The leaders of the United Kingdom and Ireland withdrew after three days of talks on the devolution — or transfer — of power to Northern Ireland and flew back to their respective capitals on Jan. 28. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, in collaboration with Irish leader Brian Cowen, said the parties that controlled the Belfast government — the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Sinn Fein — must agree on a settlement of the judicial- and police-powers issue by Jan. 29, or the United Kingdom and Ireland will "publish their own proposals." This political uncertainty comes as Irish Republican Army (IRA) militants are beginning to use improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in escalating attacks against police in Northern Ireland, where more violence could flare in the run-up to the United Kingdom's general elections that likely will be held in May.
Sources of Tension
The political conflict in Northern Ireland, a province of the United Kingdom, is one of the longest lasting in the West, pitting Irish Catholics against Irish Protestants. The Protestants are generally in favor of continued union with the United Kingdom, while most of the Catholics want union with the Republic of Ireland, or at the very least a robust and real autonomy from London. The conflict has spawned one of the most lethal militant groups in the West, the IRA, which has drawn recruits from both neighboring Ireland and Northern Ireland and which fought a violent campaign against London's rule from the 1960s until the 1990s. The conflict tentatively ended in 1998 with the U.S.- negotiated Good Friday Agreement.
Today, the issue at hand involves transferring judicial and police powers — a critical point in the Good Friday Agreement and still a touchy subject in Northern Ireland — from London to the local Belfast government. Catholic Sinn Fein supports the deal, while the Protestant DUP — in favor of a continued strong union with the mainland United Kingdom — does not. Unionist DUP is uncomfortable with the idea of transferring police powers from London to what it believes are ex-terrorists (or their associates in the IRA) on the Catholic side of the Irish divide.
Furthermore, Protestant unionists also want, as part of the power-transfer deal, restrictions lifted on controversial parades by the Orange Order, a hard-line Protestant fraternal organization. Orange Order processions have caused widespread rioting when the parades are blocked from passing through Catholic neighborhoods. The parade routes and scheduling are at the moment controlled by the British government in London. Tensions in Northern Ireland have increased since the end of 2008 in part because of the global economic crisis. The recession has hit both neighboring Ireland and the United Kingdom hard, and the effects also are being felt in the already economically depressed Northern Ireland. The latest figures from Northern Ireland show that there were 50 percent more people claiming a "jobseeker's allowance" in 2009 than in 2008, although the unemployment rate itself is at a manageable 6.8 percent. The fear, however, is that things could get much worse in Northern Ireland very quickly. Around 32 percent of the workforce is employed in the public sector and depends on 16 billion pounds ($25.6 billion) worth of transfer payments from London each year.
This dependency on London is the result, in part, of the United Kingdom's attempt to pump enough cash into the province, and provide enough jobs, for sectarian tensions to abate. But with the United Kingdom dealing with a ballooning budget deficit, projected to hit nearly 13 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2010, the government already had decided to cut 370 million pounds ($592.2 million) worth of funding for Northern Ireland in 2009 — a figure that could very well grow as London gets serious about budget cuts in 2010. Now, on top of the general economic malaise and uncertainty over jobs, the process of transferring power from the United Kingdom to Northern Ireland is raising tensions even more. The Catholic Sinn Fein and the Protestant DUP have been in an uneasy governing coalition alliance since 2007, but Sinn Fein is now threatening to pull the plug on the government if the DUP continues to block devolution.
Both the United Kingdom and Ireland are in favor of the deal, in part to prevent tensions from boiling over, and Brown and Cowen descended on Belfast to try to get the two Northern Irish sides to make a deal. However, the DUP has resisted negotiations, in part because Brown's main challenger in the upcoming British general elections, David Cameron of the Conservative Party, is publicly supporting the unionist position (the general elections are not yet officially scheduled, though rumor has it they will be held in May, when local elections take place). Cameron recently brought together different unionist parties in Northern Ireland for a controversial coordination meeting in the United Kingdom and has made a deal to field joint candidates with the Ulster Unionist Party, also Protestant and pro-union, for Northern Ireland’s 18 parliamentary seats. The Protestant unionists are calculating that if they stall on the devolution issue until the general elections in May, they may be dealing with a different government in London, one that is sympathetic to the unionist position.
Possible Implications
As the May general elections (possibly) approach, we would expect tensions to rise in Northern Ireland. The election of conservatives to power in London could provide even more of a spark for a festering militancy already engaged in violent attacks in Northern Ireland. IRA factions have remained active since the killing of two British servicemen and a Northern Ireland police officer in March 2009. The more violent of the factions, the Real IRA, has claimed responsibility for the shootings and is being investigated for involvement in several near fatal bombings targeting local police and their friends and family since the March 2009 shootings. The most high profile of these attacks was the detonation of an IED attached beneath the car of Peadar Heffron, a prominent police officer, on Jan. 8. Heffron survived but lost his right leg in the explosion.
Following the March 2009 shootings, police security increased dramatically, making shootings more difficult to pull off. This is likely the reason militants are starting to use IEDs, which can be deadly without anyone having to directly engage the target. At this point, it is unclear if the bombmakers intentionally designed the devices to be small enough to maim but not kill, or if they are still experimenting with the devices. In the past decade, the Real IRA has only rarely used deadly force. IRA factions have to walk a fine line between engaging in violence in the region to further their goals and drawing too much attention to themselves because of the violence. The IRA suffered a considerable setback following the 1998 Omagh bombing that killed 29 people, and more indiscriminate killing would likely congeal opposition to the group.
The Real IRA has attempted to detonate several large IEDs (each over 200 pounds) in the past year, but none has been successful. The use of small, well-placed devices allows militants to target specific individuals, and restricting damage to targets linked to the police is meant to undermine confidence in the force (from both civilians and within the ranks) without triggering massive retaliation.
The bottom line is that Northern Ireland's peace accord — the Good Friday Agreement — was possible because of London's willingness, under Labor Prime Minister Tony Blair, to both devolve power to Northern Ireland and to entertain negotiations with all sides. Conservative Cameron is not seen as a friend of devolution, and Scottish nationalists enjoying an independent Scottish Parliament and Catholic nationalists in Northern Ireland are both looking with suspicion at the possibility of a Conservative British government. The fact that Cameron's Conservative Party also has an electoral deal with the unionists and is actively coordinating unionist strategies also will be seen as a definitive shift away from London's impartiality toward Northern Ireland. This could give militant groups in Northern Ireland a reason to take up arms against the unionists and British security personnel in the province.
