Notes      Groups are categorized according to Table 2.
Sources   Sutton (1994) and updates from http://cain.ulster.ac.uk

The second dimension to the conflict has been one mounted by the various loyalist organizations against the civilian population, mainly Catholics. Throughout the 1970s loyalists waged a campaign of sectarian assassination against Catholics in retaliation for IRA violence, and occasionally in response to sectarian attacks mounted by republicans against Protestants (Taylor, 1999). Overall, this campaign resulted in 781 deaths, with a large proportion of them occurring during the mid-1970s. In 1975 alone, loyalists accounted for almost as many deaths as republicans. The campaign was largely discontinued after 1976, partly because it was seen to be ineffective in halting IRA violence, and partly because many of the loyalist leaders were arrested and jailed (O’Duffy, 1995). However, the campaign was reactivated in the early 1990s, as Figure 2 shows, albeit on a lesser scale than previously. In 1993 and 1994, loyalists were responsible for more than half of all of the deaths that occurred in those years.

A third dimension has been the campaign the IRA and other republicans have waged against the civilian population. This has taken the form of civilian casualties caused by indiscriminate bombings and shootings; in the early stages of the conflict most civilian deaths were the largely unintended consequences of other activities, such as random car bombings in city and town centres. In recent years the IRA have also engaged in more overtly sectarian acts of violence, often responding to sectarian attacks by loyalists on Catholics, although the extent to which it qualifies as a sectarian organisation is open to much dispute (see White, 1997 and Bruce, 1997, for two competing views in relation to this issue).

Two further observations about these patterns of violence are worthy of mention. First, despite their obvious antagonism, republicans and loyalists have conducted only sporadic attacks against one another. Republicans have managed to kill just 40 loyalists during the course of the conflict, or 2 percent of all of the deaths for which they are responsible. Similarly, loyalists have killed just 32 republicans, or 3 percent of their total. In large measure, this represents no lack of will — particularly on the loyalist side — but the logistics of such operations often require more daring and planning than each side has access to. Second, significant numbers of republicans and loyalists have been killed by their own sides. For example, republicans have killed four times more of their own members than they killed loyalists, and loyalists twice as many of their own as republicans. Some of these deaths have been as the result of accidental shootings and premature bomb explosions (the latter a particular factor among republicans — see National Graves Association, 1976), but a significant number have also been the result of summary executions for informing, corruption, and stemming from personal feuds.

In most advanced industrial societies, comparatively few people have any direct experience of political violence. The Oklahoma City bombing, while resulting in massive loss of life, directly affected only a small percentage of the US population. Likewise, Arab-inspired terrorist attacks in European airports in the 1970s and 1980s affected only small numbers of people. Since the end of the Second World War, no advanced industrial society has experienced political violence at a remotely comparable level to that of Northern Ireland. The duration, intensity and extent of the Northern Ireland conflict has ensured that large proportions of the population have direct, personal experience of political violence. While many have experienced injury, much larger numbers have witnessed acts of violence, ranging from bomb explosions and shootings, to vehicle hijacking and rioting.

There are three forms of political violence that a population might be exposed to.^[6] First, there is the direct experience of violence — being the victim of a violent event, and perhaps suffering injury. Table 3 shows that by 1998, about one in seven of the adult population reported having been the victim of a violent incident. Threats and intimidation have been a common theme throughout the conflict; in the early years of the disturbances, large population movements occurred as a result of intimidation, with families moving out of religiously mixed areas into areas dominated by their coreligionists where they felt more secure (Whyte, 1990: 33-34). Threats have also been employed to ensure that communities do not inform on paramilitaries, and to impose rudimentary public order on local communities, particularly with regard to drug dealing and vandalism (Thompson and Mulholland, 1995). Starting in 1973 (when the first survey was conducted to ask about exposure to violence), up to one in five of the population report being intimidated at some stage during the Troubles.

A second dimension is indirect experience of violence, through having a family member or close relative killed or injured, or knowing someone who has been killed or injured. The nature of Northern Ireland society, with large, extended families and closely knit communities, means that a death or an injury as a result of the violence has wide repercussions. By 1998, approximately one in five reported having had a family member or close relative injured or killed, and more than half personally knew someone who had been injured or killed. An additional form of indirect experience of violence is collective exposure to violence, through being caught up in a violent act, either an explosion or a riot. Exactly a quarter of those interviewed in 1998 had been caught up in an explosion, while almost the same number had been caught up in a riot. However, in the early 1970s, when riots were widespread, the levels of exposure were higher, and more than one in three had experienced a riot.^[7] This is, then, a conflict whose effects extent far beyond those who participate in the violence or who live in areas where it is mainly conducted; the effects extend to the society as a whole.

Exposure to violence is not shared equally between the two communities. Catholics report substantially higher levels of direct experience of violence compared to Protestants; Table 4 shows that Catholics are twice as likely to have been intimidated when compared to Protestants, and they are about one-third more likely to have been the victim of a violent incident. This greater incidence of direct experience of violence is attributable to the nature of the conflict. As the previous section indicated, two of the three main dimensions of activity have involved the conflict between the IRA and the British Army, and between loyalists and the Catholic community. In each case, these activities have exposed Catholics to a higher risk of personal violence than Protestants.

Catholics are also more likely than Protestants to have more indirect experience of violence, again reflecting the nature of the conflict, but the differences are not as pronounced. In 1995, for example, equal proportions of both religions reported knowing someone who had been killed or injured in the Troubles — a reflection of the sometimes random nature of the violence, particularly with regard to bombings which have often targeted pubs, shops and other public places which are not exclusively the preserve or one or other community. Finally, the widespread nature of the violence has meant that both communities have been as likely to have been caught up in an explosion. However, the greater incidence of riots in Catholic areas means that they report more exposure to this form of collective violence.

Not only is exposure to violence unevenly distributed across the communities, there are significant variations in the groups within each community who are exposed to it. By far the most important factor is geography. A variety of studies have found that urbanization is of prime importance and, net of other factors, living in Belfast or Londonderry is significantly more likely to result in death or injury (Schellenberg, 1977; Murray, 1982; Poole, 1983, 1993). This is confirmed in Table 5, which uses the 1998 Northern Ireland Referendum and Election Survey to run regression analyses predicting the probability of being exposed to all of the six separate types of violence identified in Table 4. For Catholics, there is a particularly strong effect for living in Belfast: compared to Catholics living outside the two major cities, there is a 20 percent greater probability of someone being exposed to violence, net of other things.

Gender and age have also been found to be significant. As in most conflicts, it is young men who are most likely to be caught up in conflict, to recruited as paramilitary activists and, as a result, the most likely to be killed or injured. The type of violence we are interested in here, ranging across from intimidation to knowing someone who has been killed or injured, should make these relationships less significant. Nevertheless, the results in Table 5 show that men are more likely to be exposed to violence than women, while Protestants aged in their 30s report more exposure than any of the other age groups. Social deprivation does not seem to be important, as least as it is measured by labour force status. However, Protestants who attended a mixed school have a greater probability of exposure. There are two possible explanations for this. First, such schools are often more likely to be located in interface areas between the two communities, where violence is greater. Second, attending a mixed school brings individuals into contact with the those of opposite religion, and that may make them easier to target for retaliation.^[8]

Perhaps more than anything else, the Northern Ireland conflict has been sustained by the popular ambiguity that exists towards the use of political violence. Latent support for the use of violence often occurs in societies where political institutions have emerged from war or civil conflict. However, such support is usually transitional, and once the principle of the orderly transfer of political power following democratic elections becomes established, support for violence fades. The Irish state emerged out of a successful war against the British followed by a deeply divisive civil war; nevertheless, by 1932 the republicans who had lost the civil war had been returned to office in a democratic election and the parliamentary tradition securely entrenched (Farrell, 1973; Munger, 1975).

In Northern Ireland, by contrast, two traditions of achieving political change have been engrained in the political system. The constitutional tradition seeks to attain political change primarily through political parties competing in democratic elections, as well as through pressure and interest group activity. These are the familiar (and exclusive) forms of political activity in the established democracies. The extra-constitutional tradition seeks to achieve political goals through the use of force, either through protest activity (and an implicit threat of physical force) or through the use of armed force itself (the explicit threat of physical force). These two traditions have operated in parallel for two centuries, with each being dominant at particular periods. For example, the Irish Party’s success in bringing the Irish question to the forefront of British politics in the late nineteenth century made the constitutional tradition dominant; with the failure of the third Home Rule Bill, physical force become dominant, leading to the 1916 Easter Rising and the eventual formation of the Irish state in 1921.

Two characteristics of how these two traditions have operated in Northern Ireland are important. First, the decision whether or not to use constitutional or extra-constitutional methods is less a moral one than a matter of expediency and practicality; if violence is seen to have the greatest chance of achieving the required political goals, then it will be utilized. Second, while the two traditions are analytically separate, groups and individuals nominally in one tradition may invoke the means of the other in order to advance a political aim. For example, Charles Stewart Parnell recruited a wide and politically heterogeneous following by refusing to define how far he would deviate from constitutional politics to attain his demands (Lyons, 1973: 193). In contemporary Northern Ireland a similar strategy is followed by the republican movement, which sustains an electoral organization, Sinn Fein, as well as an armed force, the IRA — in what has been immortalized as the strategy of the ‘armalite and the ballot box’.^[9]

The ambiguity surrounding the use of physical force, which is clearly apparent in many of the main political organizations and leaders in Northern Ireland, is also found within the general population. Using public opinion surveys to gauge public support for political violence is problematic; most respondents are loath to admit their support for physical force in a personal interview and, in any event, such support is usually contingent upon the particular circumstances at the time. A person might be less supportive of force during a ceasefire, when their community was making major gains through constitutional politics, but more supportive if they felt political progress was slow or their community at risk from sectarian attack. A range of questions asked in the 1968, 1973 and 1978 surveys, reported in Table 6, provide different perspectives on the extent of latent public support for the use of physical force.

In 1968, on the eve of the Troubles, survey respondents were asked if they believed it right ‘to take any measures necessary’ to achieve a political goal. For Protestants, the political goal was maintaining Northern Ireland as ‘a Protestant country’; the implication of this was the preservation of the Protestant community’s monopoly on political power. Moreover, the reference to the use of ‘any measures necessary’ is a direct quote from the 1912 Ulster Covenant, which committed the signatories to use ‘all means that may be found necessary’ to defeat Home Rule (Bardon, 1992: 438). Given the historical parallels, it is not surprising that half of all of the Protestants interviewed in the survey supported the use of force for that goal. Catholics were less likely to support the use of force to end partition; nevertheless, 13 percent still agreed with the statement. Among the Catholics supporting the statement, three quarters said that they did so because of their belief in Irish unity (Rose, 1971: 193).

A more explicit question about the legitimacy of violence, divorced from historical circumstances, produced different results in 1973. When asked if they believed that violence was a legitimate way to achieve one’s goals, 16 percent of Protestants agreed, but more significantly, 25 percent of Catholics took the same view. Clearly the violence of the early years of the conflict, which had disproportionately affected Catholic areas, had caused a shift in opinion towards support for the use of violence. The survey was also conducted after the abolition of the Stormont parliament and the imposition of direct rule from Westminster, which was widely interpreted as having been achieved through sustained republican violence. In 1978 the issue was broached by asking respondents how they felt about the paramilitaries from each of the two communities. Almost half of the Catholics interviewed believed that members of the IRA were ‘patriots and idealists’, while only slightly fewer Protestants believed that loyalist paramilitaries’ actions were justified.

The most recent survey question relating to support for violence was asked in 1998, and deals with the levels of sympathy expressed by respondents for each community’s paramilitary organization.^[10] The question was phrased so as to permit respondents to indicate sympathy, while not at the same time explicitly supporting the use of force. Once again, Table 7 shows that significant minorities within each community lend support to their respective paramilitary groups. A total of 31 percent of Protestants express some level of sympathy for the loyalist paramilitaries, while the figure for Catholics sympathizing with republicans is very similar, at 28 percent. About one in every 14 people within each community have ‘a lot of sympathy’ for their respective community’s paramilitary organization. By any standards, these are significant numbers of people within a society who have empathy with the methods and goals of terrorist organizations. If we extrapolate these estimates to the general population, around 60,000 Protestants would have a lot of sympathy for loyalist paramilitaries, and about 40,000 Catholics a lot of sympathy for their republican counterparts.^[11]

A notable pattern in both tables is the sympathy expressed for the other community’s paramilitaries. In Table 6, 35 percent of Protestants agreed that the IRA were ‘patriots and idealists’, and 25 percent of Catholics that the actions of loyalist paramilitaries was justified. Similarly, in Table 7, although hardly any of the respondents said that they had a ‘lot of sympathy’ for the other side’s paramilitaries, one in five Catholics had ‘some sympathy’ for loyalist paramilitaries, and one in 10 Protestants ‘some sympathy’ for republicans. This pattern is all the more curious when we take into account the ferocity of the conflict between the two main paramilitary groupings. The explanation seems to rest on how the activists on both sides regard the conflict as a war, and their own role in it as one of ‘soldiers’ fighting for a just cause; both paramilitary groupings regard their prisoners as ‘prisoners of war’. In turn, these ‘soldiers’ and their sympathizers legitimate their own status in the conflict by showing respect for the motives of their opponents (Bairner, 1996: 161).

The opinion poll evidence in both communities about support for physical force, while intermittent, tells a remarkably consistent — and shocking — story. The results show that, however the survey question is phrased, significant minorities within each community support the use of violence for political ends. There is perhaps no other advanced industrial society where such large numbers of people effectively condone terrorism. The explanations can be traced to the complex interaction between constitutional and extra-constitutional politics throughout Irish history, and to the successes of republicans in achieving political independence through the use of force and of unionists in securing exclusion from these new arrangements through the threat of force. For each community, the activities of contemporary paramilitary groups resonate with the iconographic figures of their history.^[12] Perhaps more pertinently, the message of the Troubles is that the use of physical force does bring political gains, a fact that has not been lost on constitutional politicians.

Political violence has a range of consequences for the society within which it takes place. It has a major impact on the everyday lives of individuals, threatening injury or death to themselves and to their relatives and friends; destroying property, jobs and livelihoods; and altering political behaviour and beliefs. Most importantly, we would predict that exposure to violence would engender further violence, in a continuous cycle; as the proverb suggests, those who sow dragon’s teeth reap a harvest of violence in return. Numerous paramilitary activists have cited violent experiences as formative influences in their decision to take up arms. Gerry Adams, for example, traces his activism to attempts by the RUC to prevent an Irish tricolour being displayed at Sinn Fein’s West Belfast office during the 1964 general election campaign; he says that the experience led him to believe that ‘the north of Ireland was a state based upon the violent suppression of political opposition’ (Adams, 1996: 51).

Violence also causes major disruption to democratic political institutions. Although Northern Ireland maintained formal democratic institutions from 1921 to 1972, the province was not a competitive democracy in the conventional sense, since there was no possibility that the Protestant and unionist majority would ever lose an election, nor that the Catholic and nationalist opposition could ever win. It was a hegemonic state where the contiguity of religion and politics was sustained by the ever-present threat of violence (O'Leary and Arthur, 1990). Following direct rule in 1972, even limited local democracy was withdrawn from the province, with the partial (and short-lived) exceptions of the 1973 Assembly, the 1975 Constitutional Convention and the 1982 Assembly, all of which failed in their goal of re-establishing devolution and were undermined by widespread political violence. The current impasse over the future of the Northern Ireland executive, caused by delays in the IRA’s commitment to decommission its weapons, shows the ability of physical force groups, even when adhering to a ceasefire, to undermine democratic institutions.

Disagreement over the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons highlights the ambiguity surrounding the use of political violence. The issue became prominent after the IRA and loyalist ceasefires of August and October 1994, respectively. Constitutional groups argued that the ceasefires could not be translated into a permanent settlement until the paramilitary groups handed in their arms. The British government’s position was that weapons had to be handed in prior to the commencement of talks; republicans argued that decommissioning could only take place once a settlement had been reached. The Independent International Commission on Decommissioning, then chaired by US senator George Mitchell, concluded in January 1996 that while all of the parties should commit themselves to democratic principles and to total disarmament, in practice decommissioning would have to await an agreement (Mitchell, 1999). The British government did not accept this view and called an election as an alternative to decommissioning.

The Good Friday Agreement is ambiguous on the decommissioning issue. It commits the signatories ‘to use any influence they may have, to achieve the decommissioning of all paramilitary arms within two years following endorsement in referendums North and South of the agreement and in the context of the implementation of the overall settlement.’ Republicans viewed this goal as an aspiration; once democratic institutions which included Sinn Fein were established and accepted, arms would gradually be decommissioned (Ruane and Todd, 1999: 25). By contrast, unionists saw it as binding that decommissioning would be underway prior to the formation of the executive, and that the process would be, at the very least, well advanced by May 2000, as laid out in the Good Friday Agreement. For many unionists, it was an article of faith that they would not share government with an organization that maintained arms.

The issue came to a head during George Mitchell’s review of the Good Friday Agreement, conducted between September and November 1999. Following extensive discussions, Mitchell concluded that ‘a basis now exists for devolution to occur, for the institutions to established, and for decommissioning to take place as soon as possible’ (Times, 19 November 1999). In effect, Mitchell was arguing that both should occur simultaneously. This placed the Ulster Unionists in a quandary: should they adhere to their policy of non-participation without decommissioning, thereby wrecking the Agreement, or should they agree to participate and wait for IRA decommissioning under the terms of the Agreement? The party’s council voted 480 votes to 349 on 27 November 1999 to take the latter path, as advocated by their leader, David Trimble. Trimble swayed party opinion by signing a postdated letter of resignation from the executive, which would be activated if decommissioning had not commenced by February 2000 (Sunday Times, 28 November 1999). The executive was formed on 2 December 1999, but on the clear understanding on the part of the Ulster Unionists that the executive would collapse unless decommissioning commenced immediately.

As in the proverb of the dragon’s teeth, we would hypothesize that exposure to political violence fosters support for further violence, expressed through support for paramilitary organizations. In addition, we would hypothesize that violence is deeply intertwined with popular views about the decommissioning of weapons. When asked about their views on this issue, both communities overwhelmingly supported decommissioning as one of the main components of the Good Friday Agreement, with 95 percent of Protestants and 87 percent of Catholics supporting it (Table 8). However, the figures reveal that Protestants were almost twice as likely to be strongly supportive than Catholics, indicating the depth of Protestant feelings about the issue. By contrast, just 2 percent of Protestants and 6 percent of Catholics opposed decommissioning. Indeed, of the eight major proposals contained in the Agreement, decommissioning received the strongest popular endorsement.^[13]

The multivariate results, using exposure to violence to predict sympathy for paramilitary groups and in turn views about the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons, support the hypotheses (Figure 3). In each community the exposure to political violence helps to mould sympathies for paramilitary organizations, and views about the decommissioning of weapons, although there are important differences. Having indirect experience of violence, through knowing someone who has been killed or injured, increases sympathy for paramilitary groups in both communities. By contrast, direct, personal experience of violence decreases sympathies for the loyalist paramilitary groups among Protestants, but increases sympathies for republican groups among Catholics. This may be related to the differing roles of the paramilitaries within each community. For Protestants, redress for being a victim of violence is most likely to be accomplished via the security forces. For Catholics, the role of the IRA as ‘the community’s defender’, coupled with the antipathy of many Catholics towards the security forces, makes them look to republican paramilitaries for retaliation (Brewer et al., 1999).

Figure 3: Exposure to Violence, Paramilitarism, and
Decommissioning, 1998

Exposure to violence and support for paramilitary groups also moulds views on the decommissioning of weapons, as we predicted. Within both communities, popular sympathies for the respective paramilitary groups results in weaker support for decommissioning. Paramilitary sympathizers clearly believe that these groups should retain their weapons and their physical force role; the relationship is particularly strong among Catholics. Exposure to collective violence — witnessing a bombing or a riot — also influences views about decommissioning, but again in different ways within each community. Among Protestants, such exposure serves to foster support for decommissioning but among Catholics exposure weakens it. Once again, these differences may reflect the different role of the security forces in each community, since collective exposure to violent events may bring individuals into contact with the security forces, and reinforce pre-existing views about them. For Catholics, such contact is more likely to be negative. Indirect experience of violence also weakens support for decommissioning, but only among Catholics.

The Northern Ireland problem has proved to be one of the most intractable political conflicts of the twentieth century. Scholars have disagreed widely both in their interpretation of its causes and in its possible solutions — a phenomenon that McGarry and O’Leary (1995: 355) call ‘the conflict about the conflict.’ There is, however, now cautious agreement that it is an internal conflict between the two religious communities, and that outside influences — such as those of the British or Irish governments — have relatively little impact on its trajectory. The conflict is perpetuated by a range of social processes, such as family structure, the educational system and social interaction, which reinforce the values and outlooks which are specific to each community. These values and outlooks are transmitted from generation to generation, so that it is the young who are significantly more likely to have been influenced in their political outlooks by growing up amidst widespread violence and civil disturbances (Hayes and McAllister, 1999).

One aspect of the conflict that has been consistently neglected in these interpretations is political violence. The violence has been treated as a consequence of the absence of political agreement; once a permanent settlement is found involving all of the main actors, then it is assumed that the violence will disappear. If all parties (and especially the republicans) believe that the Northern Ireland state is legitimate, then there is no need to maintain the armed struggle against it (Todd, 1999: 66). This optimistic scenario ignores two factors. First, Northern Ireland maintains two traditions of achieving political change, one constitutional and one extra-constitutional, the latter fostered by an historic communal enmity and, since 1972, by the major political gains which have been delivered by republican violence. Since the decision whether or not to use extra-constitutional methods for political ends is a practical rather than a moral judgement, its future use cannot be excluded. Second, as we have shown in this paper, exposure to political violence is often a cause of further violence, through support for paramilitarism and by a disinclination to support the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons.

Only a sustained period of peace is likely to break this vicious cycle. The Irish Republic’s experience in nationbuilding suggests that the transition to an exclusively parliamentary tradition can become established in a decade, although much of that was promoted by the ruthless suppression of the IRA by both pro and anti-treaty governments. Moreover, the large numbers who have been exposed to and directly influenced by political violence in Northern Ireland suggest that the demise of the physical force tradition will take much longer. The current impasse over the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons also indicates that while all parties may have been signatories to what they believe to be a lasting settlement, most (and particularly the republican paramilitaries) wish to maintain their military capacity in the event of a breakdown. Whatever the outcome of this latest phase of the conflict, it suggests that latent support for paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland will continue for some time to the future.

Footnotes

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