This short extract is from the sixth and final chapter (In Conclusions) from the upcoming e-book by Vicky Cosstick entitled Don’t Mention the War: Exploring Aspects of the Legacy of the Northern Ireland Troubles. This e-book will be launched in Belfast on Monday 4 February – you can register to attend via the Eventbrite page here. 

Where sections of the passage end somewhat abruptly, please keep in mind that this is only part of the chapter. The full version of the e-book can be ordered in advance of publication from Amazon here and will be published on 4 February. Other articles from Vicky Cosstick on Northern Slant can be found here.

The previous five serialisations published on Northern Slant are listed (with links) below:

Chapter 1: There are in NI two distinct realities, two parallel universes.

Chapter 2: The impact of the Troubles on women’s experience and equality.

Chapter 3: The reality and consequences of trauma in Northern Ireland.

Chapter 4: The Good Friday Agreement: A flawed and incomplete process.

Chapter 5: What is the role of the media in post-conflict Northern Ireland?

Vicky’s work encompasses research and essays about the legacy of the conflict in Northern Ireland on the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement, working with artist Rita Duffy and supported by Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust funding.

Northern Slant welcomes perspectives from authors of different backgrounds and political persuasions – the opinions shared in this publication belong entirely to the author and not Northern Slant.

 

In Anna Burns’s gripping, chilling 2018 Booker prize winning novel, the eponymous Milkman is the embodiment of toxic masculinity and coercive control in what is instantly recognisable as 1970s Belfast. In the “totalitarian run enclave” she describes, the paramilitaries are, like everyone else, dependent on the approval of the “community”, a sinister Greek chorus that echoes the refrains of violence, threat and menace. This brilliant, forensic pen portrait of the complex and all-pervasive dynamics of power and gender which allowed paramilitary dominance to thrive during the Troubles, reveals women at the same time victims and mediators of social control: the mother, sisters and best friend of the central character, an eighteen-year-old girl; the local gossips and “groupies” of the paramilitaries. In Notes of a Native Son, James Baldwin, writing in 1955 of the African American experience, wrote: “It must be remembered that the oppressed and oppressor are bound together within the same society; they accept the same criteria, they share the same beliefs, they both alike depend on the same reality.”

Here we are, twenty years after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, and significant vestiges of that oppressive, paramilitary dominated culture remain in certain areas of Northern Ireland. During 2016-17, there were 94 victims of paramilitary-style shootings 286 people were intimidated out of their home. Paramilitary crime and social control, or organised crime masquerading behind one or other sectarian banner, persists and was identified by the Fresh Start Agreement of 2015 as a priority. Ten million pounds has since been invested in “Tackling Paramilitarism”, a five-year programme, now going into its third year, which attempts to promote a culture of lawfulness, coordinate public awareness campaigns and offer development programmes for young people and women. It calls for policing and criminal justice reforms and promotes educational and health initiatives among a raft of 38 measures to tackle the insidious and self-reinforcing cycles of paramilitarism and deprivation in Northern Ireland.

The complexity of the problem, acknowledged by the 2016 report and brought to technicolour life by the novel Milkman, is acknowledged by programme leaders. Detective Superintendent Bobby Singleton, who leads the Paramilitary Crime Task Force, established by the Tackling Paramilitarism programme, notes that 35% of those surveyed in affected communities have stated their support for the paramilitaries, and that these communities are also those with highest levels of deprivation, educational disadvantage, levels of poor health and disability. Work to address paramilitarism has been ongoing, he says, and the extra funding allows the PSNI to sharpen its focus. There are already, he believes, enough police on the streets and “we are confident we are not going to arrest our way out of paramilitarism.” If deprivation is a root cause, then any individuals removed from neighbourhoods will soon be replaced. Singleton affirms the value of the multi-faceted approach of the Tackling Paramilitarism programme. Part of the solution lies with communities themselves, he stresses. Police need to understand the importance of listening to communities, and communities in turn need to engage more with police [conversation with author].

 

Signs of hope – and suspended animation

There are signs of hope and constructive change. A Citizens’ Assembly was held during two weekends in November 2018, with expert presentations and professional facilitation. Attended by 77 out of the 80 invited, and representative of the Northern Ireland population by gender, age, class and community identification, the assembly explored the future of social care for the elderly in Northern Ireland. They generated three high-level resolutions on transformation, funding, and political leadership of social care and 27 recommendations to be presented to the Department of Health. The final report from the Assembly is due to be published in January 2019.

Jamie Pow, a member of the Advisory Group for the Assembly, and an assistant editor of Northern Slant, commented after the conclusion of the Assembly: “When people are presented with a wide range of information and discussing complex policy issues with strangers, they are more than capable of having respectful, constructive conversations with one another. They may reach different conclusions, but they come to understand the views of others – and themselves – much better.” The sheer volume of recommendations illustrated the level of energy and engagement with the topic, he added. One was passed unanimously. “Imagine that: gathering a cross-section of Northern Ireland into one room and them being able to unanimously reach agreement on one of the biggest policy challenges facing our society.”

Hope has also been widely expressed in the Programme for Government generated by the last Executive, prior to the collapse of the Assembly. It has offered a programme of work on which political parties were willing to agree, and which was proudly outcome-based – motivating and incentivising departments and agencies to work together to deliver “well-being” for the citizens of Northern Ireland. Whether the programme adequately recognises and addresses the widespread legacies of a post-conflict society, or whether it is based on systemic denial and avoidance of the issues to be faced remains a moot point.

This is an extraordinarily difficult moment for Northern Ireland. We await with bated breath the report next spring on the RHI public inquiry, and the results of the public consultation on the proposed mechanisms for Dealing with the Past. Brexit, with its massive implications for Northern Ireland, has indeed come to dominate the public debate and consciousness, elbowing everything else to one side.

 

A failure of leadership and vision

I have argued on the basis of my research that there is still a very significant level of post-conflict trauma, even 20 years after the peace agreement was signed. That trauma persists because it was never addressed during 30 years of conflict – indeed, there was virtually no official attempt to recognise or acknowledge that trauma, only a patchy and inadequate response over the last 20 years. Like an iceberg, much of the impact of the trauma remains invisible and unresearched and is being transmitted unchecked down through the generations.

That trauma is a systemic phenomenon, affecting the working of all institutional infrastructure of Northern Irish society: media, politics, delivery of government services, operation of policy and justice, education and academia. These institutional mechanisms are those which, according to Jeffrey Alexander, as I have argued in Chapter 3, should and could be enabling a society to process and move through its trauma, but are themselves ensnared and made impotent by the web of trauma.

One symptom is the repetitive, insular, public discourse dominated by sectarian concerns in which in opinion pieces, on television and radio talk shows, on panels at conferences and on social media, the same politicians, presenters, academics, members of the public, and heads of public agencies, mostly male, say the same things over and over again. If you want to change the organisation, says Patricia Shaw, you need to change the conversation. There is a particular quality of conversation and dialogue which stimulates and promotes change in individuals and groups, and then there is just talk. Northern Ireland is full of talk but rarely the kind of conversation in which hearts and minds are changed.

In his new book about victims of conflict in South Africa, Sri Lanka and Northern Ireland (2018), Professor John Brewer argues that first generation victims are “moral beacons” because of their ability to show forgiveness, generosity and reconciliation. Based on my own experience of listening to victims, I would echo his insight. It seems to me that they often, out of necessity to survive or the desire to transcend their trauma, undergo a deep personal transformation which allows them to leave behind anger blame and vengeance.

At the launch of John Brewer’s book, journalist Brian Rowan lamented the politicisation of victimhood in Northern Ireland, which, it can be argued, prevents victims from moving through this transformational journey. Just as, at a societal level, the transformation process towards reconciliation can be inhibited by the politicisation of the peace process, so can it also be inhibited for individual victims and survivors when their experience is hijacked for political and sectarian purposes.

 

The vulnerability of unionism

At the same time, I argue that extreme elements of unionism – Jim Allister, who left the DUP over power-sharing to form the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV), and the DUP, who did not sign the GFA – have repeatedly undermined the peace process by blocking the Eames Bradley process and the redevelopment of the Maze site, and by crashing the talks process in February 2018. Extreme elements of unionism are particularly alert to symbolic gestures on reconciliation, and it is those symbolic gestures which are so urgently needed. The DUP commitment to power-sharing has, it seems, progressively weakened from Ian Paisley Senior through Peter Robinson to Arlene Foster. Brexit has given the DUP motive, means and opportunity to further block the peace process and progress in Northern Ireland.

On Northern Slant, recently, I said that the DUP are simultaneously turkeys voting for Christmas, ostriches with their heads in the sand, and King Canute holding back the tides of change. Northern Ireland as a whole, including many unionists, does not want Brexit, which is understood to be deeply contrary to their economic interests, and are more, not less likely, to vote for a re-united Ireland in the event of a reinstated border. The DUP is acting against the interests and wishes of the people of the region it represents and against its own interests.