“I HAVE repeatedly stated that the levels of criminality in our community attributable to loyalism is (sic) dwarfed by that which is controlled by the republican movement and leadership.”
Thus spake Loyalist Communities Council Chair David Campbell on Friday morning, stung into a response by the controversy over the DUP meeting his group – which includes the UVF and UDA. What the DUP talked to senior members of illegal loyalist paramilitary groups about is not clear, as the party has been coy about providing us with details. But their chinwag was in the general field of education so the talk around the table could have been about the number of sausages in a school dinner, for all we know.
How Dave knows the extent of the UDA and UVF’s criminality, I have no idea. Even if he asked the lads about it it's hardly likely that even he believes they gave him chapter and verse. How he knows the extent of the IRA’s criminality is even more of a mystery, because while there’s plenty of media examples of the daily depredations of the Uncle Andys and Mervyns who rule working class loyalist districts, evidence of IRA activities – or even of its continued existence – is distinctly thin on the ground.
Let’s take that venerable maiden aunt of unionism, the Belfast Telegraph, for instance, and see what their coverage tells us about the antics of the woolly-faced ones. A Google search for ‘UDA Belfast Telegraph’ reveals a bloodcurdling array of drug-infested, blood-soaked tales of live and dangerous Loyal Ulster patriotism:
• ‘Partying teenager beaten to a pulp by out-of-control UDA bully-boy’.
• ‘Angry Bangor mum defies threats from masked UDA thugs’.
• ‘UDA-linked crucifixion gang behind spate of shootings’.
And so on and so on ad infinitum, as they say in the Flag and Flute.
A search for ‘UVF Belfast Telegraph’, meanwhile, is similarly not for the faint of heart:
•‘Man viciously beaten by UVF for refusing order to leave NI’.
• ‘Double amputee had £15k of East Belfast UVF cocaine stashed in joists of his attic’.
• ‘UDA drug dealer has his back broken by UVF mob’.
Setra, setra, setra.
Accept the stories or don’t, but there they are for analysts of paramilitary criminality to access if and when. Now let’s try ‘IRA Belfast Telegraph’:
• ‘IRA campaign was about driving people into sea, not civil rights’.
• ‘It’s over. The IRA ceasefire 30 years on’.
• ‘Old Bailey bomber and IRA veteran Roy Walsh dies aged 75’.
You see the problem here, don’t you? UVF/UDA stories in the Hard News section; IRA stories in the Memory Lane section.
The Belfast Telegraph isn’t known as a publication which has given the IRA a by-ball, and if there were recent stories about gruesome IRA beatings and drug-dealing you can bet your army boots they’d be there in flashing neon headlines. But there aren’t. Because as everyone who lives anywhere the IRA was formerly active knows, they really have gone away, you know.
A bit of housekeeping is necessary at this point, and I have to warn you that things may get rather… circular. But hang in there and see if we can’t clear things up, and no better way to do that than by going all Ron Burgundy: Ladies and gentlemen, can I please have your attention? I’ve just been handed an urgent and horrifying news story. I need all of you to stop what you’re doing and listen...
We did have quite the IRA story on Friday morning in the BelTel – in fact, the self-same story that prompted LCC Dave to bang out his indignant and impassioned statement about the IRA preparing to storm Stormont. And that story was… give me a second here… talk among yourselves… let me see now… Ah, here it is: ‘IRA members involved in storage of weapons, it has been claimed’.
Claimed? Claimed by whom?
Well, turns out the BelTel story said that the story came from a Radio This Here Pravince story about a PSNI story. Still with me? Good. The BelTel report reported that the wireless story reported (I know, I know) “that a small number of IRA members are involved in ‘the storage of weaponry’ and ‘attempting to identify covert human intelligence sources.’”
The radio report had gravely intoned: “All the focus that there has been over recent weeks on the LCC, and look at this – the PSNI telling us that the 2015 security assessment still stands.”
So let’s take a step back here, wave our hands vigorously in front of our faces to clear the smoke and dust, and see what we’re looking at:
1. A breathless report about a security assessment that’s about to celebrate its tenth birthday.
2. A newspaper report based on that morning’s wireless report on the decade-old document.
3. An LCC statement on the back of the wireless report and subsequent BelTel report about a 2015 statement.
If you’re interested, and if you're still with me, the statement that produced the IRA reports, the statement that the PSNI put out on Friday morning in response to a query about the IRA, read simply: “The assessment commissioned in 2015 by the then Secretary of State on Paramilitary Groups in Northern Ireland has not changed.” And that’s it. The heap. A 2015 analysis of the IRA (by the same spooks who fought it for 35 years, let it be said) has not changed.
Kind of begs the question, does 'not changed' mean the same as 'still stands'? Does the PSNI mean that the assessment remains unchanged as a snapshot of where the IRA was ten years ago? Or is there a running assessment which we haven’t been told about which judges the IRA in 2024 to be in precisely the same position – to the word and to the letter – as the IRA in 2015? The latter would have to be a coincidence of universe-bending, paranormal proportions; but who knows? Spooks can and do act in very spooky ways.
What we do know as we study those same media platforms that spent decades attempting to convince us of the unique malignancy of the IRA is that currently conspicuous by their absence are stories about the IRA crucifying people; stories about the IRA dealing drugs; stories about the IRA shooting people dead. By way of contrast, those stories are legion when it comes to Keepers of the Loyal Flame. And such IRA stories are not absent because of a lack of commitment on the part of the local media to report them, they are absent because they don’t exist. But the LCC main man tells us to forget all that, inviting us instead to 'Trust me, bro.'
Just as LCC Dave has a vast repository of current media stories about loyalist criminality and violence to source when he analyses the state of loyalist paramilitary play (but chooses not to), so he has a complete absence of current media stories about IRA criminality and violence to source (but chooses not to). Which is why a story about a story about a story about a 10-year-old document was the ammunition he chose to fight his way out of a tricky spot. Blank ammunition, as it turns out – but then blanks make as much noise as the real thing.
And that’s what counts.
