Belfast riots trigger renewed scrutiny over loyalist paramilitary influence

The violent disturbances occurred in a nationalist area yet played out against a backdrop of union jacks

As the racially motivated violence unfolded in Northern Ireland this week, a striking dissonanace could be seenbehind the mobs and flames and smoke.

The knife attack that triggered the disturbances occurred in a nationalist area yet the mayhem played out against a backdrop of union jacks and loyalist murals.

You could watch rioters hurl missiles and target foreigners on Shankill Road, then cross a few blocks to Falls Road, bedecked with Irish tricolours and republican murals, and experience serenity.

History, demographics and psychology can explain some of the diverging community reactions, but there is also a familiar factor at play under the surface – paramilitaries.

The security services and some academics say there are more loyalist paramilitaries today than in 1998 when the Good Friday agreement drew a line under the Troubles. One estimate from 2020 put the number as high as 12,500, albeit with many members inactive.

The Ulster Volunteer Force and Ulster Defence Association, which are proscribed as terrorist groups in the UK, have endured despite engaging in a state-sponsored process of “transitioning” that is supposed to phase out their existence.

The groups have split into sub-groups. Some are involved in drug dealing, extortion and racketeering while others have cooperated with politicians and civic society organisations that seek to consign them to history.

The riots have renewed scrutiny because they happened in areas where paramilitaries wield influence. Ryan Henderson, an assistant chief constable, said police had no evidence that paramilitaries orchestrated the violence.

Instead, there is evidence that some paramilitary leaders chose neutrality, neither stoking nor impeding the violence, to make a point: beware a vacuum.

“The chickens are coming home to roost,” said Jamie Bryson, a prominent loyalist activist. “You don’t want loyalists to play any part in society? You want the groups to go away? Well, there you are, there’s the wild west. Be careful what you wish for because you’re going to create a vacuum.”

Under pressure to disband, loyalist groups decided to not intervene when trouble flared, said Bryson. “People don’t want you to exist on a Monday and all of a sudden want you to partially exist when it suits on a Tuesday? No. The groups are not going to exercise influence and coercion when it suits the great and the good. They’re saying very clearly: ‘We’re not stepping into these community policing roles any more.’”

It is Northern Ireland’s version of the warning attributed to the French king Louis XV: après moi, le déluge – after me, the flood. Remove authority, however unpopular, and you risk anarchy.

The dilemma prompted Linzi McLaren, a former police officer and Ulster Unionist party councillor, to urge authorities to engage with paramilitary groups – “as unpalatable as it is” – to rein in the rioters.

Aaron Edwards, a historian and authority on loyalism, said that would be a mistake. “People see this as a lever to pull against race-based violence. But what you get is morally repugnant. It’s completely indefensible to talk about engaging in paramilitaries on this issue given their long history of violence and coercive control against their own communities.”

Paramilitaries may prevent one form of violence while inflicting another, said Edwards, author of UVF: Behind the Mask. “For people in the rest of the UK, if things quiet down, they don’t really care how that happens. But it’s almost like the sausage factory, if people realised what went into making sausages, they probably wouldn’t eat them.”

Unrest erupted after dissemination of graphic footage of a knife attack that left the victim, Stephen Ogilvie, seriously injured. The suspect, a refugee from Sudan, was charged with attempted murder. Disturbances dwindled after Wednesday but the mood remains febrile – this is Northern Ireland’s third consecutive summer of racially motivated riots.

Edwards said paramilitary activity was lucrative – “they’re not going away because it’s in their interests to stick around” – and that the riots could bolster recruitment by creating a fresh pool of boys and young men with criminal records.

Given the fractured nature of the groups, there is little doubt individual members joined the rioters. In Ballymena, however, one senior loyalist said he and like-minded colleagues intervened and helped to avert violence. “People think we’re all rightwing. We’re not. Both my grandfathers fought in the war against Nazis. I don’t want Nigel Farage as my prime minister.”

Another factor was memories of riots last year that terrified foreign families and left dozens of local youths facing prosecution, he said. “People had had enough. Last year in Ballymena it was horrible.” Visiting gutted homes, some saw pencils and homework left by children forced to flee. “You see the human side, it makes you think.”

Some analysts attribute anti-immigrant sentiment in loyalist areas to a siege mentality honed over centuries, with recently arrived people of colour taking the place of Irish rebels. Others cite the fact that a falling Protestant population creates vacant properties that in some cases are filled with new arrivals.

Xenophobia is not confined to loyalist areas. According to evidence gathered by the Institute of Irish Studies at the University of Liverpool, most Catholics and Protestants believe that immigrants do not make a positive contribution to society and the economy.

“People want to be decent and be seen to be decent,” said Richard O’Rawe , an author and former IRA prisoner. “At the same time people want immigration controlled, they don’t want the borders opened and it’s come one, come all. They don’t want to end up like Birmingham.”

Racism, however, was anathema to republicanism, which motivated community leaders to curb racist eruptions, said O’Rawe. “They’d be out there saying ‘don’t do this’.”

Bryson said loyalist paramilitaries lacked the civic structures for such “soft power” and would still – if minded to snuff out a racist riot – require coercive control. “Do people think they’re going to send a nice letter to 100 masked men on the rampage and that that’s going to have any impact? They would need to forcefully put an end to it. They would still have to do it the old way.”