by the Provisionals with the aim of compelling the British Army to withdraw:
Ideologically the Provisionals' campaign has been callow in the extreme. It is true that they can depend on widespread sympathy among the Catholic population. The widespread Catholic hatred and resentment of the internment measure introduced by Faulkner's government in the summer of 1971 and the Bloody Sunday shootings37 helped to fuel support for the Provisionals. By late 1972 this sympathy had been largely eroded by the revulsion against the particularly indiscriminate and bloody campaign of bombings in Belfast and Derry which hurt the innocent civilian population (Catholic and Protestant alike), ruined livelihoods, and which seemed to prove to the majority of the population the absolute necessity of a continuing British military presence. By continuing a stubborn policy of death and destruction the Provisionals were forfeiting all possibility of participation in, or real influence upon, the planning of a new constitutional structure for Northern Ireland to replace the now discredited Stormont system. Cathal Goulding's assessment of MacStiofain could really be applied to the Provisional movement as a whole:
- The thing that I have against him is that he is a very narrow man and he is a man who won't accept or examine new ideas and in his rigidity he is sure that there is only one solution to this problem and that is by physical force. He has no time for politics of any kind - and a revolutionary who has no time for politics is in my opinion a madman.
There is no doubt that the Provisionals have deployed an impressive range of terrorist techniques including car bombs, mortar attacks, assassinations, gaol-breaking, letter-bombing and kidnapping. They have time and again demonstrated capability in carrying terror bombings into London and other English cities. But terrorism can sink to the level of a corrupted and professionalised form of crime which is finally self-destroying. Nor have the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) and UVF or the other Protestant extremist organisations in the Province any better record.38 Several recent studies have carefully documented the scale of their record of murder and destruction, and show how they also have actively incited violence and promoted sectarian hatred and bigotry.
The case of terrorism in Northern Ireland further supports my argument that liberal democracy is only seriously threatened by revolutionary terrorism when there is a general withdrawal of popular support from government, or when government appears entirely unable to deal with the problems that face it. This reassuring conclusion should not lead us to neglect the tragic costs of prolonged terror in a democracy: community values are destroyed; families are divided and bereaved; children are brought up in an atmosphere of suspicion and hatred and, in their teens, are socialised into terroristic violence. Normal business and industry becomes impossible and new investment ceases. Whole sectors of cities are so damaged by terrorism that they take on the appearance of a land subjected to air attack. Political relations between parties and groups become poisoned, so that bargaining and compromise are instantly identified as 'betrayal'. Both extremes take on organisational forms and attitudes of paramilitary movements. It becomes increasingly difficult for the ordinary citizen to escape the terror of one or other of the armed camps. 'If you are not with us you are against us' becomes the rallying cry. Terrorism can corrupt and corrode democracy by establishing a kind of tyranny over men's souls, and no democracy worth the name can afford to tolerate it.
Just as there were those in the Irish Republican movement who mis-read the history of Northern Ireland, and believed it was a case of British colonialism comparable to Cyprus, so there were some in the security forces who believed that they could simply apply the lessons of counter-insurgency acquired by the army in colonial situations and this would suffice to defeat the Provisional IRA. Both sides had to adapt to a much more complex reality. Eventually the more pragmatic and politically astute political leaders in Sinn Fein/lRA had to recognise that they had to enter the political arena if they were to have any chance of securing the changes they desired. At time of writing, following the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and its endorsement in the 22 May Referendum, it remained to be seen whether the hard-core Sinn Fein/IRA would be willing to give up the bomb and the gun for good,39 though the IRA's announcement in May 2000 that it was prepared to put its weapons 'beyond use' and to allow independent observers to inspect its arms dumps was a major breakthrough.
Meanwhile, the security forces and successive British governments have had to learn that combating protracted terrorism in a modern democratic society under the spotlight of the media and international opinionmust be carried out in ways fully compatible with the maintenance of democracy, respect for human rights and the upholding of the rule of law. Even in this severe test, the criminal justice model of response and police primacy works best.
Notes
33 For the historical and political background to this conflict, see Conor Cruise O'Brien, States cif Ireland (London: Panther, 1972); Richard Rose, Governing without Consensus (London: Faber, 1971); Charles Townshend, Political Violence in Ireland: Government and Resistance since 1848 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984); Patrick Buckland, A History of Northern Ireland (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1981); and Robert Kee, Ireland, A History (London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1980).
34 On the emergence of the Provisionals, see Patrick Bishop and Eamonn Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London: Heinemann, 1987).
35 The best analysis of the Loyalist terrorist groups is Steve Bruce, The Red Hmld: Protestant Paramilitaries in Northern Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).
36 Ibid.
37 For a collection of hitherto unpublished eye-witness accounts of Bloody Sunday, which throw into doubt the findings of Lord Widgery's official inquiry, see Don Mullan (ed.), Eyewitness Bloody Sunday: The Truth (Dublin: Wolfhound Press, 1997). 38. See Steve Bruce, The Red Hand.
39 For a calm and realistic assessment of the prospects of securing a lasting peace, see 'Goodbye to All That', The Economist, 18 April 1998, p. 13.
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Terrorism in Northern Ireland11
The political culture and traditions in Northern Ireland, on both Republican and Loyalist extremes of the political spectrum, are so steeped in violence that the Province became a virtual laboratory for deploying protracted terrorism as a weapon within a liberal democratic state. By 1998 over 3,300 had died in 29 years of conflict. From the 'Peep O'Day Boys', the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), the Fenians and the Irish Republican Army (IRA), fresh generations of gunmen have emerged in the north and south. As Conor Cruise O'Brien has remarked:
- Young people in both parts of Ireland have been brought up to think of democracy as part of everyday humdrum existence, but of recourse to violence as something existing on a superior plane, not merely glorious but even sacred. Resort to violence, that is, in conditions resembling those that spurred the Founders into action.
Insofar as IRA violence was directed against the British government since 1970 in order to force a British withdrawal from Ulster and the destruction of the Unionist regime, it must be described as a campaign against liberal democracy. But it must be admitted that, from the establishment of the Unionist regime in Stormont in 1922 to the 1980s, the northern Catholic minority suffered from political, social and economic discrimination. Moreover, the Special Powers Act introduced in Ulster in 1922 gave the government sweeping powers to suppress any unwelcome forms of political opposition. The outlawed IRA did attempt a campaign of bombings and attacks on policemen and soldiers in the north from 1956 to 1962, but it was an ignominious failure. The political initiative amongst the Catholics in the north was taken by the Civil Rights Association in the later 1960s, using non-violent demonstration, petition and political pressure. The IRA was compelled to involve itself in this political work to avoid complete isolation. Apparently blind to the real grievances of the Civil Rights movement, the hardline Unionists interpreted the movement as the front for the IRA conspiracy and revolution. Self-styled 'Loyalists' and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) over-reacted against Civil Rights marches and demonstrations, while the Revd lan Paisley whipped up a campaign of anti-Catholic hatred comparable with that of Titus Oates. There is little room for doubt that the hardline Unionists mistook the angry rioting in Londonderry's Bogside in 1969 for a Fenian rising. And the Scarman Tribunal produced abundant evidence of the panic over-reaction by the RUC. As the civilian death toll in the street-fighting rose, the Londonderry and Belfast Catholics began to arm themselves and to look to the IRA as the only available armed Catholic defence organisation. The IRA leadership in Dublin were caught off guard by this escalation into armed conflict. They had, after all, recently swung over to a political strategy in the north. It was the 'Provisional' IRA which then formed and moved in rapidly in 1970 to fill this vacuum.12 Led
by hardline 'physical force' men like Sean MacStiofain, the Northern Republicans began to rally to the Provisional organisation because they were ready for military action, and the Provisionals became bitter rivals of the so-called 'Official' Marxist dominated IRA for the support of the Northern Irish Catholics.
It is worth keeping in mind that Belfast was the most ideal terrain for the urban terrorism. It is a city of over 400,000 people, most of whom lived in small homes in narrow streets. There were few natural boundaries within the city, and because of its featureless anonymity it was relatively simple for the terrorist to evade patrols and merge into its surroundings. Much of the property is Victorian or Edwardian, and yards are divided by high walls. There were ideal fields of fire in every street, and countless hiding places for sniping and ambush. Nor was there any shortage of privately held guns, many of them officially registered on the pretext of 'rifle club' membership. Both the Provisionals and the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) 13 and the UVF14 obtained up-to-date arms from abroad. The Provisionals benefited from considerable financial aid from Republican sympathisers in the USA, and from expropriations and 'donations' within Ulster. They were able to obtain the highly accurate gas-operated American armalite rifle, made in Japan under licence for the Japanese Self-Defence Force. But the major sources of IRA weapons, including Semtex, AK-47s, and machine guns were huge shipments of arms from Libya in the mid-1980s. Certainly the border with the Republic was in constant use by the Provisionals both as a source of arms and ammunition and as an escape route for terrorists. In sum, all these conditions were conducive to an extraordinarily protracted and bitter ethnic sectarian feud between the extreme Republicans and the extreme Loyalists and a war of attrition waged by the Provisionals with the aim of compelling the British Army to withdraw.
Ideologically, the Provisionals' campaign was callow in the extreme. It is true that they could depend on widespread sympathy among the Catholic population. The widespread Catholic hatred and resentment of the internment measure introduced by Faulkner's government in the summer of 1971 and the Bloody Sunday shootings15 helped to fuel support for the Provisionals. By late 1972 the sympathy had been largely eroded by the revulsion against the particularly indiscriminate and bloody campaign of bombings in Belfast and Derry which hurt the innocent population (Catholic and Protestant alike), ruined livelihoods and which seemed to prove to the majority of the population the absolute necessity of a continuing British military presence. By continuing a stubborn policy of death and destruction the Provisionals forfeited all possibility of participation in, or real influence upon, the planning of a new constitutional structure for Northern Ireland to replace the now discredited Stormont system. Cathal Goulding's assessment of MacStiofain could really be applied to the Provisional movement as a whole:
- The whole thing I have against him is that he is a very narrow man, he is a man who won't accept or examine new ideas and in his rigidity he is sure that there is only one solution to this problem and that is by physical force. He has no time for politics of any kind - and a revolutionary who has no time for politics is in my mind a madman.16
There is no doubt that the Provisionals deployed an impressive range of terrorist techniques including car bombs, mortar attacks, assassinations, gaol-breaking, letter bombing and kidnapping. They repeatedly demonstrated capability in carrying terror bombings into London and other English cities. But terrorism can sink to the level of a corrupted and professionalised form of crime which is finally self-destroying. Nor did the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) and UVF or the other Protestant extremist organisations in the Province have any better record.17 Several recent studies have carefully documented the scale of their record of murder and destruction and show how they also actively incited violence and promoted sectarian hatred and bigotry.
The case of terrorism in Northern Ireland further supports my argument that liberal democracy is only seriously threatened by revolutionary terrorism when there is a general withdrawal of popular support from government, or when government appears entirely unable to deal with the problems that face it. This reassuring conclusion should not lead us to neglect the tragic costs of prolonged terror in a democracy: community values are destroyed; families are divided and bereaved; children are brought up in an atmosphere of suspicion and hatred and, in their teens, are socialised into terrible violence. Normal business and industry becomes impossible and new investment ceases. Whole sectors of cities are so damaged by terrorism that they take on the appearance of a land subjected to air attack. Political relations between parties and groups become poisoned, so that bargaining and compromise are instantly identified as 'betrayal'. Both extremes take on organisational forms and attitudes of paramilitary movements. It becomes increasingly difficult for the ordinary citizen to escape the terror of one or other of the armed camps. 'If you are not with us you are against us' becomes the rallying cry. Terrorism can corrupt and corrode democracy by establishing a kind of tyranny over men's souls and no democracy worth the name can afford to tolerate it.
Just as there were those in the Irish Republican movement who misread the history of Northern Ireland, and believed it was a case of British colonialism comparable to Cyprus, so there were some in the security forces who believed that they could simply apply the lessons of counter-insurgency acquired by the army in colonial situations and this would suffice to defeat the Provisional IRA. Both sides had to adapt to a much more complex reality. Eventually, the more pragmatic and politically astute political leaders in Sinn Fein/lRA had to recognise that they had to enter the political arena if they were to have any chance of securing the changes they desired. Following the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and its endorsement in the 22 May Referendum, it remained to be seen whether the hard-core Sinn F ein/lRA would be willing to give up the bomb and gun for good, although the IRA's announcement in May 2000 that it was prepared to put its weapons 'beyond use' and to allow independent observers to inspect its arms dumps was a major breakthrough. Eventually in 2005, the IRA announced the decommissioning of its weapons and only the use of peaceful means to pursue its goals. And on 26 September 2005, the head of the international decommissioning body, General de Chastelain, issued a statement confirming that the decommissioning had taken place.
Notes
11 Sir David Omand, Keynote speech, 1 July 2004, at launch of RUSI Homeland Resilience Programme, 8 July 2004, available at www.ukresilience.info/contingencies/rusi.htrn
12 Omand, ibid., p. 6.
13 'What is the Critical National Infrastructure?', op. cit., pp. 1-2.
14 (2005) 'What is national criticality?', NISCC Quarterly, 04105, p. 2, available at www.uniras.gov. uklniscc/docs/re-20051230-0 1143.pdf?lang=en.
15 Lukasik et al., op. cit.
16 Omand, op. cit, p. 6.
17 Ibid., pp. 6-7
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