Is Northern Ireland moving away from paramilitarism? Maybe, maybe not

25 May 2022 Ryan Miller    Last updated: 25 May 2022

A mural on the Lower Newtownards Road (image from UU's CAIN database)
A mural on the Lower Newtownards Road (image from UU's CAIN database)

While the headlines are filled with stories that feel out of time, local perceptions about the reach of Loyalist and Republican gangs are changing slowly, if they are changing at all.

 

Today’s Belfast Telegraph led with a story that seemed like something from the past.

Details about the visit of a US politician was leaked to loyalist paramilitaries. Security for this visit has since been enhanced.

Congressman Richard Neal is leading a delegation of US politicians to speak with officials from both NI and down south. Broadly speaking, Mr Neal is sympathetic to Republican aims, and emphatically so.

Crime Correspondent Allison Morris, who broke the story, said that the newspaper was “alerted on Tuesday evening that precise details, including estimated travel times to and from venues, had somehow fallen into the hands of loyalist paramilitaries.”

If this feels incongruous, it is. Sort of.

Everyone knows that Loyalist and Republican paramilitaries still exist. Their exact purpose is less precise. Are they, in their own eyes at least, political militias? Or are they criminal gangs that wave flags to shore up some support in the communities from which they operate?

Maybe they are a good slice of both – but the exact point of balance between those two realities varies between each individual member of these groups.

But we all know they haven’t gone away. Any incongruity stems from the idea that high-profile foreign politicians might be under realistic threat when they visit Norn Iron. However, even that maybe shouldn’t be that shocking.

It is just over three years since journalist Lyra McKee was murdered by a New IRA gunman. Only this week, a man was shot in the back in North Belfast raising fears of a internal feud among Loyalists, per another report from experienced crime reporter Ms Morris.

Most people want us to move far past this. Clearly Northern Ireland is in a far better place than it was 20 years ago, let alone 30 or 40. What more can be done?

Schemes

The Northern Ireland Executive Programme to Tackle Paramilitary Activity, Criminality and Organised Crime has several different schemes aimed at reducing paramilitary influence.

One of those schemes is Ending the Harm, a public-awareness campaign “aimed at highlighting the devastating impact of so-called ‘paramilitary style attacks’ on victims, their families, local communities and wider society.”

Last week, the Department of Justice published findings from recent surveys of both adults and young people about public perceptions of paramilitarism in NI. These surveys track answers to the same questions for each year from 2017-20, inclusive.

The Ending the Harm campaign, via its Twitter feed, highlighted some of these results: “Adult respondents who agreed/strongly agreed that paramilitary groups ‘contribute to crime, drug dealing & anti-social behaviour’ within their area increased to 26.5% in 2020.

“Only 2.9% feel paramilitaries ‘help keep their area safe’.

“An increasing proportion of young people disagreed or strongly disagreed that they are influenced too much by paramilitary groups within their area (72.3% in 2020, up from 59.5% in 2017).”

Those stats sound encouraging. What about the other findings? In terms of paramilitary influence, the surveys found that:

There was a general upward trend in the number of adults who felt paramilitary groups contribute to crime, drug-dealing and anti-social behaviour within their area (22.0%, 18.2%, 25.3%, 26.5%).

A decreasing proportion strongly agreed or agreed however that paramilitary groups help keep their area safe (5.4%, 4.8%, 6.4%, 2.9%).

A fluctuating number of young people felt paramilitary groups contribute to crime, drug-dealing and anti-social behaviour within their area (18.4%, 24.3%, 24.4%, 17.0%).

A relatively consistent proportion of young people strongly agreed or agreed that paramilitary groups help keep their area safe (7.3%, 6.1%, 5.8%, 6.2%).

Are those results good? It would be difficult to argue that perceptions in general are moving in the wrong direction. However, you could argue they are overall static – some good, some bad, and movement generally by a few percentage points in either direction.

Perceptions do not necessarily reflect reality but public opinion is important, and does offer insight about the public’s experience.

Wider view

For context, some of the other released results include:

An overwhelming majority of adults (96.4%, 95.9%, 93.3%, 95.8%) felt very or fairly safe living within their area. A slightly lower proportion of young people felt very or fairly safe living within their area (91.8%, 92.2%, 89.9%, 87.9%).

There has been an overall increase in the number of adults who felt that people within their area were confident in reporting crime and anti-social behaviour to the PSNI between 2017 (56.7%) and 2020 (63.7%). From 2017 to 2019, almost three fifths (56.9%, 59.6%, 59.4%) strongly agreed or agreed that PSNI keeps their area safe, this decreased to 45.1% in 2020.

A decreasing number of young people felt that people within their area were confident in reporting crime and anti-social behaviour to the PSNI (54.8%, 47.8%, 48.2%, 42.9%). A decreasing number of young people also felt PSNI keeps their area safe (55.2%, 50.2%, 50.0%, 37.9%).

More than three quarters of adult respondents agreed or strongly agreed that people within their area generally abide by the law (82.9%, 82.7%, 78.0%, 85.9%). However, a smaller proportion of respondents felt that they were protected by the law and justice system (62.9%, 65.0%, 62.6%, 62.7%).

There was a general decrease in the proportion of young people who felt that people within their area generally abide by the law (72.6%, 70.4%, 67.2%, 65.9%). A decreasing number of young people felt that they were protected by the law and justice system from 2017 (65.6%) to 2020 (50.1%).

So, Northern Ireland doesn’t seem like a terrible place to live – but, again, some of these perceptions are going in a good direction, and some are not. If that’s progress, it’s slow.

What now?

Efforts to eradicate paramilitarism are not racing towards ultimate success.

This is not to denigrate the good work being done to reduce the influence of paramilitaries and to stop young people from getting involved in that world.

Ending the Harm is a vital campaign – check out its real-life stories, for instance - but not one that can be expected to solve all this on its own. That is why the Executive has put together a number of different schemes in parallel.

There are initiatives to help children and young people steer away from paramilitaries, and to provide them with better opportunities and aspirations. There are analogous schemes aimed at marginalised men “who are most susceptible to paramilitary / criminal influence”.

Schemes aimed at reducing recidivism, aimed at helping people step away from their role in paramilitary organisations, schemes at aimed at promoting more women to leadership positions within communities, and more and more.

Tens of millions of pounds are spent on these programmes, great work is being done, but many of them would say they could do more with more resources.

The fact is that ending paramilitarism is an extremely stubborn and complex problem, whatever you think paramilitarism actually represents.

Northern Ireland remains a divided society, even if there is a growing cohort of people who themselves don’t feel like they stand, or wish to stand, on one side of a chasm (and this includes unionists and nationalists, as well as political ‘others’).

Moreover, criminality exists everywhere, and everywhere it is a business. Businesses make money and provide status. This will always have a level of attraction – especially in a country with an economy that has coughed and wheezed its way forward for decades.

This article doesn’t end with an answer. These are immensely difficult challenges. It’s important to be clear-sighted about that.

There is a plausible argument to be made that the latest findings on paramilitary perceptions are, overall, positive. However, at the current rate of change, we will be discussing these problems for decades to come. And, if ongoing political tensions continue to heat up, these problems might start to get worse.

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