The way to put loyalist gangs out of business is to stop the cash

There is that no incentive for paramilitary groups to transition – in fact there is every reason to stay in business, writes Brian Feeney (for the Irish News).

Forty-odd years ago there used to be what were called ‘butter mountains’, ‘milk lakes’ and ‘wine lakes’. They were the result of the then EEC’s guaranteed prices for farmers. They overproduced, knowing they’d be recompensed.

Anyway, it wasn’t all bad because the butter mountain was sold off at knockdown prices in supermarkets and in some cases distributed freely to pensioners and other people who met certain criteria.

Here, various charities and community groups were allocated butter to distribute. So naturally various organisations like the Salvation Army, St Vincent de Paul and the UDA were called into service.

The UDA, what? Seriously?

Nationalists were aghast. After all, the UDA had already killed hundreds of Catholics, sometimes without even using their murder gang nom de guerre, the non-existent UFF. (Where was the UFF compound in Long Kesh?)

The inclusion of the UDA in distributing the EEC’s surplus butter confirmed the government and security forces’ ambivalent attitude to loyalist terrorists.

From early days the British army engaged with the UDA, allowed them to mount road checks and march around the streets of central Belfast masked in motley army surplus.

Documents from the National Archives show the army and NIO were well aware of the large proportion of UDA and smaller number of UVF in the UDR, the free access of UDA men to army barracks, and routine swapping of intelligence. Finally admitting the UDA was primarily engaged in terrorism, but only after they’d killed about 400 people, the NIO proscribed the UDA in 1992.

Collusion and tolerance of the UVF was less obvious, but everyone knew who the leader was throughout most of the Troubles and where he lived in the Shankill.

His home was never raided, nor were the homes of the UVF brigade staff, all of whom were known to RUC and army. Indeed some of the brigade staff were invited to the Belfast mayor’s parlour for drinks after council meetings, depending who the unionist mayor was.

Given all that (and there’s a lot more), you can see how difficult it is for unionist politicians to accept that nominally illegal (when’s the last time anyone was convicted of membership?) loyalist terrorist gangs are social pariahs who should be cast into exterior darkness.

Tolerance remains a sentiment, even though they’ve degenerated into a foul incubus on the poorest loyalist districts.

Still, it beggars belief that DUP ministers in the toy-town assembly sit down with representatives of the very people who are responsible for the continued impoverishment of loyalist society.

It is beyond bizarre that ministers discuss with these guys (they’re always guys) social and economic development in the very districts whose social and economic development the men these guys represent are blocking.

It’s their protection rackets, drug dealing, loan sharking and more, which have driven businesses and residents out of districts. The guys the LCC represent are responsible for the poverty and dereliction.

All the talk about ‘transition’ is hot air. There are now more adherents to loyalist gangs than there were when the British government set up its useless Independent Reporting Commission on paramilitaries. It’s a waste of money and time and should be disbanded.

The fact is that there is no incentive to transition, much less for gang bosses to declare the organisations are going out of business. On the contrary, there is every reason to stay in business, legitimate and otherwise, because, astonishingly, for decades the NIO principally – but also the Irish government and scandalously Stormont – pay these groups to behave themselves and thereby reinforce their position in loyalist society.

The flawed policy began 40 years ago in the naive belief that you could create in loyalist districts the equivalent of Sinn Féin in republican districts. Just plain wrong.

Loyalists don’t vote for fronts for paramilitaries. Actually, when they stood for election not even their own members voted for them. Surely 40 years of failure prove beyond peradventure that it’s a failed strategy that perpetuates the ruin of loyalist districts.

The only strategy that can succeed is to take their money away. Unfortunately, Sinn Féin have been fully paid-up participants in bankrolling the groups through the disgraceful Social Investment Fund they and the DUP ran at Stormont.

Audit reports uncovered “significant failings” and “major flaws” in the way money was allocated and accounted but repeatedly Sinn Féin and the DUP rejected any attempts at reform.

Sinn Féin represents communities. People in those communities vote for them. Loyalists don’t represent anyone. No-one votes for them, the cause of their misfortune.

The only way to get rid of them is to take their money away, but as long as the NIO and Irish government fund them and Sinn Féin and the DUP conspire to share out their slush funds, they keep loyalist gangs in business.

Urgent Appeal