Non-State Violent Actors and Social Movement Organizations

Influence, Adaptation, and Change

Julie M. Mazzei, Julie M. Mazzei

• Editorial: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Año: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781787147287
• Categoría: Scienze sociali
• Categoría: Demografia

This volume focusses on non-state actors and political conflicts but also attends to the broader themes of the series. The research emphases the roles and motivations of non-state actors in conflicts or post-conflict situations in the post-Cold War era; as well outlining the dynamics of social movements, conflicts, or change. This volume highlights the motivations and interests of non-state violent actors (NSVAs) in the post-Cold War era; the role of identity and/or ideology in the conflicts or resolutions of so-called "new wars;" the impact of NSVAs in conflict and/or peace-making; and the ways in which IGOs and NGOs interact with NSVAs in conflicts or post-conflict zones.

SECTION I
NON-STATE ACTORS: INFLUENCE AND ADAPTATION IN CONFLICT ENVIRONMENTS

HOSTILE COUNTERMOBILIZATION AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE: LOYALIST CONTENTION AND RADICALIZATION IN NORTHERN IRELAND, 1968–1969

Gianluca De Fazio

ABSTRACT

Hostile countermobilization is a crucial, yet relatively understudied, factor in radicalizing movement tactics and generating political violence. This chapter focuses on the movement–countermovement interactions between the Civil Rights Movement and the Loyalist movement in Northern Ireland to clarify the emergence and intensification of political violence in the 1968–1969 years. The interactions between the civil rights mobilization and the loyalist countermobilization created the conditions to fuel both protest-based and sectarian violence, setting the terrain for the eruption of the Troubles. Relying on quantitative data on the actors participating to contentious collective events, as well as original archival research, this chapter shows how the loyalist countermobilization activated mechanisms of object shift and tactical codependency that facilitated the emergence of radicalization in Northern Ireland.

Keywords: Loyalism; Northern Ireland; political violence; object shift; tactical codependency

Friday, December 20, 1968. “The People’s Democracy announced that it planned to make a four-day march from Belfast to Derry starting on January 1.”

Friday, December 27, 1968. “Major Bunting, Commandant of Loyalist Citizens of Ulster, warned the PD [People’s Democracy] not to march through ‘Loyalist’ areas’.”

Wednesday, January 1, 1969. “About 40 members of the People’s Democracy, mainly students, met at the City Hall, Belfast and set out for Antrim. They carried a banner saying ‘One man, One vote’ and placards supporting Civil Rights. Major Bunting and his supporters were also present at the City Hall, waving Union Jacks and Ulster flags; some chanted ‘One Teague, No Vote’. A hostile crowd of militant Protestants accompanied by a Lambeg drummer blocked the marchers’ route at Antrim.”

– Deutsch and Magowan (1973, pp. 14–15)

The brief chronicles reported above vividly illustrate the contentious interactions between two opposed political groups, namely, civil rights marchers advocating for an end to institutional discrimination in Northern Ireland and their loyalist antagonists, who refused changes in the status quo. The People’s Democracy, a civil rights organization, led a march from Belfast to Derry in 1969, consciously inspired by the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches, which would eventually end in an ambush at Burntollet Bridge where loyalists and some off-duty police officers stoned and assaulted the civil rights marchers. This later-named “Long March” would further radicalize the clash between the two main ethno-national communities in Northern Ireland, prodding sectarian tensions to ignite during the summer of 1969 and the descent into the 35 years conflict known as the “Troubles.”

Past research has explored several aspects of the conflict in Northern Ireland to understand how political violence emerged in the late 1960s (Hennessey, 2005). These studies look at, among other elements, the ideologies of republican paramilitary groups (Alonso, 2007), the repressiveness of the Northern Ireland state (White, 1993), and the contentious interactions between challengers and authorities (Bosi, 2006; De Fazio, 2013, 2014; Maney, McCarthy, & Yukich, 2012). The reactions of the pro-Union Protestant community, and more precisely the mobilization of loyalist organizations to counter the Civil Rights Movement (CRM) and its struggle against institutional discrimination, have attracted relatively little attention in clarifying the development of political violence before and during the early years of the Troubles (but see: Bruce, 2007; Farrington, 2008; Smithey, 2011). While the emergence of loyalist paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland and their role in the violent conflict has been subject to relevant academic research (Bruce, 1992, 2001; Wood, 2006), the impact of loyalist mass mobilization in fostering political violence has been only partially scrutinized. This chapter intends to address this gap by examining the movement–countermovement interactions between the CRM and loyalist protesters to further our understanding of the early Troubles.

The theoretical and empirical contribution of this project relates to the understanding of violent contention generated by non-state actors. The main analytical goal is to examine the relationship between the CRM and the loyalist countermovement in order to unveil how their interactions fueled both protest-based and sectarian violence. Obviously, countermobilization is not the only factor explaining the turn to violence in Northern Ireland; however, its particular role in setting in motion the Troubles is often overlooked. Empirically, the study enriches existing accounts of the early Troubles by highlighting how movement–countermovement interactions helped reinforcing spirals of polarization and radical contention. To track the dynamics of radicalization (Alimi, Bosi, & Demetriou, 2012; Alimi, Demetriou, & Bosi, 2015) that unfolded in Northern Ireland between 1968 and 1969, this project utilizes Quantitative Narrative Analysis (hereinafter QNA; Franzosi, 2004, 2010) to collect systematic data on the actors participating in contentious collective events, their actions, tactics, and targets. Complemented by archival research, these data illustrate how movement–countermovement interactions in the late 1960s created opportunities for collective violence and activated mechanisms of object shift and tactical codependency, altering the threats and opportunities available to political actors and facilitating the rise of political violence in Northern Ireland.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

In the early 1920s, the Partition of Ireland separated the southern portion of the island (the Irish Free state) from the northern-eastern part (Northern Ireland, a province of the United Kingdom), where a majority of the population was Protestant and favored the union with the British crown (unionists). Since its foundation, the unionist regime envisioned Northern Ireland as “a Protestant state for Protestant people” (Farrell, 1976), barring the Irish-Catholic minority from participating in the political process, and from securing economic and social equality. The Ulster Unionist Party retained the monopoly of political power for more than 50 years (Walker, 2004), while central British governments never showed any desire to meddle with the internal politics of what was considered a distant and problematic province (Rose, 1971). Northern Ireland’s political system essentially embodied a confessional state with institutionalized partiality, without effective checks and balances capable to limit systemic biases. Unsurprisingly, institutional discrimination against the Irish-Catholic minority carefully preserved the historical domination of the Protestant-unionist majority over a society deeply divided along the ethno-national cleavage. The two communities lived in separate social microcosms, especially in terms of their residential, educational, and employment settings. Compounding their exclusion from the state, discrimination in employment and public housing further marginalized and aggrieved the Irish-Catholics, fostering their resentment toward the unionist regime (O’Hearn, 1983).

In the second half of the 1960s, a group of civil rights activists aimed to challenge the discriminatory practices perpetrated by the unionist regime. The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) – an umbrella group of ideologically heterogeneous organizations opposed to institutional discrimination – took to the streets in 1968 to secure the political inclusion of the Catholic minority within the Northern Ireland polity (Purdie, 1990). A loosely organized network of organizations, such as People’s Democracy and the Derry Housing Action Committee, coalesced around NICRA and its basic requests of full enfranchisement (“one man, one vote”), the end of discriminatory practices in the housing and job markets, and the abolition of draconian police powers (NICRA, 1978). The rancorous reaction of the pro-Union majority and the Protestant-dominated local police force (the Royal Ulster Constabulary, RUC) against the civil rights requests led to hostile countermobilization and outright police and political repression of the CRM (De Fazio, 2009).

Confronted with verbal and physical assaults during their street demonstrations, the CRM had to adapt its strategies and claims to address the repression perpetrated by the RUC (Ó Dochartaigh, 2005), as well as the numerous loyalist groups led by Reverend Ian Paisley (Greer, 2009). The heavy-handed policing of civil rights demonstrations (De Fazio, 2007; Ellison & Smyth, 2000) and the denial of their right to protest by government officials and loyalists quickly became a central political issue for the CRM. Between the first civil rights marches in the late summer of 1968 and August 1969, street confrontations between civil rights protesters, loyalist counterprotesters, and police forces escalated to communal rioting, leading to the intervention of the British Army to act as peacekeepers. An ethno-nationalist insurgent campaign to end Northern Ireland’s union with Great Britain perpetrated by paramilitary organizations like the Irish Republican Army (IRA) sidelined the initial issues of civil rights reforms to address political and economic discrimination (Bosi, 2006). The conflict between republican and loyalist paramilitary groups and security forces would eventually cause the death of more than 3,600 people in the ensuing four decades of violent contention.

COUNTERMOBILIZATION AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE

In his classic book From Mobilization to Revolution, Charles Tilly conceptualized repression as a tool available to any social group capable of threatening the ability of a challenger to mobilize and act collectively (1978, p. 100). Tilly’s intuition of identifying both state and non-state actors as potential sources of repression went mostly unheeded, as subsequent research on repression has focused almost exclusively on state agents (Earl, 2003, 2004). The potential role of non-state actors like countermovements in the unfolding of violent conflicts has been, thus far, understudied. For a long time, social movement scholarship mostly ignored the centrality of movement–countermovement interactions in the development of contentious politics (for a few notable exceptions, see Lo, 1982; Mottl, 1980; Zald & Useem, 1987). However, in the last two decades scholars have paid much more analytical attention investigating the emergence, significance, and consequences of these interactions. In particular, Meyer and Staggenborg’s (1996) analysis of the interactions between the pro-life and pro-choice movements in the United States has laid the foundations for a new area of social movement studies (Andrews, 2002; Dixon, 2008; Fetner, 2001; Rohlinger, 2002). Meyer and Staggenborg’s basic argument relates the emergence of a countermovement to three main factors: (1) the success of the original movement in achieving some of its goals, or at least gaining sympathetic public attention; (2) the perception of having certain interests or values threatened; and (3) political elites’ support of oppositional mobilization (Meyer & Staggenborg, 1996, pp. 1635–1642). As soon as a social movement is able to carry out some of its intended political goals, or garner notable media coverage, it may attract the attention of groups opposing those very same goals eventually generating a process of countermobilization (Zald & Useem, 1987, p. 247). This will be more likely if social movement goals are perceived (or constructed) as threatening the material interests and/or symbolic values of other groups (Crockett & Kane, 2012).

The formation of a significant countermobilization directly affects the initial movement, as the latter has to face an altered set of political opportunities and threats (Zald & Useem, 1987). Movements and countermovements have to fine-tune their tactics as they engage in several arenas of potential conflict: “from direct confrontation, to lobbying authorities, to speaking to disparate audiences, to debating the shadows of previous generations” (Zald & Useem, 1987, p. 259). While movement–countermovement interactions may become tense, they generally tend to remain nonviolent. However, some countermovements may embrace violent tactics to neutralize opposing movements and may even attempt to coerce political authorities. Examples of violent countermovements include the early 1920s fascist squads in Italy assaulting socialist activists and workers (Franzosi, 1997, 1999), and US white supremacists targeting civil rights activists and their allies in the 1950s and 1960s (Cunningham, 2012). One of the strategic goals of these violent groups was to intimidate and, in extreme cases, terrorize political opponents th...

Índice

• Cover
• Title Page
• Section I Non-State Actors: Influence and Adaptation in Conflict Environments
• Section II Non-State Actors: Challengers and Change
• About the Authors
• Index