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1240.0. "Book Review: The Red Hand" by TALLIS::DARCY (Alpha Migration Tools) Tue Jul 13 1993 11:23

Article 18980 of soc.culture.celtic:
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From: [email protected] (Tony J. Hurson)
Subject: Book Review: "The Red Hand"
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Organization: Capital Area Central Texas UNIX Society, Austin, Tx
Date: Tue, 13 Jul 93 00:09:52 GMT+5:00
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I recently read the book "The Red Hand" by Steve Bruce. Here's what I found.
Comments, to [email protected], are very welcome.

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                     The Red Hand: Protestant Paramilitaries
                     In Northern Ireland
      
                     Steve Bruce
      
                     Oxford University Press, 1992
      
                     311 pages
      
                     7.99 British Pounds (paperback, 9/92 prices)
      
      

Steve Bruce, now Professor of Sociology at Aberdeen University, spent the
'eighties in Belfast, studying and teaching at Queen's University. His
12 years there were fruitful, for by the time "The Red Hand" was published 
in 1992, he already had quite a reputation in the study of evangelical
Protestantism, chiefly the Irish and Scottish varieties. His best known book,
"God Save Ulster: The Religion and Politics of Paisleyism," made his name
beyond academia. And no wonder: though a sociologist by training and a
scrupulous researcher, his prose is supple, engaging and free of the 
academic jargon that shuts out the general reader. "The Red Hand" continues
in that accessible vein, taking us to the relatively unstudied, violent 
fringes of Protestant culture in Northern Ireland. Though he quotes liberally
(and sceptically) from other written sources, Bruce relies primarily on
interviews as the source material of the book. In the introduction, he is 
quite modest about the veracity of some of the information presented and
indeed, throughout the book, he informs the reader whenever he has trouble
with "facts" presented from underworld sources. Such caution is very
understandable, given the subject matter.

Northern Ireland's Protestant paramilitaries are in the more unusual category 
of PRO-STATE terrorists. They justify their existence by claiming that the 
British government is inadequately defending Ulster's Protestants against the 
onslaught of republican terrorism (mainly from the Irish Republican Army, or 
IRA). They are thus competing with the British Army, the local police force 
(the Royal Ulster Constabulary, or RUC) and the local militia (the Royal Irish
Regiment, formerly the Ulster Defence Regiment, which is under British Army
control) for legitimacy within the unionist community. It is this contingent
status that makes them, in author Sarah Nelson's words, "Ulster's uncertain
defenders."

Though the glossary of organisations at the beginning of the book forms an
alphabet soup of acronyms, the story of loyalist paramilitaries in Northern
Ireland boils down to two main groups: the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and
the Ulster Defence Association (UDA). The UVF is the smaller, more militant
and secretive organisation, proscribed by the British government for most
of the current period of violence. Though it claims its name and lineage 
from Carson's and Craig's original UVF, that was instrumental in creating the
Northern Irish state, the contemporary organisation's membership and leaders
come almost entirely from the working class and the group is very amorphous.
UVF "Companies", for instance, are often organised around the public bars their
members drink at. The other main group, the Ulster Defence Association (UDA)
resembles a paramilitary militia, and until recently it operated legally. Its
origins are in the "Defence Associations" or vigilante groups that organised
in Protestant neighbourhoods of Belfast at the height of the communal rioting
that marked the early phase of the present troubles. It too is a solidly
working class organisation, with many members in trade unions (though it
emphatically avoids any socialist labels). In carrying out terrorist attacks,
the UDA uses a pseudonym: the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF.)

In roughly chronological order, Bruce takes us through the ups and downs of
these two factions. The UDA's crowning success was undoubtedly the toppling
of the short-lived power-sharing executive in 1974. Despite the doubts of
"respectible" unionist politicians, it initiated the general strike that
brought the province to a standstill and defeated the government. The UVF
played a significantly smaller role in the strike. Buoyed by that victory, 
both the UVF and the UDA decided to move into politics and both failed 
disasterously, with very poor numbers at the ballot box. Bruce suggests that 
this was due to the innate conservatism of unionist voters, even working
class ones. A failed general strike in 1977 and the comparatively muted street
protests that followed the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement in late 1985
exposed the UDA's declining ability to mobilise the unionist masses. The
UDA also has a problem with racketeering: it operates protection rackets as
a fund-raising source, and such a cash-based underground business is very
prone to personal corruption. In carving up racketeering turf, the UDA has
also lost loyalist support by collaborating with its republican enemies.
Its present weakness casts its continuing existence into doubt, for if its 
raison d'etre now revolves solely around its UFF assassins, it is 
indistinguishable from the UVF. 

The UVF, having a lower profile and a narrower focus ("killing republicans,") 
is less obviously in decline, but bloody feuds with the UDA (over turf and 
personalities) and a series of grisly murders in the mid-'seventies by one 
of its companies from Belfast's Shankill Road (the killers became known as 
"The Shankill Butchers,") have sullied its image too.

Here are the main points raised in "The Red Hand". I have given each a 
header:

                            A REACTIVE FORCE

The author uses statistics compiled by the Irish Information Partnership to
argue that trends in loyalist violence lag those of republican terrorism.
That may surprise those who recall that the first explosions, at public
utilities, in Northern Ireland in 1969 were caused by loyalists masquerading
as IRA men, but a graph of murder rates in Northern Ireland in the period 
1969 - 1989 clearly suggests that loyalist gunmen RESPOND to republican
terrorism.

                            "TAIG STIFFERS"

Though Bruce does not particularly emphasize this fact, murders carried out
by loyalist paramilitaries are primarily sectarian - that is, the victim is
chosen solely by religious affiliation. A glance from a table in the book's
statistical appendix clearly shows this:

	Table A.3: Summary of Fatal Casualties in Northern Ireland,
		   1969 - 1989

				AGENCY RESPONSIBLE

VICTIM		SECURITY	REPUBLICAN	LOYALIST	OTHER/
		FORCES		PARAMILITARIES	PARAMILITARIES	UNIDENTIFIED
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Security 	15		847		10		4
Forces

Republican	123		146		21		6
Paramilitaries

Loyalist	13		18		40		2
Paramilitaries

Civilians
  Catholic	149		173		506		74
  Protestant	25		379		114		57
  Other		4		22		12		1

Prison		0		23		2		0
Officers

["The Red Hand", statistical appendix, from Irish Information Partnership,
"Agenda."]

Five hundred and six of the 705 casualties in Northern Ireland attributed to 
loyalist paramilitaries fall in the "Civilian, Catholic" category, compared 
with just 21 "Republican Paramilitaries." In contrast, republican 
paramilitaries have killed 379 Protestant civilians, out their total of 1,608. 
Now, categorisation of victims is difficult in Northern Ireland (the IRA often 
does not claim its members until years after their deaths,) but the weight of 
these numbers shows that UDA and UVF killings are largely indiscriminate. In 
fact, paramilitaries interviewed in the book openly admit to simply "stiffing 
Taigs." Indiscriminate killings are justified by arguments like "It shows 'them' 
the cost of supporting the IRA." Such a policy is not without a price in terms 
of unionist support, however. Bruce suggests that while most unionists are quite 
happy to see the UDA or UVF kill republican terrorists or politicians, they 
become more ambivalent when Catholics are being killed simply because of their
religion. Also, he suggests that loyalist terrorists chose more random targets 
because specific ones usually require a lot of intelligence work. Their 
enemies in the IRA have the advantage of openly distinguishable targets (the 
police and army). Bruce suggests that the UVF has become more selective in its
choice of victims in recent years, and attributes this to the growth of open 
political campaigning by members of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA.

         COLLABORATION WITH THE SECURITY FORCES IS INSIGNIFICANT?

This is probably the most contentious claim of the book. Bruce suggests that
information and sometimes weapons are passed from the Crown forces to the
UVF and UDA, but that it takes place on a small and localised scale. He
treats claims of "grand schemes" between the state forces and paramilitaries
very sceptically. Three cases that might indicate wider collaboration - those
of Captain Robert Nairac, UDA intelligence officer Brian Nelson and the
bombings of Dublin and Monaghan in 1974 - are dismissed by Bruce. 

Captain Robert Nairac was a British Army intelligence officer who was accused 
of collaborating with the mid-Ulster UVF in the killing of IRA man John Green 
in 1975. The claim that Nairac was "running" the Portadown branch of the UVF 
was based mainly on testimony by ex-British Army officer Fred Holroyd. 
Holroyd was based in Armagh in the early 'seventies and was discharged from 
the army on medical grounds. Bruce considers him an unreliable man with
an axe to grind and mentions discrepancies with evidence Holroyd advanced
to show Nairac's involvement in the execution.

The claim that British forces aided loyalist paramilitaries when they bombed
Dublin and Monaghan in May 1974, resulting in 33 deaths, is dismissed by
Bruce for the same reason: Holroyd is the source of the allegation. In a
letter to Garda (the republic's police force) in 1987, Holroyd claimed that
British intelligence officers and the RUC aided the Portadown branch of
the UVF in the bomb attack. The Garda considered the letter to have general
information about the mid-Ulster UVF, but found it short on specifics.
Though the Portadown UVF is strongly suspected to have carried out the 
bombings, conclusive evidence is still lacking (see "The Irish Times," 
July 7 1993.)

Belfast UDA man Brian Nelson was arrested in January 1990, around the time 
press offices and politicians in Northern Ireland were being deluged with 
photocopies of montages purporting to be British Army documents on republican 
suspects. The rumours on the street were that Nelson was a British intelligence 
officer who had channelled this information to the UDA. Bruce turns this 
accusation around and suggests that Nelson  was a UDA man who collaborated 
with the security forces, feeding information to them without reciprocation. 
As for all those documents, the author suggests that there may have been some 
low-level leaks of information by Ulster Defence Regiment members to loyalist 
paramilitaries, but the latter created a large number of counterfeits to sow 
confusion. However, other "neutral" sources, such as "The Economist" 
(September 30 1989,) considered the leaks were real and widespread around
this period.

What genuine documents do get in the hands of the UVF and UDA usually come
from part-time members of the Ulster Defence Regiment (now the Royal Irish
Regiment). These soldiers form the least professional part of the British
Army. They continue to live in their own communities, usually strongly 
loyalist areas (for their personal protection.) With their commitment to 
defeating the IRA,  it is easy to imagine some of them "slipping the word" on 
republican suspects to friends in a bar.

Bruce also notes that at the height of the troubles, the army and police
often "turned a blind eye" to loyalist paramilitaries. He explains this
passive collusion as an unwillingness of the security forces to fight on two
fronts at a time of widespread republican violence.

                         A MOVEMENT IN DECLINE

Loyalist paramilitaries have become victims of the security forces success in
containing IRA violence in Northern Ireland. Granted, the RUC and British 
Army privately admits that they cannot eliminate the IRA, but neither can
that organisation directly threaten the state's existence. The move towards
"Ulsterisation" of the security forces in the late 'seventies was perceived
as a step towards normalcy, or at least containment. And the British 
government's covert policy of ambushing and executing IRA terrorists, using 
the SAS (British Army commandoes) and special police units, directly competes 
with the UDA and UVF.  One paramilitary is quoted as saying he wanted to "oil 
my gun and stick it under the floorboards" when he first heard of SAS executions 
of IRA men.  The paramilitaries' failure to destroy the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 
1985, which gave the Republic of Ireland government a stake in Northern Irish 
affairs for the first time, has also hurt morale. Bruce's conclusion is that 
the UDA and UVF do not have much of a fight left in them; and that even if 
Northern Ireland returns to conflagration, the unionist community will not 
call on these groups for help:

        That remains the first big question for the future
        of the UDA and UVF: to what extent are Protestants
        prepared to fight against the British government's
        policy [giving the Republic of Ireland a stake in 
        Northern Ireland]? Contrary to the views of a UDA
        spokesman, I would say 'not very much.'

        ...The second big question is this: even if Ulster
        Protestants were prepared to fight, would they do
        so under the aegis of the UDA and UVF? Again, my
        answer has to be quite different from that hoped 
        for by the UDA and UVF: no, they would not. Even
        in 1974, the poor opinion of paramilitaries forced
        them to operate behind a 'front' of the UWF [Ulster
        Workers' Council] and the politicians and little
        that has happened since has enhanced the reputation
        or popularity of the UDA and UVF. A close 
        examination of the murders and attempted murders
        committed by loyalists in 1990 and 1991 shows that
        many of their victims could be more 'legitimate'
        as targets than the media suggested. But that is
        not the point. The point is that even unionists
        are happy to believe that these are sectarian
        attacks and there are enough murders that are
        indefensible even in UDA and UVF terms to  
        confirm that impression. ...This suggests that,
        whatever the UDA's and UVF's capacity for 
        continuing their present levels of activity, they
        are unlikely to flourish again.

                           ["The Red Hand," pages 289 - 290.]

                               --- oOo ---

"The Red Hand" gives readers the most thorough understanding to date of 
Northern Ireland's loyalist extremists. Author Steve Bruce achieves this 
primarily by "getting down in the trenches" and interviewing members of the
UDA and UVF. The unedited 'hard man' language, that peppers the book, gives
some idea of the thinking of Ulster's unloved defenders. More importantly,
Bruce carefully sifts the claims he receives and seeks independent 
confirmation of them. He also refers liberally to other written sources, 
documented in the book's large bibliography, but with the exception of London 
"Independent" columnist David McKittrick, he often finds their opinions 
wanting. The only thing I found missing from "The Red Hand" was an explanation 
of the command structure of the UVF.

Some readers might find the complete absence of moral condemnation by the
author disconcerting. Bruce would probably reply that judging the conduct
of the paramilitaries is not the purpose of the book. In fact, moralising
might have been counterproductive, since the author showed drafts of his
work to UVF and UDA members for feedback.

This book is essential reading for anyone trying to understand the conflict 
in Northern Ireland.



Tony Hurson, Austin, Texas, July 1993.