Assumptions on threats to state flawed

Irish News, The Wednesday Column with Brian Feeney

April 10, 2002

ABOUT 12 years ago a British army patrol intercepted a heavily armed UVF murder gang on the Falls Road. The UVF gang was on its way to spray the O'Donnell's club with automatic fire.

When the British soldiers surrounded their vehicle, one UVF man jumped out and shouted. 'Don't shoot, we're Prods.'

His appeal was based on a number of assumptions. First, and of course his main priority, was his belief that announcing his religion would save his skin. Why should that be so? Why did it give him a chance when the unarmed Pearse Jordan, shot running away from the RUC, had none?

It was because of the UVF man's second assumption, namely that British soldiers would instantly accept that loyalist killers presented no threat to them, whereas if they had believed the armed gang in the car were IRA men, the soldiers were likely to kill them immediately with a fusillade of shots. Perhaps the would-be UVF killer's assumptions were correct because the soldiers did not open fire and the UVF men went to jail instead of to Roselawn.

Whether the assumptions were correct or not is not the point here. It is the fact that the UVF man believed in them enough to stake his life on them. The fundamental assumption underlying all the others is that republicans present a danger to the state while loyalists are a danger only to Catholics and, well, that doesn't matter too much.

Following on from that assumption is the belief that you can bet your life on, that security forces here will react in different ways to republicans and loyalists.

That assumption seems still to be operative.

The British administration here decided the walk-in at Castlereagh was a threat to national security. Soon afterwards the British intelligence services decided republicans were behind the walk-in. Four hundred police and troops were dispatched to smash their way into the homes of senior republicans and sundry office premises like the Pat Finucane Centre and Cunamh on an arrest-and-search exercise. People were carted off for interrogation and documents and computer paraphernalia were seized.

On the other hand, Alan McQuillan, assistant chief constable for Belfast, stated unequivocally that the UDA is behind the rioting in north Belfast, mainly on the Limestone Road. Recently countless petrol bombs, over a score of blast bombs and more than a dozen shots have been directed at police and army from the UDA stronghold of Tigers Bay, a clear breach of one of the basic assumptions outlined above: quite obviously loyalists are a danger to the state; they always have been.

And yet no member of the UDA has been arrested, no houses of UDA leaders searched despite a chief police officer telling the public he believes they are responsible. Naturally after throwing hundreds of pipe bombs at homes of Catholics throughout 2001 you wouldn't expect a major security operation against the UDA, nor was there one. The UDA was living up to its reputation as a danger only to Catholics, not the state. But you might have expected a substantial response when the UDA demonstrated beyond peradventure what we've all known for years, that it constitutes a serious threat to the state's security forces.

Instead of such an expectation, no action: zilch, zero, nada. Not even the arrest of rioters. On the contrary, the naive British administration here prefers to believe, against all evidence, experience and common sense, the alleged UDA spokesmen who for the umpteenth time say the UDA will 'use its influence' to end violence. This touchingly innocent belief remains in spite of Mr McQuillan's conclusion that the UDA does not want peace, does not want to live near Catholics and in spite of the fact that a day after the UDA spokesman's latest assurances the UDA bombed the home of a couple, one of whom happens to be Catholic and one Protestant.

The trouble with the NIO's fatuous position is that the UDA is in bits with no central command, a defunct political wing, no political aims and most importantly no votes. Its political posturings have always been derided by everyone except the NIO. After all, not even all UDA members vote for UDA candidates, thereby showing the membership knows the UDA has no political aim despite the NIO's faith in UDA leaders.

Still, they're safe enough as long as the flawed assumptions of our UVF gunman prevail because the NIO doesn't see the UDA as a threat to Norn Irn. Even firing shots and throwing bombs at police don't qualify. Now can you imagine what would happen if an assistant chief constable said the IRA was responsible for throwing 20 blast bombs at the police? How big do you think the swoop would be? What would be the decibel reading from unionist politicians?