The Irish and British governments are primed to engage in a calculated gamble to persuade the loyalist and dissident republican paramilitaries to clear the stage.
Some people are sceptical.
In the coming parliamentary period Dublin and London are due to authorise the appointment of a special interlocutor who will engage with loyalist paramilitaries such as the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), its smaller offshoot the Red Hand Commando, and the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) to ascertain whether they will agree to some form of disbandment.
Over a period, possibly of nine months to a year, the interlocutor also will seek a similar response from the armed dissident groups.
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The governments are embarking on this project with considerable and understandable trepidation because they have been burnt in the past and, some well-placed figures are convinced, they will be burned again.
Few places do irony better than Northern Ireland. One of the so-called “poster boys” for this long-running process of “transition and transformation” was Winston “Winkie” Irvine. Despite a very serious high-ranking UVF pedigree Dublin and London invested heavily in Irvine as a figure who could help lead the loyalist paramilitaries away from criminality and community control into something like an old soldiers’ retirement network or such like.
The Department of Foreign Affairs went so far as to finance Irvine in taking a master’s in international peacebuilding at university in Maynooth. Irvine, however, on the actual day of his conferring, instead appeared in court charged with firearms possession – ultimately earning a 2½-year stretch, 15 months in prison and 15 months free on licence.
Adding insult to injury from Dublin’s point of view, the weapons discovery was linked to the UVF planting a hoax bomb at an event the then minister for foreign affairs, Simon Coveney, was attending in north Belfast in March 2022.
It reflected what the Irish Government must have viewed as a staggering level of ingratitude by Irvine and his cohorts, considering the millions of pounds and the time and effort it has expended trying to assist this “transition”.
The former Alliance leader Lord (John) Alderdice wasn’t surprised by this lack of appreciation.
He told the BBC’s Spotlight programme, “I have heard it all before, time and again. There is always going to be this big development. It has never happened.
“What I have seen is more talking about transition and transformation and no doubt with an invoice provided for how much money is needed to be made available for public services in order to pay off these people ... There comes a point where you have to say, no, this has not been delivered,”
This mention of the “invoice” is a jaundiced reference to the tens of millions of pounds the two governments, the European Union and bodies such as the International Fund for Ireland have pumped into loyalist communities in particular. The large suspicion is that a considerable portion of this largesse ended up in the pockets of the paramilitaries.
There is no definitive figure but one recent security assessment has the loyalist paramilitaries comprising an estimated 12,500 members, about 7,500 in the UVF and 5,000 in the UDA. Most are not active but retain membership.
During the Troubles the UVF and Red Hand Commando were responsible for more than 550 killings, the UDA for more than 400, with thousands more maimed, wounded and bereaved by their actions.
The UDA still operates a loose system of “brigadiers” running areas such as west and north Belfast although the UDA in southeast Antrim has broken away from the main organisation.
The group’s most influential leader is Jackie McDonald from south Belfast, who told The Irish Times recently that if the loyalist paramilitaries left “the stage at 12 o’clock tonight, at five past 12 there’d be the new UDA, or another version of the UVF or Red Hand [Commando]”.
The UVF has a more centralised militarised structure with one overall leader, who is now quite elderly and, some sources say, is trying to find a way to retire without causing major ruptures.
The organisation still yields considerable clout. Two years ago it forced a leader in east Belfast who had developed a notorious reputation to stand down.
In June 2024 in response to some resistance to that decision the UVF staged a show of strength with about 1,500 people turned out in white shirts, dark ties and black trousers lined up along the Newtownards Road in east Belfast for a memorial event. This quasi-paramilitary display was interpreted as a clear message to the displaced UVF leader to mind his manners.
The Northern edition of the Sunday World and the Belfast-based Sunday Life carry regular stories about the alleged high-life exploits of some of the loyalist paramilitaries and of their criminal activities, to such an extent that its journalists have been threatened from time to time.
The two main dissident groups are the New IRA formed in 2012 – an amalgamation of the Real IRA, Republican Action Against Drugs and dissident republicans operating more independently – and the Continuity IRA.
The New IRA is estimated to have a hardline support of about 500 people, with some 100 of them regarded as prepared to carry out paramilitary attacks. Members are based mainly in Derry, Strabane and Belfast. The Continuity IRA, which split into different factions, is viewed as a lesser threat.
Since 1998 the dissidents are believed to have been involved in about 50 killings. These include the 1998 Real IRA Omagh bombing in which 29 people were killed, including a woman heavily pregnant with twin girls, and the killings of two British soldiers, two prison officers and two PSNI officers. Killings also include the shootings of alleged drug dealers and deaths from internal feuding.
Security sources are adamant that many paramilitaries are deeply involved in crimes such as drug dealing, extortion, other forms of racketeering and prostitution, and that they command sinister control over many working-class communities.
In 2017 the Paramilitary Crime Task Force was established comprising the PSNI, the British National Crime Agency and Revenue and Customs. Since then it has recovered drugs valued at £8.5 million, seized 431 weapons and more than £1.2 million (€1.4 million) in cash and charged or reported for prosecution 569 people.
It is against this inauspicious backdrop that the two governments are due in the next parliamentary term to appoint the interlocutor. The governments and the Independent Reporting Commission (IRC), which has been pushing the idea of an interlocutor, are not unmindful of the degree of disbelief around loyalism pledging another grand transition, or about the dissidents downing arms.
The central argument of the IRC, whose remit is to “monitor progress on tackling paramilitary activity in Northern Ireland”, is that for the first time this “creates a process” where those wishing to eschew paramilitarism have somewhere to go.
One IRC source said that no one was naive enough to believe that the interlocutor could persuade all paramilitaries to quit their activities but they could be partially and even substantially successful in assisting a significant degree of buy-in by the armed groups. And that also is the view from Dublin and London.
“If you took 60-70 per cent of structures and membership out of business that would be worthwhile,” said one senior source.
“The British and Irish governments believe it is worth exploring whether direct engagement could see voluntary action by these groups to remove themselves from the picture, even with all the cynicism and questions around that,” he said.
The view was that this is a “useful and modest” thing to do.
“We are talking about transition to disbandment. We are not talking about some endless circular process with people pretending to be exercising positive leadership while riding two horses.”
And as regards John Alderdice’s prediction that any move from the paramilitaries would have a large invoice attached, the source did not rule out some form of financial carrot – but not for the paramilitaries.
“This does not involve payments to individuals and groups but it involves us being clear, that if you do what you say you are doing, people from a loyalist background and a republican background are not excluded from participating in their community,” the source said.
What the interlocutor, the governments and the IRC are hoping to achieve, said the source, was “ending recruitment, allowing people to leave these groups without fear of reprisal, co-operation in ending criminal activity, drug dealing, coercive control and sexual activity”.
Despite the cynicism they believe it is an experiment worth testing.
