Republican News · Thursday 15 August 2002

Blood on Trimble's hands

We often think of ourselves in Ireland as far removed from these regimes, but the Six Counties is no different. The use of UDA terror as a counter-insurgency tactic to do Britain's dirty work has been the subject in recent times of well-publicised investigations into individual killings, but the effects of all this on wider society have not been adequately scrutinised.

The culture of fascism, drug dealing, steroid-pumped strongmen and sectarian hate that British Intelligence has encouraged, could be seen in the motivation of the North Belfast Commander of the UDA, as expressed in his interview with the Guardian this week. The 25-year-old, of Egyptian and Irish parentage, said "it was a macho thing when I was hanging about with friends who were also getting involved".

'Machismo', for the thugs of the UDA, means terrorising families from their homes with pipe bombs, shootings and orchestrated riots. Their version of manliness means attacking the vulnerable in other communities, and profiting from the drug addiction of the vulnerable in their own.

What makes all this far worse is that the UDA is not some marginalised, micro-organisation, as their lack of electoral success might suggest, but a ballooning gang of thousands of members, directed by the Crown forces and allowed to do what they like by an impervious British Secretary of State.

Worse again is the fact that David Trimble is, consciously or unconsciously, surrendering the leadership of unionism to its thuggish political dregs. Despite the unsettling growth of sectarianism in unionist communities since the signing of the Agreement, and seemingly oblivious to the daily and nightly outrages conducted by the UDA, David Trimble has marked out a different agenda.

Ignoring the reality of what is actually happening, he prefers, without rhyme or reason, to threaten to sink the institutions because of alleged and elusive IRA activity.

When David Trimble jeopardises the peace process to play inter-unionist power games, he opens the door for the UDA to embrace further violence. This means that Catholic Chris Whitson, who died on Monday night, ten days after being attacked for his religion outside a nightclub in Portrush, will not be the last victim of Britain's dirty war in Ireland.