Irish Author and Journalist - Danny Morrison

The Cause of Violence

International opinion, the British public and the people of the twenty-six counties were assured for decades that the cause of violence in the North was the IRA campaign. If it were not for the IRA, we were told, there would be no need for the British army, for repressive powers, for state censorship. Loyalist paramilitary violence was explained away by the RUC, Secretaries of State, and unionists of every hue, including those cutting their victims' throats, as a tit-for-tat response to the provocative republicans, as reprisals.

Indeed, even high nationalist unemployment, the preponderance of low skilled workers in that community, the location of industries in unionist areas, the general poor showing of the economy and the lack of investment, the collapse of the tourist industry, the reason why enough houses were not built, why buses didn't run, why the RUC had to beat up prisoners and fire plastic bullets, were all the fault of republicans and the IRA's armed struggle.

Republicans, on the other hand, insisted that the campaign was an ultimate response to fifty years of unionist misrule, then British direct rule in support of unionism. The fact that the IRA campaign was bloody, ferocious and tenacious, masked, in a crucial sense, the ultimate truth of the matter. Furthermore, the fact that there could never be a real peace process until the IRA called an enduring ceasefire also implied IRA causation of conflict.

It is one of the ironies of the conflict that Unionists, the British, most Irish governments and most sections of the media hid behind the IRA campaign.

Former Ulster Unionist leader, James Molyneaux's famous slip of the tongue, shortly after the first IRA ceasefire announcement in August 1994, that the ceasefire represented 'the greatest threat to the union' in sixty years, was just such an admission.

For thirty years, but actually for eighty years, the British government, and successive Dublin governments for their own reasons, chose to ignore the ugly nature of the state established by partition and the Government of Ireland Act. They chose to ignore nationalist appeals for justice, and continued to ignore the situation even when nationalist violence was in its infancy and the state, its police force and its supporters, began shooting Catholics and burning them in their thousands out of their homes in response to the campaign for civil rights. All intentions by London to introduce reforms were always primarily circumscribed by concerns for unionist sensibilities, not for nationalist rights.

And that preoccupation continues to this day because the raison d'etre of the 'Northern Ireland' state was unionist primacy. In defence of unionists and the union Britain itself became ensnared (thanks to its gung-ho militarists) and depraved through its involvement in the 'dirty war', details of which are only beginning to emerge and will ultimately reveal the magnitude of the scandal. Number 10 Downing Street cleared these assassinations of nationalists and republicans by its army and in collusion with its various agents. It had already cleared the torture of detainees when it derogated from the European Convention on Human Rights.

Although implicit in the Belfast Agreement was that unionism, the British and republicanism all shared some culpability (with unionists and the Brits in public denial, and through the demand for 'IRA decommissioning' still attempting to occupy the moral high ground) that Agreement was meant to create a balanced situation, a new beginning. All parties have, to some extent or another, been in breach of its terms. That is hardly surprising.

Republicans made major compromises but still haven't realised even their limited goals (especially in relation to new policing).

But it is the unionists who have balked most at the terms of the new dispensation. The Ulster Unionists, under pressure from Ian Paisley's DUP, sometimes appear to be two or three different parties. The Agreement guaranteed the unionists that they would not be frogmarched into a united Ireland and in return they were to agree to share power with those whom they and the British have oppressed and abused.

The loyalist violence against Catholic schoolchildren in North Belfast, whilst having a sectarian fervour, is directly related to the political process. Those attacks, and the ongoing pipe-bomb campaign, are aimed at provoking the IRA into breaking its ceasefire. If the IRA breaks its ceasefire then the unionists, the British and the media, can revert to the myth that republicans are responsible for causing the violence and they can deny the injustices at the heart of the northern state.

The British government is being duplicitous when - as in Dr John Reid's recent speech about unionist alienation - it panders to unjustified and exaggerated unionist claims that they are being made second-class citizens, and that justice and equality issues are somehow a threat. The only threat such changes pose are psychological.

In my opinion, the IRA ceasefire was the best thing to have happened here in decades. It cleared the air, created a breathing space, granted relief, and opened up certain political possibilities, which have to be intelligently and courageously pursued outside of any reliance on, or thoughts of a return to, armed struggle.

Republicans - because of their opposition to the RUC and because the changes outlined in the policing legislation fall short of what they are demanding - are caught in a bind. They refuse to recognise the PSNI because it still looks too much like the old RUC, still has the corrupt Special Branch pulling strings. Yet there is no contradiction in demanding action from the British, including impartial policing. Indeed, there is even an advantage to be making certain demands of the police force by way of testing its capacity to change (and to acknowledge such change when it occurs).

The loyalist violence in North Belfast and elsewhere is aimed at provoking the IRA into breaking its ceasefire so that the Belfast Agreement can be destroyed and the clock turned back to old times. Despite nationalist anger and feelings of helplessness at the sight of school children being attacked by thugs, republicans should remain patient, mobilise international opinion and hold Britain to its responsibilities.

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