Communities have say on criminals controlling them and the societal issues they exploit to fuel their activity
UDA mural on the Newtownards Road in BelfastA UDA/UFF mural in the loyalist Rathcoole estate in south east Antrim. Pic: PacemakerMasked men at a funeral at Roselawn crematoriumThe UDA has been linked to an attack in which a man was nailed to this fence in BushmillsNorth Down UDA muralUDA mural on the Newtownards Road in BelfastA UDA/UFF mural in the loyalist Rathcoole estate in south east Antrim. Pic: Pacemaker
Niamh Campbell
Not a month goes by in Northern Ireland, where either the UDA or UVF don’t make any headlines, and quite often, people here don’t really bat an eyelid,
At an event exploring Paramilitary Intimidation Within Communities in 2015, Professor Liam Kennedy from the Institute of Irish Studies at Queen’s University Belfast said there is a “degree of acceptance to dehumanisation over half a century”.
This could explain why so many residents in paramilitary-dominated areas appear to be desensitised to their activities.
However, in the last fortnight, more members of the public have been displaying outrage at the bizarre and brazen acts some paramilitary members have been carrying out, with seemingly no worries of consequences or reproach.
Earlier this month, the Belfast Telegraph revealed that six masked men in paramilitary uniforms carried the coffin of Andrew ‘Andy’ Best, a former member of the UDA’s 3rd Battalion based in Tigers Bay.
Despite the paramilitary funeral, sources in Tigers Bay say Best was at one time subjected to a punishment attack from the organisation he had been a member of since his early 20s, and police now say they are investigating images of the masked men at the funeral, which took place in April.
On Friday, a 37-year-old man was arrested by police investigating a ‘crucifixion’ attack in which a man was nailed to a fence in Bushmills, Co Antrim, during the early hours of May 5. Police confirmed on Saturday morning that he had been released from custody following questioning.
The group had previously issued threats and there had been accusations of criminality against individuals painted on walls in the area.
According to PSNI data, between 2022 and 2023, there were 23 casualties as a result of paramilitary-style assaults carried out by loyalist groups, and four loyalist paramilitary shootings.
And last October, an academic told MPs that there are more loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland today than there were 30 years ago.
South East Antrim UDA mural in Glengormley, north Belfast
Dr Aaron Edwards, a lecturer at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, said: “The political dimension has lessened since the ceasefires (in 1994), however since the Brexit referendum and subsequent protest actions on the streets, we have seen new life breathed into these old antiquated paramilitary structures.”
Dr John Kyle, a former veteran unionist politician for east Belfast, says that throughout his 16 years of sitting on Belfast City Council, he never felt that paramilitary activity was waning.
“I didn’t feel that it was going away, despite all the good work being done, including the good work being done by those who used to be involved with these organisations,” he explained.
“Some of them are doing really good work, and have done really work over past decades – those such as The Resurgam Trust in Lisburn, Act Initiative on the Shankill and Alternatives Restorative Justice [all community organisations dedicated to building communities and tackling anti-social behaviours].
“But, the loan sharks, protection racketeering, threatening and coercive control was – and is – still not going away.
“Part of the problem is that the sentences that are being given out in court to drug dealers are a laugh. They are totally inadequate. These people are getting short and suspended sentences, when they should be getting put away for years, because they’re destroying lives and corrupting societies.”
In Northern Ireland, judges are bound by sentencing guidelines and must take into account mitigating circumstances, such as early guilty pleas, co-operation with police and remorse, as well as aggravating factors, such as intent and excessive violence.
Dr Kyle continued: “Communities, politicians and churches can’t deal with them – the criminal justice system needs to.
“It is time for paramilitaries to leave the stage. It is absolutely essential that they transition into full civilisation in the next year or two, because otherwise they’re just giving cover to these criminal gangs.”
Dr John Kyle. Picture: Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker
Understandably, when approached for their views on this type of behaviour, many people from within communities deemed as loyalist or unionist don’t want to be named, because they are still living in fear or don’t want to be criticised and targeted for seemingly ‘stepping out of line’.
One community worker, who has been volunteering his time to work with children in certain areas of east Belfast for over 10 years, says he feels like he is “losing a battle to paramilitaries every single hour, of every single day’.
He believes loyalist gangs are worse than their republican counterparts, as they “hide in plain sight”.
“These loyalist paramilitaries are embedded in everything now; pubs, community centres, football clubs, darts teams, pool teams, boxing clubs – if they control everything, how do clubs outside of that get sponsorship?
“They use these outlets as a way of good PR for themselves – ‘look at the good we are doing for our community and for the kids here’ – but really, they are means to control those neighbourhoods from within, and a means to launder their illegal money.
“People don’t realise their kids are being groomed quite literally, to become drug dealers and drug addicts themselves, through these organisations.
“They also get the local chippy or taxi firm or whatever to sponsor said teams, but it’s not really sponsorship money, it’s protection money.
“Japanese knotweed can destroy houses, it destroys foundations, and it takes over.
“The paramilitaries are Japanese knotweed to the community. They get in, and you can’t get them out.
One woman from north Belfast, whose father was in the UDA during the Troubles, stressed that exactly what the late PUP leader said, is “what we are seeing today”.
“The fact is, these are criminal gangs using loyalism and the organisations as coverage. That’s not what loyalism is,” she said.
“A lot of loyalists are doing fantastic work and I know that they are doing it quietly. A lot of them have transitioned since the 80s and 90s, and have done so successfully.
“We are also seeing intergenerational trauma, poverty and social disadvantage, which I have to say, the Executive has failed to address.
She added that the government and unionist politicians have failed the people they are supposed to represent, but noted that the same goes for republican communities.
“Just look at north Belfast. You have Tiger’s Bay on one side of the road and the New Lodge on the other. The working class people are suffering the same.
“In fact, a north Belfast women’s group led by the Shankill Women’s Centre, produced a photography book several years ago. They compared the photos from both areas and found they had the same issues.
“Poverty, lack of appropriate housing, lack of amenities and a lack of things for young people to do – that is what allows these gangs to thrive.”
QUESTIONS: Eugene Thompson is stilling looking for answers into his brother Paul’s murder 30 years ago this month
IN the dying hours of the inquest into the killing of Paul Thompson, the legal representatives of the Northern Ireland Office and the Secretary of State worked to the last minute to prevent Eugene Thompson, Paul’s only surviving relative, from getting a ‘gist’ of withheld papers which may have been relevant to the murder.
The Coroner fought tooth and nail to provide Eugene with this gist, despite the Secretary of State, but it was not to be. The inquest ended unfinished and the Coroner is writing to the same Secretary of State to request a public inquiry.
Nothing could have prepared Eugene Thompson for this process. Nothing could have prepared us for the Legacy Act, the denial of fundamental rights, the arrogance of the enablers of the Act, or the legal representatives of the British state who left Paul Thompson’s brother, their late mother Margaret’s surviving son, sitting in that court as the lights went off, without the inquest finished.
The Legacy Act has created an environment where the British state has reasserted its own legal primacy and its shield of sovereignty, regardless of the devolution of criminal justice or policing. Connected to that is the notion that we will frame our understanding of our conflict through the lens of Britain’s own discovery and history processes.
Last week we were treated to the spectacle of a ‘public’ history project which will now write the official history of British policy in Ireland. This new project will be like the new ICRIR processes. They are promised unprecedented access to documents unavailable before. They are promised goodwill, never seen before. And if you believe that, I hope the Tooth Fairy filled your pillow cases with the gold at the end of the rainbow that Santa collected when he rode in on a unicorn.
We are ready for what that means. No-one believes that there is a different state to the one that devised the Legacy Act and sent its hyena-like lackies into the courts to deny gists of hidden reports to bereaved relatives like Eugene, Bridie Brown, Chris Moran, Christine McCusker or Bernie McKearney; one that will now suddenly emerge in all of its beneficence. No-one believes that the British state will now begin the processes of opening up the files written by Frank Kitson, disclosure of which were denied to Mary Heenan, wife of Paddy, killed by Ginger Baker.
It is not only because we are not the thick Paddies some would like us to think we are, or that we are a bit cynical after decades of lies, denial and delays. No, we do not believe any of this guff because of all of that – and because the British government in its current Tory embodiment told us that their plan is exactly the opposite. They put in their manifestos and made public promises to their veterans that they will protect veterans and their narrative of the British state’s role in our conflict. And these dead-hand bodies are how they will do it.
What we can expect now is exactly what we have seen for decades in the absence of British good faith. Families and communities recording the truth, sharing the truth and fighting for the better day to come. Never giving up.
Why would an Irish based human rights group produce an exhibit on the legacy of colonialism? And why here and why now?
The question about here and now is easy to answer. This launch of this exhibition took place in August 2017 in the Museum of Free Derry. There are few places more appropriate to have an exhibit on the poisonous legacy of colonialism. It really needs no explanation. Bloody Sunday, Amritzar, As regards timing. In 2017 India and Pakistan commemorated 70 years since partition, an event that marked the end of British rule and led to the deaths of millions and displacement of millions more. One footnote. In the grounds of the Royal Academy in Dungannon there is a statue to Brig General John Nicholson. He was killed during the siege of Dehli. He advocated the…
‘flaying alive, impalement or burning,’ of Indian prisoners and added, ‘I would inflict the most excruciating tortures I could think of on them with a perfectly easy conscience.’
Should we have statues to such people?
In 2020 the legacy of racism and slavery in the US, in particular in numerous police departments across the country, has manifested itself in the on-going killings of people of colour and the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement worldwide. Racism and slavery-the motor that drove and financed the empire, is the backdrop to the crisis in the US today.
And the answer as to why we would look beyond our shores in such an exhibit is to be found in the on-going impact of British military policies and practices in the north of Ireland in the early 1970s. Policies and practices that were to leave a disastrous legacy in particular on working class nationalist/republican communities. Unarmed civilians were shot dead by British troops with impunity. Daily harassment and repression was the norm and even now new evidence is emerging of horrendous cases of torture including the use of waterboarding and electric shocks.
Relatives of those who were killed (and were then labelled terrorists, gunmen and bombers) continue to seek truth and acknowledgement. Many of the victims of torture are still with us.
And crucially, the military policies and practices that defined Operation Banner, the military name for deployment in the North from 1969 to 2007, did not begin nor did they end on the island of Ireland.
Internment, mass screening of civilians, the use of the five torture techniques, waterboarding and electric shocks, states of emergency, massacres by troops and the use of undercover secret units had long been standard practice in the counter-insurgency wars fought during the retreat from empire.
Troops that stepped off boats in Derry and Belfast in 1969 were often fresh from other brutalising conflicts as the sun began to set on the empire. That units such as the Parachute Regiment would go on to commit massacres (Bloody Sunday, Ballymurphy, Springhill) or use waterboarding on detainees is hardly surprising given their record in other conflicts. Both the first and second battalion of the Paras had served in Aden.
Kitson
Senior officers who had free rein in Cyprus or Aden such as Brigadier Frank Kitson soon set about implementing low intensity war tactics that had been tried and tested. The European Convention on Human Rights cut little ice in military circles. Kitson created undercover units (the MRF) whose aim was to provoke sectarian conflict. Similar units had been set up in Cyprus (Q Patrols) and Oman (firqats). It is striking that every single General Officer Commanding the British Army in the north in the 1970s had seen military service in the ‘colonies’.
Prior colonial service was not limited to the ranks of the military. Two RUC Chief Constables in the 1970s had been colonial police. Arthur Young served in Malaya and Kenya though it should be noted that Young was apparently appalled by the atrocities being carried out in Kenya by British forces and left after less than eight months.
Kenneth Newman’s stint in Palestine as a young officer came some 20 years after Major General Henry Tudor established the Mandate Police Force. Tudor had form. He had created and commanded the Infamous Black and Tans during the Irish War of Independence and succeeded in bringing many of his former Tan comrades with him to Palestine. Between 75% and 95% of the ‘gendamerie’ that he commanded were former ‘Tans’.
Colonel Nicholson, the “Hooded Men” & the “Five Techniques”
In 1971 allegations of torture began to emerge from interrogation centres in the north. This led to the Irish Government taking a case to the European Court of Human Rights. The location of the most egregious torture, including the use of the ‘Five Techniques’ (see box), has only recently been revealed. Declassified documents found by the Pat Finucane Centre confirmed that a selected group of men were tortured at Ballykelly army camp near Derry.
The same documents contain the name of a senior officer, an expert in interrogation from the Joint Services Interrogation Wing at Ashford in Kent, who was in charge in Ballykelly in 1971. We will return to this individual.
As the conflict here escalated the ten year secret war in Oman/Dhofar continued. The SAS were hired out as mercenaries to the Sultan to fight a war cloaked in exceptional secrecy. This climate of secrecy mirrored the almost complete failure in Britain to highlight human rights abuses that occurred in the retreat from empire.
To this day there is little mention of the dark side of empire in the curriculum, in parliament or in the media. The Imperial War Museum tells a fascinating story but the torture, massacre and repression that was a hallmark of empire is conspicuous by its absence from the exhibitions. Little wonder that the same violations have recurred more recently in Iraq or Afghanistan. The then Attorney General, in evidence to the European Commission of Human Rights in Feb 1977 made a solemn promise that the Five Techniques would never again be permitted. Not long after the Iraq invasion British army units began interrogating prisoners using the Five Techniques.
So the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, and as we speak, the people of Yemen, pay the price for the collective failure to face up to the poisonous legacy of empire.
According to the 2011 Baha Mousa Inquiry a Lt Col John Robert Nicholson OBE had admitted to an earlier inquiry (The Parker Inquiry) to being ‘personally present’ when the ‘five techniques’ were used in Aden and British Guyana. Nicholson also discloses from personal knowledge that they had been used in other countries, including Cameroon, Borneo, Cyprus and Malaysia. Declassified documents discovered by the PFC confirm that the same Lt Col John Nicholson who served at Aden was the most senior British army officer at Ballykelly in 1971 when the ‘Hooded men’ were tortured.
Dublin, 13 May 1916 – 14 men have been executed in Kilmainham Gaol for their involvement in the recent Dublin rebellion.
The executions were carried out by firing squad at dawn.
The men had earlier been tried in secrecy at Richmond Barracks in Dublin at a series of field general courts-martial where they were permitted no defence counsel.
Among the men who have been shot are all seven signatories of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic that was posted on walls around Dublin during the rebellion and was read aloud outside the GPO on Sackville Street by Patrick Pearse on Easter Monday.
A further execution in Co. Cork took place on 9 May where Thomas Kent was shot after his arrest 7 days earlier. Mr Kent had been heavily linked with land agitation in Cork, but it is not clear that he had any involvement in the Rising in Dublin.
Cartoon from Issues and Events commenting on the freedom of Ireland. (Image: Villanova University)
Other rebels Also executed were leaders of various garrisons of volunteers who took over key buildings around Dublin. The decisions to single out Willie Pearse and John MacBride for execution appear unrelated to any rank they held, however.
In London, Roger Casement awaits trial for treason and is being held in the Tower of London, following his arrest in Co. Kerry on Good Friday. It appears that Casement was attempting to facilitate a shipment of arms from Germany for use in the rebellion.
Meanwhile, the arrests of hundreds of people associated, or deemed by the authorities to be associated with the Rising, continues.
Those arrested are being interned, with some being sent across the Irish Sea to England and Wales.
[Editor’s note: This is an article from Century Ireland, a fortnightly online newspaper, written from the perspective of a journalist 100 years ago, based on news reports of the time.]
