wfn.org | Weary and Wary in Northern Ireland:

[PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org]

28-January-1998 
98034 
 
    Weary and Wary in Northern Ireland: 
    Renewed Violence Threatens Peace Talks 
 
    by Alexa Smith 
 
LOUISVILLE, Ky.--The Rev. Sam Hutchinson goes for a walk in his Belfast, 
Northern Ireland, neighborhood every night before bed. 
 
    He followed his usual route last week, but not without a bit of the 
nervousness that has spread to Belfast's quiet suburbs, far from the more 
volatile boroughs of the provincial capital politely known as "difficult 
areas."  For in those areas - with names such as Shankill Road and Carlisle 
Circus  and Whitewell Road - a tit-for-tat murder campaign resumed last 
week. Six were killed and one of the small Protestant parties with links to 
a paramilitary force pulled out of the political talks that are geared 
toward ending the violence that has killed more than 3,000 people since 
1969. 
 
    "Every car that passes, you wonder, `Who's that?'" said Hutchinson, 
stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland (PCI).  "You know, they 
can't guard every hotel, every pub, every taxi company." 
 
    But Hutchinson's dogged persistence in keeping up his routine despite 
his uneasiness is nothing new in Northern Ireland.  So when the unusually 
random violence began last week, the Northern Irish continued to go to 
grocery stores, walk their dogs, pack children off to school in their ties 
and blazers, and try to keep life as routine as possible, opening doors, as 
they say there, "a wee bit" more cautiously after dusk. 
 
    "For a day or two, people go off the streets ... there's a tension in 
the air," said the Rev. Noel Agnew, a Presbyterian minister in a 
predominantly Catholic borough in east Belfast.  "But gradually you see 
people come back on [the streets] again. 
 
    "We've become so used to killing," he said. 
 
    There is little popular support for killing.  In fact, the vast 
majority of people in the British province oppose it.  But they are, 
admittedly, helpless to stop the violence once it starts.  And last week it 
started again - with automatic rifles firing out of cars that sped away 
quickly, leaving behind virtually no traceable clues and more bodies. 
 
    Ultraradical splinter paramilitary groups - both pro-British and 
pro-Irish Republic - have refused to recognize the cease-fire that the main 
groups - Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the Ulster Defense Association 
(UDA) - have largely maintained for the past three years.  Officials say 
that several of them - particularly the Loyalist Volunteer Force and the 
republicans' Irish National Liberation Army - are trying to incite enough 
violence to end talks between the British and Irish governments and among 
seven Northern Irish political parties. 
 
    Violence has claimed 10 lives in the province since Christmas - eight 
of them Catholics. Loyalist (pro-British) paramilitary groups - such as the 
Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF), whose political representatives withdrew 
from the talks because of the UFF's return to violence - say they are 
avenging the death of Billy Wright, a Protestant paramilitary leader who 
was shot in the Maze prison in late December by a splinter republican 
(pro-Irish Republic) paramilitary group. 
 
    But according to sources in Belfast, among those killed last week are 
five innocent people who just happened to live in traditionally Catholic 
areas and so became easily distinguishable targets.  Agnew puts it like 
this: "It only takes two guys and a car to go into an area and shoot 
somebody.  That's easy to do.  There's even a willingness to speak out 
against what's going on.  But the two groups who are killing are not 
listening to what anybody's saying. 
 
    "And the sad thing is this all gets branded as Christianity.  But the 
people in this have nothing whatsoever to do with the church." 
 
    That statement is generally accepted as true by Irish insiders and 
outside analysts of Ulster politics.  Stopping violence means that 
mainstream paramilitary groups need to rein in extremists,  who live in 
Belfast's traditionally segregated neighborhoods, where unemployment 
remains high, and feel increasingly isolated from the political process. 
And their ability to do so has been mixed. 
 
    Others insist, however, there's collusion - that mainstream 
paramilitary groups quietly authorize, or at least lend verbal support to, 
murders others commit.  That exempts the official parties from blame and 
secures them seats at multiparty talks under way now in London. 
Negotiators there have pledged themselves to nonviolence. 
 
    "What's happened is that [mainline paramilitary groups, such as the IRA 
and the UDA] have imbued a number of minds in the community with the idea 
that murder is acceptable," said Robert Mahony, former director of the 
Irish Studies Center at the Catholic University of America in Washington, 
D.C., and a member of the Inter-Church Committee on Northern Ireland, a 
coalition of U.S. and Irish Catholics and Presbyterians. 
 
    "And once you do that, you can't just turn it on or off," he said. 
"Once you say murder is okay it is very difficult to help those people that 
you've helped cross the line be particular." 
 
    "There are sociopaths on both sides who get their sense of identity, 
pleasure and power by making other people suffer, or even by killing them," 
said Mahony. "But 99.9 percent of the people don't do this stuff, and they 
wish the lads would stop it.  But we've been shown over the last 30 years 
that terrorism doesn't need democratic support.  A handful of people can 
hold a city for ransom." 
 
    Ensconced in traditionally loyalist or republican neighborhoods, 
paramilitary groups are increasingly accused of "controlling" rather than 
"protecting" shopowners, landlords and others that fall within their turf, 
using gangster-style tactics to extort "protection" money and administer 
punishments for alleged breaches.  It is frequently alleged that some of 
the perpetrators are increasingly tied to more mundane crimes, such as drug 
sales. 
 
    "There's no work to go to.  No job.  What do these young men - who've 
known nothing in their adult lives except violence - do?  They either turn 
to [more] violence or they turn to crime," said the Rev. Roy Magee, a 
Presbyterian minister who teaches conflict resolution at Belfast's 
University of Ulster and who has brokered cease-fires with loyalist groups 
in the past.  "We need meaningful employment in these areas ... to take 
young men off the streets. 
 
    "They've been involved with paramilitaries - never had a job in their 
adult lives." 
 
    Dismantling a virtually invisible guerrilla army structure is a problem 
few know how to solve.  And some say it will continue to exist whether 
there is a political settlement  or not. 
 
    "I think people by and large feel helpless," said Magee, who believes 
that withdrawing even tacit support for paramilitary violence is essential 
to stopping it.  "Church people will ask, `What can we do?'  Well, it is 
seedy business [dealing with] these people who've taken the law into their 
own hands.  Most [people] just put their heads down and steer clear." 
 
    Mahony calls such coping "constructive denial" and says that is just 
about the only way to get through the days and weeks when "The Troubles" 
themselves become undeniable.  "You look at the fact that everything is 
going to hell in a handbasket and it is so dreadful that you just put it to 
one side.  You just say, `I've got to get on with my life.' 
 
    "So if you're a student, you study.  If you're a stockbroker, you sell 
stocks.  If you're a taxi driver, you drive.  And that's because you know 
you can't do much about these things." 
 
    But one Belfast pastor - who asked to remain anonymous - said the 
stress does take its toll, even after three years of relative commitment to 
a cease-fire that began in the summer of 1995.  "I don't think we ever got 
away from the idea of danger," he said.  "It's always in the back of your 
mind.  You're never 100 percent certain ... and you're always waiting for a 
step backward. You think, `It might work. It might not.'  You're always 
wary." 
 
    That's a reality that those who've been vocal about peace work 
recognize too.  "All of this does affect you mentally," said the Rev. John 
Dunlop, a former PCI moderator.  "Constantly running into roadblocks. 
Bombs going off.  Getting news that people have been killed.  Though you 
may not be affected physically, spiritually, psychologically and 
emotionally, you are affected by it. 
 
    "Violence is disastrous." 
 
    Despite failed attempts to find a permanent solution, Northern Irish 
have always managed to pull back from the brink that could amount to civil 
war. Dunlop takes hope from knowing that in spite of the mayhem 
paramilitary groups have caused.  "This could have been Bosnia," he said. 
"It got close sometimes, but it never tipped over." 
 
    Conflict experts say that opposition always escalates when a solution 
to the problem is near.  So with a political settlement a real possibility 
in Northern Ireland, killings now are especially nerve-racking.  "For the 
time being," said the Rev. Lesley Carroll, a Presbyterian pastor in 
Belfast, "everybody is just on edge.  When you go about, people are talking 
about it, worrying about it ... what it's going to mean. 
 
    "People who work in conflict resolution say that as a settlement comes 
near, there's a certain inevitability about [more violence]," he said. 
"Well, that's no comfort at all. You just wonder how many people will be 
sacrificed for inevitability." 
 
     Carroll, a longtime peace worker, added, "But people have lived 
helpless a lifetime in this country, you know.  We've come to be short-term 
planners." 

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