Terrorism is back in Northern Ireland

09 September 2009

Paul Bew says that the young police recruits in the province now find themselves facing the sort of armed confrontations they assumed were a thing of the past

Even the dissidents have now spawned their own heavily armed dissidents. The bomb defused by army experts at Forkhill this week was the work not of the Real IRA but one of its own breakaway groups, Oglaigh na hEireann. The bomb was bigger than the Real IRA bomb in Omagh which killed unborn twins, six men, 12 women and 11 children. It brings into sharp relief the problems now facing the security services.

Another illustration of these problems came last month. In the village of Meigh in south Armagh, near the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, a police car encountered seven heavily armed terrorists — they even had a rocket launcher with them — operating a vehicle checkpoint and handing out leaflets telling locals not to co-operate with the security services. The police, who were lightly armed — and, it was later rumoured, undertrained in firearm use — beat a hasty retreat. As one website put it, ‘PSNI patrol flees from Real IRA roadblock’. To make matters worse, within a few days of the incident, a leaked internal Police Service of Northern Ireland report appeared which was severely critical of the functioning of the organisation.

Both events have combined to contribute to a certain jumpiness in the public mood. The authorities respond somewhat wearily, pointing out that no one ever believed that the Belfast Agreement meant the absolute end of Republican terrorism in Ireland. The prompt action of the police in Meigh prevented civilian casualties, they say. And even in the old days, RUC patrols did on occasion back away from confrontation with armed republicans. Naturally, many of the pensioned-off members of the RUC take a different view.

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Mike

September 10th, 2009 9:19am Report this comment

Time for a new roadmap for a peace process, and a peace processor, and more Nobel Peace prizes and Congressional Meldals, Amen.

David B. Wildgoose

September 11th, 2009 1:45pm Report this comment

The Irish Republicans are anti-English rather than anti-British - for example their "mainland" terror campaign was in England rather amongst their "fellow Celts" in Scotland and Wales.

Meanwhile the Scottish Presbyterian "Unionists" in Northern Ireland with their "Ulster Scots" language want close links with Scotland, but take great delight in helping New Labour impose draconian 42-day internment legislation on the English.

The answer is obvious.

England leaves the Union, possibly to be replaced by the Republic of Ireland, and then everybody's happy. The "Unionists" are still in Union with Scotland. And the SNP, Plaid Cymru and Irish Republicans no longer have to campaign to rid themselves of England.

And once again we English will be able to look after our own interests in our own English Parliament.

What's not to like?

40 Degrees S

September 11th, 2009 2:18pm Report this comment

What if a series of plebiscites, with foreseen results and under UN or EU supervision, were held in obviously Nationalist areas asking voters to decide on UK or RoI citizenship, and counties or LGAs above a particular percentage for RoI joined the Irish Republic?

Thus, Fermanagh and southern Armagh, for example, would no longer be a “Northern Ireland” problem, and the creeping equal numbers of nationalists v unionists would be redressed - at least, for the time being, till the next plebiscite.

Yes, "Northern Ireland” might be reduced to the counties of Antrim and Down, and there may have to be a population exchange like the Greco-Turkish one after 1923 (but with hopefully less bloodshed^), but wouldn’t it be a more manageable province?

^ not that the leaders of each side in such situations seem to worry about it.

40 Degrees S

September 12th, 2009 1:36am Report this comment

Love your creative thinking about Northern Ireland and Britain, David B. Wildgoose
(11 September 2009 1:45pm): let what a century ago was called the “Celtic Fringe” become a garment of seamless unity among the Scots (Highland & Lowland, RC and Protestant) the Welsh, and the Irish (traditional and militant republicans, RC and Protestant).

As if.

Let’s not forget that an inter-clan feud in 1169 was the reason that the Anglo-Normans from Britain first entered Irish affairs; let’s not recall that more Scots died at Culloden for German George than for the wee Papist sot.

And another thing: more Irish have died fighting for Britain than have ever died fighting against it.

Looking at things from the opposite direction, p’raps Angleterre could reclaim a role in La belle France by reviving its former identity as an extension of the duchy of Normandie. Or became another Land in the German republic as Saxony-across-the-water (although an irredentist Denmark, remembering the Jutes-Jutland connexion, might want a say).

Entirely fanciful though all the above is, alternative histories do have their fascinations, don’t they!

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