Northern Ireland (merged thread)

[Red Rat]

Generally UK Police forces prefer to contain public order situations, preventing damage to property and minimising risk to life. They prefer a longer term solution which sees them contain the situation and then with things have died down they go in days and weeks later and arrest those involved using evidence they have gathered during the riots.

In the old days when the army supported the RUC we were often deployed to knock heads if things did get bad, allowing the RUC to keep their hands unsullied and mend fences later (Many a happy summer spent with the jocks skulking with intent in support of the RUC!). But again, there had to be risk to life or property for us to get involved. Where I was based (Londonderry) we just used to bottle them up in the 'Bogside' and let them vent there. They would throw petrol bombs we would fire baton rounds. We would go in to disperse only if they were trying to get into the city centre for pillage or trying to cross sectarian divides for pillage, arson and rape.

What is more ominous is this, reported in the Daily Telegraph:

It was a brief verbal exchange that spoke volumes. By a burned-out car that still smouldered, its blackened bonnet strewn with broken bottles that the night before had been fashioned into lethal Molotov cocktails and hurled at police officers, the pair stood face to face, only inches apart. One, grey-haired and balding, 6ft 4in with a distinctly age-stooped gait, folded his arms across his chest and narrowed his eyes in a flinty glare. The other, a swaggering teenager in a hoodie, his face swathed in a Manchester United scarf to conceal his identity, stared straight back. "Shove off, old man," he said mockingly. "Sure, you sold out your community. Just so that the likes of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness could parade about in posh suits and sit up in Stormont. What do they care about the Ardoyne now? You lot don't speak for us any more. Why don't you just f––– off.''

It wasn't the response the older man, Bobby Storey, had expected. Nor the reaction to which he was accustomed. Storey, a veteran IRA man, a legendary godfather of terror in the nationalist heartland of north Belfast, is not a man many would challenge.

Known in paramilitary parlance as "The Enforcer", Storey served 18 years for gun attacks on the Army. In 1983 he was among 38 Provisionals who escaped from Northern Ireland's Maze prison – the largest jailbreak in British history. Maudlin republican ballads eulogise his terrorist exploits, and his portrait glares down from the gable walls of republican west Belfast.

In short, among the nationalist community, when Bobby Storey, in his trademark low, menacing voice, says jump, the required response is: "How high?"

Here, however, in the riot-scarred streets of Ardoyne, the young pretender in his hoodie and mask was far from intimidated. All week he had led locals, some as young as eight, in pitched battles against the police – hurling stones, bricks and home-made grenades.

Bristling with bravado, he jabbed a stubby finger into Storey's chest and told him: "We rule our own roost here, Storey. Back off. Nobody cares what you think."

This was not just the common confrontation of age and youth one witnesses in Northern Ireland's tribal sectarian strongholds. Instead this was the IRA's dissident offspring telling the veteran forefathers of Northern Ireland's Troubles that they no longer commanded respect. That their word was no longer law. That the day to which Sinn Féin's time-honoured slogan, Tiocfaidh ár lá ("Our day will come") refers had been and gone – and a new generation are preparing to have theirs.

Today, the republican men of violence who orchestrated the terror campaign that punctuated the Seventies and Eighties are respected ministers and MLAs (Members of the Legislative Assembly) in the Province's fledgling government. The men of war now speak the language of peace. Except the dissidents are not listening. And it is the shadowy "new-style" IRA who have whipped up passions among disaffected youngsters in north Belfast, where unemployment is still high and allegiances to a 32-county united Ireland are still an impassioned aim.

Leaders from the Real and Continuity IRA run regular training camps in counties Louth and Monaghan in Eire, where a new generation of terrorists eagerly learn the lessons and logistics of terrorism. As one senior security source points out: "We know the IRA dissidents are plotting a major bombing campaign to derail the peace process. And to do that they need to win over hearts and minds in the nationalist community. So they've come into Ardoyne to ferment unrest and dissent.

"Intelligence chiefs have warned ministers that splinter groups like the Real and Continuity IRA are on the verge of a wave of killings. We believe a new generation of republican fanatics are planning a campaign. The hardcore are in their twenties and they are building bombs from designs pioneered by the PIRA. Recent bombings, like the bridge at Cullyhanna, show they are overcoming their technical problems with detonators. Our big fear is an attempt to emulate the 1984 Brighton bomb attack. And those preparing for the Conservative conference in Birmingham in October have factored the threat into their security preparations."

Link:www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/northernireland/7896588/Sinn-Fein-are-yesterdays-men.htm