PUBLIC SUPPORT for dissident republican groups has been underestimated, research has concluded.
Some 14 per cent of nationalists have expressed sympathy for the reasons behind dissident violence which has reached new threat levels in Northern Ireland and Britain.
Prof Jonathan Tonge of Liverpool, an established author on Irish affairs, is to present his findings in a paper at Queen’s University in Belfast this morning.
The research was carried out across all 18 Northern Ireland constituencies in the wake of the Westminster election in May by Market Research Northern Ireland and supported by the Economic and Social Research Council.
Respondents were asked: “Do you have sympathy for the reasons why some republican groups (such as the Real IRA and Continuity IRA) continue to use violence?”
Speaking to The Irish Times yesterday, Prof Tonge said: “Some 8.2 per cent of the 1,002 respondents said they did have sympathy. This figure translates into 14.2 per cent of those respondents identifying themselves as nationalists.” However, he added: “This doesn’t mean there is unequivocal support. It’s important to put in that caveat.”
Pointing to supporting data, Prof Tonge said that of all respondents 7.8 per cent said they either liked or strongly liked Republican Sinn Féin while 3.8 per cent liked or strongly liked the 32-County Sovereignty Movement.
Both organisations oppose the new political and policing institutions.
“When you break it down, this support is coming from young males under 35 – it quite clearly comes out in the data,” he said.
“This is where you find the concentration of support. They have no memory of violence, plus we are in an economic downturn.” Prof Tonge’s research also found that of nationalist respondents only, some 7 per cent opposed the PSNI, while a further 18 per cent of nationalists found little difference between the new police service and the former RUC which was superseded in 2001.
“The starkest finding was that Catholics do not see the dissidents as a threat,” he said.
“Only 14 per cent of them see them as a major threat, whereas 53 per cent of Protestants do see dissidents as a major threat. Now that, to me, is much more interesting because three times as many Protestants [as Catholics] feel they are being targeted even though Catholic police officers have been targets. That is perhaps a more startling finding.” He said he would have expected dissident support levels of 2 or 3 per cent among respondents.
“They were distinctly asked this in face-to-face interviews,” he said. “It is one thing having bravado in an anonymous questionnaire survey, but these were face-to-face.”
He said the survey was designed to test the commonly expressed assumption that 99.9 per cent of people did not support dissident republican opposition to the new Stormont institutions and the PSNI. “That is why we put the questions in. We were surprised [at the results].”
He said it was untrue to say dissident groupings have no support at all.
“What they have is small-scale support. They are still politically isolated. Their support is not quite negligible, we can say that. They have probably sufficient support to continue to function in some form.
“If you are going to try to counter these groups, the narrative has to be about the futility of it all, perhaps a little less about the level of support.
“They have very little support but the narrative might have to shift slightly to [asking]: what is this going to achieve?”