Several Catholic families have been forced to flee a mixed-housing estate in the Lower Oldpark area of North Belfast after renewed intimidation, violence and threats of petrol bombs. In nearby Manor Street, a migrant family was also attacked, their windows smashed and “locals only” daubed across their garage.
This outrageous episode is but the latest flashpoint in a growing wave of sectarian and racist attacks across the North. Over the past year alone, as the Unionist establishment increasingly relies on sectarian and racist rhetoric to divert from the deepening crisis, racially motivated hate crimes surged to 1,329, while sectarian crimes stood at 611.
More often than not, behind the violence lurks the shadow of the loyalist paramilitaries – as strong as ever, and holding a torch to the fuse of an explosive situation in the Six Counties.
Intimidation and violence
The Oldpark attacks follow the collapse of a deal ‘granted’ by the UDA after an earlier round of intimidation back in May.
Catholic families had lived in the estate for about a year when Oldpark’s UDA boss ordered the attack. According to the Belfast Telegraph, this was authorised by the C Company’s second-in-command, and linked to protecting their drug rackets from ‘non-locals’. Enforcing sectarian geography under threat of intimidation and violence is essential for these gangsters to continue and hold a grip on ‘their’ community.
One single mother of three described the first attack:
“The windows got put through. The youngest boy, he was in his bedroom in his cot. It was beside the window and [now] there was glass all over his cot… All the men were all masked up in balaclavas and they were shouting [things] like ‘out you Fenian bastards’.”
That was May. Violence flared again only weeks ago, allegedly after a row at a children’s park. This time the UDA’s message was blunt: “no more deals, all Catholics out!” – and it came with threats of arson and death.
Four families have since abandoned their homes, and more are likely to follow. Outrageously, the PSNI told them to move, openly admitting they could not stop the UDA from torching their houses. And the establishment wonders why Catholic trust in the PSNI is collapsing…
Many of these families had waited years for housing. Now they are back to square one – homeless, terrorised, and abandoned.
Adding insult to injury, it also turns out that the loyalist gangster who authorised the attack “is connected to community groups that get government funding.” Outrageous, yes – but far from exceptional.
This is the reality: paramilitaries, intimidation, violence – and the institution of British rule not only failing to stop them, but actively financing and propping them up.
Impunity
Scandalous as it is, the Oldpark story is only one of many. There are dozens like it, but many never reach the press because victims in both communities fear reprisals and know the authorities will not intervene.
Just a few years ago, a similar story was broken by BBC Spotlight NI – the case of Lorna Campbell, assaulted and forced from her home after her son got into a brawl with a UDA member. The PSNI initially refused her protection – because the UDA had “assured” them she wasn’t under threat. Worse still, police tipped off the paramilitaries that she had sought help. Earlier this year, another Catholic family was forced out of North Belfast after a drive-by intimidation. The list of such attacks is endless.
An investigation led by The Detail found that between 2012 and 2015, 1,842 people were made homeless through intimidation, with over 70 percent of cases directly involving paramilitaries. The Belfast Telegraph found a shocking 2,000 such cases in the three-year period of 2015-2018.
More than 30 years since their so-called ‘ceasefire’, far from disappearing, loyalist paramilitaries have only tightened their grip. They are still recruiting, still armed, still running rackets worth hundreds of thousands of pounds every month. And it is in cases like Oldpark, where they act openly and with impunity, that their real power is laid bare.
At every major disturbance – Ballymena, the South Belfast riots last year, the 2021 Sea Border clashes, the Flag Protests of the past decade, and so on – loyalist gangs lurk in the background. And every time, from flags, to riots, pogroms and intimidations, we then have to witness the PSNI and the establishment arguing that we need to reason with them, often even pleading with them to restore calm.
And while the loyalist paramilitaries are treated with extreme ‘tact’, grandmothers get the heavy-handed treatment because of their support for Palestine, and nationalist youth face hard crack-downs.
In Oldpark as well, the initial reaction in May was for the Housing Association to strike a deal with the UDA, and when that failed, the PSNI simply put their hands up in the air and claimed they couldn’t do anything about it. Outrageously they even stated the involvement of paramilitaries can’t be confirmed – despite UDA flags popping up in the estate as the Catholics were forced to flee!
As Sinn Féin’s Gerry Kelly rightly remarked, there is an “avoidance” of blaming loyalist paramilitaries from the PSNI. In fact, the whole establishment treats them with kid gloves!
The fiend is out of control
There is no doubt that many in the PSNI sympathise or collude with loyalists. But that does not fully explain why the establishment treats them with kid gloves.
The problem is deeper – loyalist paramilitaries hold a grip on disaffected communities and use it to their advantage. As the Belfast Telegraph explained in the aftermath of the riots last summer:
“Rioting in east Belfast [is essentially] a funding application. There is now a substantial infrastructure of well-funded individuals who only have relevance if they can halt rioting.”
The point is that British imperialism has nurtured the monster of sectarianism for centuries. Combine that with the North’s deep, decades-long crisis, the deadlock of the Good Friday institutions, and increased sectarian and racist rhetoric from the British and Unionist establishment – you get a powder keg ready to detonate at a moment’s notice.
The power of the paramilitaries – themselves a result of these forces – comes from holding a match to that keg, threatening to ignite chaos.
The establishment response has been to avoid a clash and try and appease them with funds, grants, and jobs through so-called ‘charities’ and ‘community groups’. Supposedly, these charities then liaise with ‘the community’ and work towards ‘easing tensions’, etc.
In actual fact, these gangsters are terrorising communities, and pocketing the money under this hypocritical pretence on the tacit agreement that they won’t stir up too much trouble. They are literally cashing in fat cheques, at the taxpayers’ expense. And the result: they are getting stronger, not weaker.
While they are being bribed essentially to ‘shut up’, the anger in Protestant communities and the crisis of political unionism, throws the unionist politicians who wanted the loyalist paramilitaries out of politics into dependence on them. The tail ends up wagging the dog.
Indeed, with their grip on communities, they exert influence at election time through intimidation and voter fraud, and have also worked their way up the state’s institutions. To give one shocking example, ‘peace builder’ Winston Irvine – in reality a UVF commander – was even appointed to the North Belfast Policing and Community Safety Partnerships at some point! All of these are well known facts.
The irony is stark: these groups were consciously nurtured by the British and Unionist establishment for their own short-sighted, cynical interests. But once you hand a man a gun, he can use it for his own ends.
Now they are a permanent source of headaches, embarrassment, and instability for the ruling class. The fiend is out of control.
Transition has failed!
And yet all of this was supposed to be over in 1998. For more than two decades we’ve been told the same lie: decommissioning is nearly complete, disbandment is around the corner, transition is just one step away. And yet, still today, Catholic and migrant families from Oldpark are forced to flee under threat of a pogrom.
The guns remain, the loyalist gangs grow richer, and the violence continues. In the words of Lord Alderdice, former chair of the Independent Monitoring Commission:
“The transition process is not working. A halt should be called, and you can’t call a halt now sooner than today. There comes a point when you have to say no, this hasn’t been delivered. It’s not going to be delivered. And, actually, by continuing we are making it worse.”
British imperialism cannot get rid of the monsters it has created. On the contrary – as broken Britain lurches from one crisis to next, more fuel is thrown onto the fire in the North.
The Labour Party is preparing another round of austerity attacks on the working class. Reform has topped the opinion polls for months, with Farage even suggesting the UK withdraw from the ECHR and potentially “renegotiate the Good Friday Agreement”. Meanwhile, Jim Allister is now the most popular politician amongst Unionists – and by a country mile.
The whole shaky foundations of the Stormont institutions are threatened by the crisis of British capitalism. Inflammable material is only accumulating, providing even a stronger basis for the growth of paramilitarism amongst abandoned communities.
But alongside this, the crisis is increasingly radicalising workers and youth. 91 percent have no confidence in political parties. Many are desperately looking for an alternative they can’t currently find out there.
The duty of communists is to build that revolutionary alternative.
A revolution is needed to sweep away Stormont and the whole rotten edifice of capitalist rule in Ireland. Only in the process of that revolution can sectarianism – and its twin evil of loyalist paramilitarism – be destroyed once and for all.
