Opinion

Outrage over loyalist appeasement in depressingly short supply

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson writes a twice-weekly column for The Irish News and is a regular commentator on current affairs on radio and television.

The BBC's Spotlight programme contained jaw-dropping revelations about the UDA
The BBC's Spotlight programme contained jaw-dropping revelations about the UDA The BBC's Spotlight programme contained jaw-dropping revelations about the UDA

BBC Spotlight journalist Stephen Dempster must wonder what it takes to get a story rolling. His investigation into the appeasement of loyalist ‘community work’ was full of jaw-dropping outrages. Councils, ministers and the police were shown to be complicit in the funding and empire-building of UDA-linked organisations. A Bangor neighbourhood that dared to stand up for the law was officially instructed to pay homage to gangsters. Newspapers reported the programme, along with a similar scandal involving the UVF muscling in on the funding of a major substance abuse charity, which now faces closure. Yet dropped jaws and outrage seem in despairingly short supply. We all know these things happen but they are supposed to be ugly pragmatism on the road to normality. Is knowing about them instead just making ugly pragmatism normal?

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Stormont’s finance committee has published the report of its Nama inquiry but only after giving up trying to compel reluctant witnesses. Failing to give evidence or supply documents to a Stormont committee is a criminal offence punishable by up to three months in jail. Hints were dropped that this did not apply to all Nama witnesses as the power of summons is limited to devolved matters or Northern Ireland residents. However, the real problem was that nobody would say anything once the real criminal justice system became involved. This was obvious from as far back as last July, when the Department of Finance’s top civil servant appeared before the committee but said very little on the grounds that it might prejudice the National Crime Agency’s investigation.

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The New IRA has admitted trying to kill a prison officer in east Belfast, blaming a dispute over the treatment of dissident republican inmates. So why select this victim, who only trains prison officers and is based at Hydebank Wood, where no dissidents are held? The New IRA said he was on a list of potential targets but he cannot have been chosen for convenience as a bomb had to be attached under his car in a packed part of inner east Belfast. In fact, his targeting looks so inconvenient that perhaps his east Belfast address was the point and loyalist violence is being deliberately provoked. Is cynically dividing the Irish against themselves not Britain’s role?

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Some clarity has emerged over the application for a public interest immunity certificate at the Arlene Arkinson inquest. As suspected, the PSNI is protecting an informer and as the PSNI has said, this is to protect covert intelligence techniques. However, this relates not to a paramilitary under surveillance but simply to someone offering information in confidence who turned out to be mistaken. An inquest is not a trial, so people have no right to know their accuser. It is also true that there must be public faith in confidentiality if the police are ever to receive anonymous tip-offs. Unfortunately, following procedure all the way up to the Northern Ireland Office, at the same time as a ‘national security’ row over dealing with the past, has ended up doing a great deal of damage to public confidence.

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It has been over a week since an Equality Commission report found there are more Catholic than Protestant applicants for social housing almost everywhere in Northern Ireland and they spend longer on the waiting list. Unionist silence is sadly predictable but why the nationalist and republicans silence? Could it be because the report blamed the inflexibility of segregation and called for more integration - a deeply inconvenient cause? Special marks to self-described human rights group the Committee for the Administration of Justice, which said: “there needs to be concerted effort, on the basis of objective need, to tackle all forms of housing inequality. Whilst the report also references tackling segregation, it is important to emphasise that the world over segregation is a symptom of housing inequality rather than its cause.” This appears to be a plea to tackle segregation by building more segregated housing.

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The Labour Party should run candidates in Northern to help us “move beyond sterile sectarian politics,” Labour peer Baroness May Blood has said. This is a common turn of phrase when discussing this subject but local Labourites should note how amusing it sounds in Britain, where ‘sectarianism’ in the political sense is seen as the defining vice of the Labour party - and becoming more so with every day the Corbynistas are in charge.

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The TUV objection in Ballymena to manhole covers with the Irish word for water is being widely regarded as the dumbest such argument yet. Personally, I think it is still pipped by Portadown’s row over a bicycle lane that looked a bit like a tricolour. However, in the United States, the word ‘manhole’ itself is controversial. Over half of US states have implemented gender-neutral language policies and ‘manhole’ has notoriously been the hardest term to replace. ‘Utility hole’ and ‘maintenance hole’ are among the rejected alternatives. But this is not helping Ballymena, as ‘hole’ is rather rude in Ulster-Scots.

newton@irishnews.com