The fuss about the UVF and the LVF talking about going out of business was interesting, even if not very credible. Any changes in these organisations, or the UDA and Red Hand, are simply a matter of an adjustment of British armed forces in Ireland.
All these organisations are part of British forces, some set up by the London adminstration, some set up locally and infiltrated by London's local agents. So what is really happening when UVF and LVF and UDA and Uncle Tom Cobbley all say they are disbanding or disarming or disappearing or dismantling?
Well, after the republicans decided they do not need war any more London administrators have decided they do not need some of their one-time local allies any more. So they are trying to get back to the situation where armed force is seen to be in their official rather than their unofficial hands. To do this they have to do a certain amount of cleaning up of their official armed forces – hence the adjustment of the RIR and UDR and suchlike, they have been diluting these, getting them into the general military mix, maybe getting them off to Afghanistan or somewhere.
(Remember what they did with the old UVF when it had served its purpose in Ireland? They were sent off to the Somme).
They are also trying to persuade their unofficial armed forces to declare a cessation – hence the persuasive words to the UVF etc and the words of praise when they obey orders. And any killing initiatives within official or unofficial armed forces will be discouraged rather than encouraged as they were in the bad old days. The days of yore are going by and such adjustments have to be made.
Interesting how they use language in all this. Republicans and nationalists are ordered to change and are punished even when they do; London's supporters, the UVF, LVF, UDA, Red Hand etc, are asked to change and whether they change or not are praised by church and state and promised money by the sackful.
Throughout all this carefully staged and scripted affair one has to remember that London's Irish supporters remain armed to the teeth. What London is doing is reducing the effectiveness of one layer of its armed opposition to the republicans. From now on it will rely more on its official armed forces, the police and their army, including their various secret forces.
How many of the thousands of unofficial guns held by the London's supporters will be allowed to stay in their hands remains to be seen. Guns in loyalist hands are harmless if they say they are; guns in anybody else's hands are deadly no matter what they say. That is the official attitude.
It is a measure of the self-confidence of republicans and nationalists that they know they can face all these people without war. For them war is a last resort, for London and such governments it has always been a first resort. It takes a lot of self-confidence to be able to look London's people in the eye and say, you need guns, we don't.
Faced with such self-confidence the best the London administration is prepared to do is reduce the armaments of its official and unofficial forces. That is the process in train at the moment.
The way public speakers are using language about all this is interesting. When those who oppose London's policies have to do anything, they are threatened, they are told that there will be prison, fines, loss of jobs, refusal of jobs, and, as one of the major unionist representatives put it, "fires which will take a long time to put out". And all this soon becomes the language of ordinary political and even church life.
But when London's supporters are required to do something, they are asked, it is recommended that they should do it. And when they make the slightest move towards decent behaviour church and state and business world unite to praise them, to say how courageous they are, how much they are contributing to the peace of the community. There is even talk – or at least there used to be until people realised the sheer waste and indolence of the regime that is just passing out in the northeast – of the "work ethic". The work ethic, if you please. Of a regime which laid waste the economy of Ireland's northeast by sheer indolence and inefficiency!
Oppressive regimes go through phases. They deny they ever did anything wrong. They say that if they ever did anything wrong everybody did the same. And they say whatever they did, it was the right thing to do. And anyway other people did it too, and those whom they oppressed did it most of all.
At present we are watching people of the old passing unionist regime going through denial of this kind. They are denying they ever did anything wrong and those who say they did do anything wrong are whingers, liars, simpletons or fascists.
That phase will pass but it will pass only after we have set up strong laws to stop oppressiveness, efficient policing to enforce them and competent courts to judge and, if necessary, penalise those who break them. After that comes persuasion to be civil.
At this moment in our political history in Ireland's northeast the passing regime realises very well what it did. The trouble is that it still believes it was all right to do it.
And that attitude is going to take some education to mend.
