A year ago, in March 2022, the terror threat level in Northern Ireland was lowered for the first time in more than a decade. This week, however, that window of hope was slammed shut once again, when the Northern Ireland secretary, Chris Heaton-Harris, announced that the threat level was being restored to “severe”. This means that a terror attack in the north is now officially deemed to be “highly likely”. These are extraordinarily ominous words, not solely because there is less than a month to go before the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday agreement, which brought power-sharing and peace to Northern Ireland.
In his statement on Tuesday about the threat level, Mr Heaton-Harris pointed the finger at an increase in politically motivated violence. He singled out the targeting of police officers, exemplified by the shooting of DCI John Caldwell in Omagh in February, and by a bomb attack on police in Strabane in November, both attributed to the New IRA. Yet the threat to peace does not emanate from dissident republicans alone. There have been pipe bomb and petrol bomb attacks on homes in Ards and North Down this week, all of which are part of a continuing drugs war between rival loyalist UDA gangs.
All these incidents underscore the need to take this week’s announcement of highly likely attacks very seriously indeed. For that to be meaningful, however, constitutional political activity in Northern Ireland must assert itself again. Mr Heaton-Harris said this week that “the political future of Northern Ireland rests with the democratic will of the people and not the violent actions of the few”. That is of course true. At present, however, it is not a statement of reality but only a statement of aspiration.
With no political institutions currently operating, the democratic will of Northern Ireland is not being mobilised against the terrorists as it should be. Instead, it is increasingly marginalised. Stormont has not sat since the assembly election last May. There has been no power-sharing executive for more than a year. Local elections will go ahead in a few weeks, but, because of the Democratic Unionist party’s boycott, the most important institutions in Northern Ireland’s democratic governance remain a ghost town.
All these issues are connected. There is a direct link between the increased threat level, the rise in violence and the absence of politics. This absence, in turn, is umbilically linked to the DUP’s foolish refusal (not shared by most of the public) to accept the Northern Ireland protocol and, more recently, the Windsor framework of improvements to the protocol negotiated by the UK government. Behind this lies the DUP’s fear that its grip on unionist opinion is under threat from more implacable rivals such as Traditional Unionist Voice, as well as the community’s deeper anxiety that unionism’s historic hold on Northern Ireland is inexorably weakening.
It is possible that the imminent anniversary will help to reverse this mood of anxiety and uncertainty. Let us hope so. Renewed international acclaim for the 1998 agreement, spearheaded by American clout from President Joe Biden, may coalesce with an emphatic cross-community show of public support for peaceful politics to generate new democratic momentum. The threat level announcement, however, points towards a different and less optimistic reality. Those who have contributed to it, whether by their crimes or simply by their political negligence, bear a heavy responsibility for the tense days that now lie immediately ahead.
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