Five Catholic families were intimidated out of their homes in Oldpark in north Belfast in recent weeks. The dogs in the street know that members of loyalist paramilitary groups were involved, or encouraged others to participate.
So far there has not been a single arrest by the Police Service of Northern Ireland, let alone an appearance in court by anyone to face charges.
Instead, police say that while people linked to the Ulster Defence Association were involved, its leadership was not.
Following the Belfast Agreement, the British government believed that the Provisional IRA (PIRA) would deal with dissident republicans, and that loyalist paramilitaries would fade away as the republican threat diminished. On both counts they have been proven wrong.
Speaking to the British-Irish Association in Oxford earlier this month, Northern Ireland Secretary of State Hilary Benn said the British government in 2025 is spending £137 million (€156.9 million) to tackle terrorism, paramilitarism and organised crime in Northern Ireland.
“The threats are changing, and more than ever we have to work together to meet them,” he told the Pembroke College gathering. But why are there still threats from paramilitaries? Why are there still paramilitaries?
Dublin and London have finally appointed an independent “expert” to report on what is needed to end paramilitary activity in Northern Ireland, but it remains unclear how this process will support wider objectives on legacy and the future.
Figures for the numbers of people, nearly all men, who are members of loyalist paramilitary organisations – the Ulster Defence Association, Ulster Volunteer Force and Red Hand Commando – vary hugely, from the hundreds who are active, to more than 12,000.
The vast majority are not involved in antisocial behaviour, but the key rump exerts control through distribution of drugs, extortion of money, and coercion and intimidation of anyone seen as obstructive to their lucrative illegal gains.
Rightly, the independent expert will probably reinforce the message that the overriding responsibility for bringing paramilitary and dissident organisations to a close is down to the leaders of those organisations.
Perhaps less likely, but even more important, is a need to outline the responsibilities of the two governments, but particularly the British, with regard to how they will structure and deliver that outcome.
For more than two decades the British government, along with representatives of Irish and US governments, has appointed monitoring bodies to report on the scale and type of activities being carried out by paramilitary organisations.
However, it has offered no leadership to end their existence. Looking to the north Belfast attacks in recent weeks, the calls for arrests of individuals who are members of or are linked to paramilitary groups reflects the belief that the problem can be policed away.
Such calls will appeal to those who believe the issue is primarily a law-and-order problem, but this approach alone is destined to fail. Paramilitarism exists and survives because of a mix of complex social, economic and political influences.
The removal of paramilitaries from the loyalist-dominated communities where they exist will require an equally complex process of measures and mechanisms to change those influences, even if the audience for such arguments has faded as the 1998 agreement has retreated into history.
So far, qualities required within the British and Irish governments regarding the role that they should and must play to dismantle paramilitarism has been seriously lacking. Since the Belfast Agreement the emphasis has been on reporting and containing, but not on solving, the question.
Further, little attention has been given to how a number of well-funded and positive community initiatives converge with an agreed overall strategy, largely because there has been no such strategy to speak of.
This was and is a failure to fully deal with the messy business of resolving conflict. Why individuals are drawn to these organisations and are still being recruited remain ongoing problems that require long-term action, not quick-fix commentary.
The existence of the paramilitaries – the loyalist ones, and the republican dissidents, too – offers ever-ready “copy” for the Belfast-based tabloid newspapers. However, those same newspapers, and unionist politicians, offer little leadership about the measures needed to bring about their end.
A “peace industry” was created after the Belfast Agreement, one that was well-intentioned but which has too often left loyalist communities on a drip-feed of aid, rather than helping to create a new, more hopeful future.
Instead, real on-the-ground action is needed to offer better education and employment prospects in places where such options have not been available, or not even been respected, for two generations or more.
That is just the start. Better mental health services for communities that are riddled with post-Troubles trauma is needed, too. If the rest of the world has moved on from the Troubles, many living in the streets that formed its nightly backdrop on the TV news have clearly not.
Stronger, closer relations with police and stronger, better community leaderships – ones that are not infected by the paramilitary bacillus – are also needed to deal with the myriad of criminal and antisocial issues that plague these communities.
Arts and sports must be encouraged; sectarian attitudes must be confronted one house at a time, one street at a time, and funding must be found, too, so that loyalist communities reflect not just on their own past but on what is needed to create a better future.
Jobs and business investment, which will need the assistance of backers from the US, not just London and Dublin, must be found to set up in these communities, not elsewhere in Northern Ireland, conditional on paramilitarism ending.
There are hard questions, too, for unionist politicians to face. For decades they have ignored loyalist communities, or used them as political fodder on the occasions when street actions suited their aims – even if they would not publicly associate with such actions.
A precedent exists from 2018, when a team of interlocutors worked with loyalist paramilitary leaders to produce a statement on transformation – the first collective statement from them since that made at the time of the 1994 ceasefire.
That earlier statement helped set in motion negotiations for the Belfast Agreement. Yet, no communication took place between the British government and the interlocutors involved in 2018 on what they did, how they did it, or what they learned.
Such engagement must start again if fears and frustrations are to be prevented from hardening into more extreme positions and attitudes. To ignore this is dangerous territory, not just for loyalist communities, but for the social stability of Northern Ireland itself.
When the independent expert finally reports, it will be approaching 30 years since the Belfast Agreement. That agreement failed to bring about an end to paramilitarism. The opportunity cannot be lost again.
Graham Spencer is Emeritus Professor of Social and Political Conflict, University of Portsmouth
