THE murders of two soldiers and a police officer in Northern Ireland caused some people to think that their worst fears were being realised. However, the Troubles will return to pose a serious threat to the Stormont Assembly only if dissident republicans are able to provoke the lunatic fringe of loyalism into joining a campaign of sectarian tit-for-tat slaughter.
Neither the Real IRA nor the Continuity IRA has the strength in numbers or the weapons to mount and sustain a conflict such as the Provisional IRA waged for many years. The most for which the Real IRA can hope is to increase the trickle of defectors from the mainstream republican movement into its ranks or recruit fresh blood. So it aims to appeal to experienced republicans disillusioned with the Sinn Fein peace strategy and to post-Troubles youngsters who think that a campaign of violence is the only way to bring about a united Ireland.
Another outcome of the Real IRA’s current terror strategy might be to unite dissident republican movements militarily under a joint command. This would include the Real IRA, Continuity IRA, the Irish National Liberation Army and other fringe groups such as the Irish Republican Liberation Army. This would be to adopt tactics similar to those of dissident loyalists opposed to both the 1994 ceasefire agreed by loyalist death squads and the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. Dissident loyalists representing the Orange Volunteers, Red Hand Defenders, Loyalist Volunteer Force, hardliners in the more mainstream Ulster Volunteer Force, Red Hand Commandos and Ulster Defence Association formed the Protestant Military Alliance in the late 1990s. This was in competition with the umbrella group speaking for the loyalist terror gangs on the ceasefire – the so-called Combined Loyalist Military Command.
Given the cross-community outrage against the Real IRA over the recent atrocities, the British security forces will probably be able to contain the dissident republican terror campaign to hardline republican heartlands. It is ironic that, in order to stand any chance of toppling the power-sharing Assembly, dissident republicans would have to rely on a sectarian backlash from loyalist dissidents equally opposed to the Democratic Unionist Party/Sinn Fein coalition at Stormont.
While loyalist leaders –especially Progressive Unionist MLA Dawn Purvis – have appealed for calm, they have little influence over loyalism’s exceptionally volatile dissident fringe. The most dangerous of the these dissidents are the Orange Volunteers, which was formed in 1999, borrowing the name of a terror group which had been defunct since the late 1970s. The modern Orange Volunteers have indulged in arson attacks on Catholic churches, schools and property – in retaliation for a campaign of arson raids on Orange halls on both sides of the Irish border.
The LVF – formed in the mid 1990s by Billy “King Rat” Wright from elements in his Mid Ulster Brigade of the UVF – has descended into little more than a drug-dealing criminal gang. The Red Hand Defenders have attracted hardmen from the UVF and UDA who are disillusioned with the peace process. However, internal loyalist feuds and turf wars over criminal empires has so far stopped Protestant dissidents from turning their guns on innocent Catholics. In the meantime, such loyalists prefer to fight among themselves for control of Protestant working-class areas. But there is the danger that a sustained – even brief – dissident republican campaign could refocus the attention of dissident loyalists away from killing each other and back onto sectarian murder. Given that older loyalist death squads have so far refused to decommission their arsenals, there is the additional headache for the security forces that dissidents in the UDA and UVF could pass on their weapons to arm the likes of the Orange Volunteers. This would be reminiscent of when the legal Ulster Resistance terror gang gave a substantial part of its arms cache to the banned UVF and Ulster Freedom Fighters in the late 1980s.
Dissident republicans are trying to create a political situation similar to March 1972 when then British Prime Minister Edward Heath scrapped the original Stormont parliament because it could no longer cope with the increasing republican and loyalist terror campaigns. In the early 1970s, the actions of the Provisional and Official IRA alone were not sufficient to bring down Stormont. An added push from loyalist death squads was needed. The ultimate fear now is that republican dissidents might target Unionist politicians in a bid to push the peace process to the brink, especially with European elections due on June 4. This would copy the Provos’ tactics in 1981 and ’82 when the IRA murdered two leading Unionist politicians, Robert Bradford and Edgar Graham. The effects of these killings was to ensure the 1982 Assembly never made it beyond the stage of a glorified talking shop, eventually collapsing in 1986.
There is also the fear that republican dissidents might start a bombing campaign on the British mainland– a move which could provoke dissident loyalists to retaliate in similar fashion in the Republic of Ireland.
