Paramilitaries remain embedded in Northern Ireland communities due to a range of factors including “ongoing political controversy”, a Westminster committee heard on Wednesday.
Giving evidence to the Commons’ Northern Ireland Affairs Committee during its "inquiry into the effect of the paramilitary groups on society in Northern Ireland", academics outlined how various groups still exercise “coercive control” on people and communities across the region.
MPs were told issues of socio economic disadvantage mixed with the legacy of identity politics and a lack of trust in police mean paramilitarism remains an ongoing problem decades after the Good Friday Agreement. The issue has a modern twist, however, with social media used now to issue threats and entice young people into street disorder, the committee was told.
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Dr Siobhán McAlister said that while the issue is “very complex”, paramilitary groups are “still seen as being valuable, useful at keeping hard drugs out of communities and dealing with paedophiles” as there is a “sense that the mechanisms of justice can’t work fast enough”.
The “support for groups shifts”, she added, at “particular times of political instability”, with the groups playing a role in a “fight for a common identity”. The “political underbelly” of paramilitarism is “not completely lost”, she told the Committee.
The Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Queen’s said that while these groups are a form of organised crime one “can’t completely remove the political element”. The organisations, she said, are “very much in the community and of the community” and are “seen to protect the community”, particularly when there is “instability when identity is seen to be threatened”.
Dr Colm Walsh, a Research Fellow at Queen’s, told the inquiry that young people more likely to end up in clutches of paramilitaries are those who have experienced “significant trauma” in their lives for example violence. This, combined with high levels of distrust of the state including police and mistrust of outsiders, can set people on a road to involvement.
Prof Duncan Morrow said the idea of paramilitaries being “defenders of the community” persists with a “them and us” narrative still prevalent which adds to the notion that communities “need someone to defend us”.
Addressing the issue of current political issues fuelling paramilitarism, Prof. Morrow added: “We have to be honest that in some cases the ongoing political controversy we’ve had is a climate for, different groups at different times claiming legitimacy. The issue of legacy plays into this. The unresolved political environment plays into this. All the issues we talked about, like defending ‘us against them’ are more difficult to get away.
“The absence of a really clear political drive at the core of the Executive, not just as a Justice issue, but buy-in not just from the Executive but right down to Council level is an issue.”
The role of politics was echoed by Dr McAlister who told Committee MPs that “at times of political instability violence reignites, support for these groups is given more legitimacy”.
There is still a fear to report crimes, she added, plus a “perception that police are ineffectual in dealing with issues” which manifests in low conviction rates as well as arrests and drugs seizures going on while the groups continue to exist.
But the problem of paramilitarism still returns to the three issues of policing, legacy issues and socio economic depravation, she added.
Given the importance of socio economic factors, she said, it shows “we can’t police or arrest our way out of this”.
Prof Morrow, Ulster University Professor in Politics, added that there is also an issue of paramilitaries being “involved in the political process in that there is still, particularly at times of difficulty or crisis, a role given to paramilitaries to articulate things” and we need, “longer term, to be able to develop ways for communities to communicate things, to articulate their problems, without having to turn to paramilitaries”.
Dr McAlister also told MPs that “identity is important to young people”, while Dr Walsh said a recent study of young people’s attitudes to paramilitarism found that there was a “real sense of threat from the outside” thanks to changing demographics in certain areas.
He added that the “symbolism” of flags and other emblems like murals was not necessarily a threat but a way to “portray what they believed their community was about and who they were and what their identity was and in some way protect that from this outside”.
Committee chair Simon Hoare MP asked the academics about the “invisible but often pernicious” social media platforms and if they were being exploited by the armed criminal organisations.
Dr McAlister replied: “Some young people talk about receiving threats via social media as well and they never know how real those threats are or whether they’re ever lifted.
“So often, you know, [they are] long term living under this kind of fear that they could be attacked at any time.”
Dr McAlister also referred to research indicating the use of social media to incite young people to get involved in street disorder.
Dr Walsh, whose research has found young people being ‘exposed’ to paramilitarism as young as 13, addressed the issue.
He added: “I think it was very clear from what the young people were saying on those kind of pull factors towards the riots that there was definitely a social media aspect to that, which is interesting and it’s also dangerous.
“Because when we put that in the context of criminal exploitation, a lot of the times the messages that young people were getting weren’t directly from paramilitary groups, they weren’t from individuals that they believed to be associated with paramilitary groups.
“But, actually, there was a snowball effect which often happens that messages and requests to attend in certain places kind of go viral within peer groups.
“But if you work it back, it was very clear that that was instigated and it was organised and one can assume that the individuals who were organising were associated with parliamentary groups.”
Addressing the use of language, Dr McAlister added that the exploitation of young people by paramilitaries needs to be labelled as “child grooming”.
The academics all agreed that more research is needed on the affects on young women of paramilitarism given the dominant narrative that it is mainly young men who are affected.
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