Opinion

Leona O’Neill: Will paramilitaries still be ‘transitioning’ 25 years from now?

If we continue to do what we always did, we will never be rid of the UVF, ONH and other groups

Mention UVF to most people and you will hear a variation on a theme: “They’re just hoods exploiting people in their own areas and lining their own pockets”
In peaceful Northern Ireland in 2024, why do we still need the UVF?
By Leona O'Neill

According to the dictionary, the definition of transition is ‘a change or shift from one state, subject, place to another’.

As with a lot of other things, the word means something completely different here in Northern Ireland.

In the rest of the world, transition would traditionally suggest that you get to where you’re looking to go after a period of work. That’s the whole point of a transition.

But here, it’s a state of being, a way of life, a whole vibe, the state of constantly transitioning, ceaselessly moving the finish line, never actually getting to the point of change despite millions of pounds of government money being pumped in to help ease your path.

Northern Ireland’s unique version of transitioning was on full display last weekend when hundreds of men appeared on Belfast’s Newtownards Road wearing the exact same attire, after stripping the clothes shops bare of crisp white shirts, black trousers and black ties.

Hundreds of men in white shirts and black ties lined the route of a memorial parade for murdered UVF man Robert Seymour on the Newtownards Road
Hundreds of men in white shirts and black ties lined the route of a memorial parade for murdered UVF man Robert Seymour on the Newtownards Road

The gathering was to commemorate Robert Seymour – a UVF member who was shot dead by the IRA in Belfast in 1988 – but has been described as an apparent ‘show of strength’ by the Ulster Volunteer Force, linked to support for the new leadership of the organisation in east Belfast amid simmering tensions.

In peaceful Northern Ireland in 2024, why do we need UVF men? What are their roles in society? How is there still a robust paramilitary structure despite all the hard work with regards peace-building?

What is stopping us transitioning these groups into non-existence? Has there ever, anywhere in the world, been a transitioning period of a quarter of a century?

Twenty-six years on from the Good Friday Agreement, millions of pounds, and dozens of government-funding initiatives, how have we not transitioned out of the warped society we once lived in, where all shades of paramilitary groups had such a stranglehold in our communities?

How, decades into peace, do they continue to recruit and engage in a whole suite of illegal activities common to criminal gangs?

In an Independent Reporting Commission report in 2021 it was stated that paramilitaries remain ‘a clear and present danger’ in Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, in its report on the effect of paramilitary activity this year, spelled out how terror gangs represent a ‘festering wound’ on society in 2024.

UVF posters have appeared in east Belfast
UVF posters which appeared in east Belfast earlier this year

We love our vicious circles in Northern Ireland. Terror gangs exist in working class communities, often feeding on the desperation of families, exerting control and instilling fear and terror so that people are too scared to report any wrongdoing to police. And on and on the paramilitary show goes, spinning wildly, pulling in fresh recruits yearly, wielding power, changing the guards, getting stronger.

In 2024 we still have masked men on our streets. We have dissident republicans marking Easter in colour parties or INLA men firing shots over coffins, riots in cemeteries, loyalists lining the streets in shows of strength, pipe bombs, shootings, rioting in the streets.

Petrol bombs are prepared for the Easter Monday dissident republican parade in Derry. Picture Margaret McLaughlin 1-4-2024
An Easter Monday republican parade makes its way from the Creggan area to the City Cemetery in Derry earlier this year. Picture: Margaret McLaughlin (MARGARET MCLAUGHLIN PHOTOGRAPHY )

We have kneecappings, houses being shot up, protection money being handed over, drugs being sold. We still have entire communities under the boot of paramilitaries who don’t appear to want to transition into anything except richer and more powerful entities.

Money has been pumped into Northern Ireland to help the gods of war transition to men of peace, but many of them got distracted by the gleam of shiny riches and headed off towards what was glimmering to become kings of criminality instead.

What is their incentive to stop now? Who can give them more power and money than they are already making?

What is their incentive to stop now? Who can give them more power and money than they are already making?

Even in 2024, there is no desire to shut up shop with regards paramilitarism. There is still a lot of money to be made. And I suppose it makes good business sense not to close down an operation that is fully profit making.

It is a hugely complex issue, one that many people are working hard to find solutions to. But the continued normalisation and justification of paramilitaries in our society helps only the paramilitaries themselves.

If we continue to do what we always did, we will still be ‘transitioning’ 25 years from now – probably breaking world records in the process – but the scourge of terror groups and their chokehold on communities will be just as suffocating.