Uncertainty Exposes Instability: Making Sense of Recent Violence in Northern Ireland
Amanda Hall, PhD Candidate
Those who do not closely follow politics in Northern Ireland, or who do not have a keen interest in the region’s history, could be forgiven for thinking that last week’s car bomb in the border city of Derry/Londonderry by the New IRA came out of the blue. In fact, this analysis was supported across major new sources, including the BBC, The Guardian, and The Independent – though, it should be noted, this coverage was summarily relegated to the digital back pages. It is difficult to imagine that a similar incident in a town of comparable size in Great Britain, such as Bedford or Dundee, would have a car bomb relegated to this lesser status almost by default.
Monday brought with it new uncertainty, as three cars were hijacked in Derry/Londonderry and a ‘suspicious device’ was found in Belfast; Wednesday saw the discovery of a ‘suspected firearm’ in Derry/Londonderry as part of the investigation into Saturday’s car bomb. If concern about the car bomb in the press was potentially lacklustre, reaction to these further incidents demonstrated the extent to which collective apathy toward Northern Ireland has been allowed to fester.
A dramatic incident of political violence in Northern Ireland is simultaneously surprising and expected, evoking a reaction Naomi O’Leary described as, of ‘these things happen in Northern Ireland’. Understanding this dual surprise and resignation is vital in understanding why, more than twenty years after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, Republican groups are still using car bombings and hijackings for potential political gain.
In its concern with the concrete factors which could be quantified — the ‘end’ of paramilitary violence and the establishment of a new power-sharing, devolved government at Stormont — the peace process inadvertently failed to address the social factors at the heart of the conflict, kicking the can of ‘peace’ down the proverbial road under the guise of the Agreement’s constructive ambiguity. While it remains unclear just what the motives of these recent attacks were, the fact that they occurred indicates that the structural conditions which produced Republican violence endure.
Dating back to Reginald Maudling’s infamous 1971 statement about the role of the military in Northern Ireland being to maintain an ‘acceptable level of violence’, it has remained clear that some degree of conflict — and the instability it begets — was seen by the British government as the proverbial (or literal) price of doing business in the region. While Maudling’s words were undoubtedly ill-chosen, events of the last decades (say nothing of the last days) has indicated that there is a level of violence which is perceived as ‘normal’ or ‘expected’ in Northern Ireland — a perception that has become apparent in coverage of this recent wave of events. The Brexit vote in 2016, and subsequent General Election, have thrust Northern Ireland and its politics back into the limelight in some UK circles. To borrow an oft-cited Republican phrase, the causes of division and conflict in Northern Ireland have not gone away — this makes it perhaps more important now, than at any point in the last two decades, that these underlying causes and their endurance are understood so that such destabilising forces and events can be anticipated or even counteracted. It is this anticipation and active deterrence that is vital if Northern Ireland is to hold on to the bare minimum of goals set by the Good Friday Agreement — a ‘strained’ but functioning ‘peace’.
This ‘new wave’ of violence in Northern Ireland is really anything but ‘new’ — not only was there a wave of violence over the summer, with six nights of rioting in Derry/Londonderry and the hijacking and bombing of a bus near Belfast, but even these events were predicated by simmering unrest. The threat level in Northern Ireland from ‘Northern Ireland-related terrorism’ has remained unchanged at ‘severe,’ meaning ‘an attack is a strong possibility,’ since the establishment of threat levels in 2010. While these recent attacks may appear to be unexpected, this threat level indicates that those concerned with the possibility of terrorism acknowledge that, despite significant effort to the contrary, the threat from paramilitaries has endured long after the peace-related ceasefires and weapons decommissioning. The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and MI5 concluded in 2015 that ‘all the main paramilitary groups operating during the period of the Troubles remain in existence,’ while the PSNI’s ‘Police Recorded Security Situation Statistics’ indicate little overall downward trend in key security statistics on paramilitary-related shootings, bombings, and weapons caches. What is perhaps more troubling are the ways that this feeds into a sense of inevitability, stalling, and even the reversal of stability in Northern Ireland are echoed across the sector concerned with delivering, maintaining, and evaluating ‘peace’ in the region, with recent research from the University of Ulster describing even the efforts at achieving quantitative gains — such as the removal of ‘peace walls’ by 2023 — making only ‘limited progress’ (with the implication that this progress was hampered by the lack of political leadership due to the on-going suspension of Stormont). As this deadlock drags on, and the continued uncertainty around Brexit and the Irish border remains global headline news, ‘peace’ in Northern Ireland remains dangerously locked in the cross-hairs of those with the potential, and in some cases the desire, to destabilise the region in order to achieve their own goals.
While we don’t know what the reasoning was behind these various incidents, or even how the five are connected, the uncertainty in Northern Ireland endures. The growing confusion and collective anxiety around the future of the Irish border, and even the Good Friday Agreement itself, indicates that, despite twenty years of ‘peace’, to declare conflict in Northern Ireland ‘over’ is to ignore the ways that violence and its threat continue to punctuate life there. Less scrutinised, but no less relevant, is the continued suspension of Stormont and the impact this has on stakeholders in these still-on-going processes: with no clear governmental leadership or path toward the restoration of power-sharing, it is difficult to maintain the almost ‘default’ faith in the peace process that has haphazardly developed over the last two decades, allowing mistrust to grow and leaving space for disaffected groups to begin to stake their claim. This claim staking is just one interpretation of last week’s events: ‘we’re still here, and don’t forget that,’ these incidents seem to say. While a direct line can be drawn between the Good Friday Agreement and the events of the last week, it is important that in trying to make sense of these occurrences that we do not get distracted in attempts to revisit the past; while the past remains a salient factor in the present and even the future in Northern Ireland, it is this future that can still be changed — whether that is from a car bomb initiating a new wave of violence or from supporting the types of fundamental societal shifts necessary to prevent further attacks.
The most recent Peace Monitoring Report perhaps put it best: ‘Indifference to the peace process is as damaging as lack of understanding. Silence affords ignorance a respectability and acceptance.’ A failure to understand, and then functionally address, the root causes of the incidents seen in the last week in Northern Ireland is perhaps a first step toward this acceptance. Republican group Saoradh, while denying connection to the IRA and the weekend’s attacks, responded to inquiry about the events with a statement including that ‘Saoradh takes into consideration the wider aspect of the current political sphere’. It is this ‘current political sphere’ in which the ghosts of Northern Ireland past, present, and future have collided to beg the greater public to take notice of the very real damage which has already been inflicted and the risks to stability and indeed ‘peace’ that may still be yet to come.
Amanda Hall is a PhD Candidate in the University of St. Andrews School of International Relations and Handa Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence. Her research considers the space between ‘peace’ and ‘conflict’ in post-1998 Northern Ireland. She tweets @amandalhall.
