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“Paramilitarism: Mass Violence in the Shadow of the State” by Uĝur Ümit Üngör (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020). Reviewed by Chris Stanley. The genesis for this book was an analysis of Assad of Syria’s unleashing of militias to repress an uprising against his regime in 2011. Upon reflection the author realised that that violent episode deserved a monograph in its own right. But the Syrian episode provides a prism through which Uĝur Ümit Üngör compellingly considers paramilitarism, violence and the state. He uses the metaphor of the solar eclipse to reveal the dark heat of the relationship between state and paramilitarism (page 186).  Üngör opens with the recent and continuing Syrian ‘experience’ of violent conflict reliant upon the paramilitary militias. Episodes of insurgency and counter-insurgency can be painfully drawn out over years, as those in Northern Ireland are all too sadly aware. And this aspect of paramilitarism is possibly more important than Üngör realises.  Today in Northern Ireland there continue to be the entrails of violent paramilitary activity by Republican dissidents set against the peace process. This activity relies upon political and economic disenfranchisement largely among the young and led to the murder in 2019 of the journalist Lyra McKee in Derry. But the structure and activities of these Republican dissients paramilitary groups are vastly different to those of the PIRA and INLA at the height of the Conflict.  Also today in Northern Ireland the remnants of Loyalist paramilitary exists in the form of low-level violent gangsterism and criminality. Üngör has a sound understanding of the relationship between paramilitarism and criminality.  The shadow of paramilitarism still looms as a presence in Northern Ireland; its force still to be understood through the continued contested out-workings of the Legacy of the Conflict and the relations between the British state and Loyalist and Republican paramilitarism through the policies and practices of collusion, most recently explored by Mark McGovern in ‘Counterinsurgency and Colllusion in Northern Ireland’ (London: Pluto Press, 2019). But what is paramilitarism? Üngör conceptualizes it as “a system in which a state has a relationship with irregular armed organisations that carry out violence. But what is paramilitarism? Üngör conceptualizes it as “a system in which a state has a relationship with irregular armed organisations that carry out violence. These armed groups have different forms and types of relationship with the state, but nevertheless are linked to it” (page 7).  By having a link to the state these organisations achieve a quasi-legitimacy (even if for many it is deniable) – unlike militias. By having a link to the state these organisations achieve a quasi-legitimacy (even if for many it is deniable). There is both a dynamic and a relational proximity between paramilitary groups and the state (page 8) which sets them aside from militias which might have a more dominant role in a failing state or a state which is ceasing to exist or coming into existence. Hence the importance of the organic nature of this relationship.  PIRA was terrorist because it was anti-state (despite collusion between it and aspects of the British security forces, characterised by the role of PIRA-informer Freddie Scappaticci aka Stakeknife) whilst the UDA/UVF/UFF grouping was paramilitary because of direct links between elements within the UDR and the RUC In a counter-insurgency situation such as the Conflict in Northern Ireland, the PIRA was terrorist because it was anti-state (despite collusion between it and aspects of the Britsih security forces, characterised by the role of PIRA-informer Freddie Scappaticci aka Stakeknife) whilst the UDA/UVF/UFF grouping was paramilitary because of direct links between elements within the UDR and the RUC, the latter providing intelligence, personnel and equipment – most notoriously in the Dublin-Monagham Bombings in 1974 which former British Army Military Intelligence Officer (MIO) Fred Holroyd described as the closest point Britain came to invading Ireland in the post-war period.  The UDA was more than tolerated by the British state; it was indeed relied upon because it was outside a legitimate (and therefore accountable-deniable) structure The UDA was more than tolerated by the British state; it was indeed relied upon because it was outside a legitimate (and therefore accountable-deniable) structure (page 11). The UDA was manageable for a period but as with similar organisations described by Üngör (page 15) its value to the state was determined by political-security need and with the Good Friday Peace Agreement 1998 its work for the state was done.  Thus it fragmented into its present form of low-level Loyalist gangsterism mirrored by fragmented dissident Republicanism.   Üngör’s book starts with a loose history or survey – necessarily so given the shadowy nature of his subject – of paramilitarism. He traces its development from militias in emerging modern states and their role in supporting those seeking or claiming territorial rights. The paramilitary subaltern can well be imagined in the Machiavellian world of The Prince. It is in the twentieth century that what might be described as modern paramilitarism emerges, as state authority becomes more settled. The role of the state evolves to protecting its ideological values and countering attempts at insurgency. Regarding Northern Ireland, Üngör considers three heads. First, the security dilemma between identity communities (the sectarian divide). Second, collusion. Third, criminal infighting ‘after the war’. It is welcome that Üngör recognises the centrality of collusion to the Conflict in Northern Ireland – collusion which is still being exposed and contested – as it goes to state impunity for  ‘political’ violence.  I suggest Üngör is wrong in describing the Conflict as ‘war’.  It was a counterinsurgency for the British state and struggle for equality and British withdrawal for Republicans However, I suggest Üngör is wrong in describing the Conflict as ‘war’. Whereas the Conflict has been described as the “Irish War” or “The Dirty War” in fact the Conflict was never designated as either a war or an internal armed conflict as such designations would have invoked the Geneva Conventions. It was a counter-insurgency exercise for the British state and a Republican struggle for equality and the forced withdrawal of the British. Üngör

An Outsider’s view  of always present, now boiling, racism in Ireland By David Langwallner  Hugo Hamilton wrote a book called ‘The Speckled People’ (2003) which to some extent mirrored my experience in growing up with a Germanic mother and a Gaeilgeoir Irish father who refused to allow him to speak English. “Speckled, ‘half and half…Irish on top and German below’”. I was raised largely in Dublin, half Austrian. My school days in a minor school were blighted by Nazi remarks: “go back to Germany Hitler” in the school yard from kids who are now our envied establishment: police or civil servants, or indeed family or criminal lawyers. Austria, I knew, was the country of Mozart,  Schubert, Haydn and Strauss, and Egon Schiele: they did not understand or care when they spied a vehicle for their bullying. They instinctively knew to search for something to which there could be no comeback, to something innate I could do nothing about. It was a huge struggle to survive that and I did so through academic achievement which diminished the bullying somewhat. Like many who have been tormented I also developed the facility with the spoken word which has stood me in good stead. In fact I over-compensated, though I say so myself, with a certain loquaciousness in desperation to gain an acceptance never willingly forthcoming.  When I eventually went to Trinity College in Dublin there was an initial sense of release but there was always an element of bullying and my relationship with the Trinity Law Faculty then and now was terrible, particularly since the importation of academics from UCD. There are far too many little Irelanders in positions of institutional responsibility in Trinity and certain extremists of a fundamentalist nature. Insidious. For them I was neither fish nor fowl. Guinness with blackcurrant. Half-caste, speckled. I remember in the Irish Observer Mace for Trinity an international debate competition I subsequently won I  was undermined with a choice racist comment which drew great guffaws of laughter from the mobocracy of UCD’s premier debating society the L and H: Nein Danke, Herr Langwallner.  I have always considered UCD a breeding ground for corporate criminals and social glibness and the two go hand in glove.  Have you ever gone to the Gaeltacht or a session of traditional Irish music, a UCD-spawned non-entity senior counsel with a Gaelgeoir name asked me a few years ago? Well why should that matter? UCD’s law faculty spawned Sutherland, Cowen, McDowell, Paul Gallagher: all agents of the globalised neo-liberal establishment. But also a disproportionate number of jailbirds such as solicitor Thomas Byrne and ‘Cocaine Jim’ who robbed his own bank.  At times the difference seems to me to be missable. Having studied and worked in the UK and America I am now confirmedly multicultural and non-racist. In effect I am a mongrel, so my antennae are always raised about racist biases and evaluations. I think my worldview constitutes the acquisition of empathy through bitter personal experience. I escaped Ireland’s adolescent universities and enjoyed a time in better colleges in the US and the UK. Harvard is a multi-cultural and mixed-race community and the LSE is immersed in heterogeneous London.  They were models of cosmopolitan tolerance. I might add that interaction with the protestant Brahmin community in Harvard was also a slightly odd experience. I felt not unlike the way Woody Allen imagines himself turning into a caricature Jew at a protestant thanksgiving in Annie Hall. I suspect that is why I got on so well with the legendary Alan Dershowitz, Professor of Criminal Law at Harvard, like Allen a secular Jew, who has represented the likes of Assange, Tyson, OJ Simpson, and Epstein. Outsiders. The recently departed Gunter Grass wrote many novels and was a vigorous political polemicist and  a German national figure. He is most famous for his novel ‘The Tin Drum’(1959).  Its premise is that Oscar, a severely mentally handicapped child or child adult, sees everything that is going on at the onset of fascism in Germany; and reacts by banging a tin drum. It is the perspective of the outsider, the clown observant, the not-to-be-taken-seriously, the boy who cried wolf. The person suffering from a disability. He cannot be seen as a threat. Like a lot of autistic people and those suffering from Aspergers, of which I have had considerable professional experience, he is inclined to tell the truth or call it as he sees it. His mind is unfiltered by bourgeois hypocrisy. When the lunatics have taken over the asylum they designate the truth-teller as mad.  So yes, I have always been an outsider: precarious but at  least equipped with an objectivity. It was always going to be dangerous to return to Ireland thirty years ago and deploy a faux cosmopolitanism or vicarious celebrity that local parochialism and the parish pump of Ireland do not accept or endorse. And so, ill-equipped, I practised and lectured law in Ireland. I became dean of Griffith College’s law department and lectured for years in the King’s Inns. My role in establishing The Irish Innocence Project, which seeks to get innocent prisoners off death row, gradually led to moves against me and frankly attempted state murder. Some of the spectres of my minor school now in positions of institutional authority came back to haunt, for racism in fact is very much on the ascendant in Ireland. Certainly the more public you become. I should of course state that the level of racism I have encountered is not equivalent to that often suffered by people of colour. More generally, a very recent EU Survey from its Fundamental Rights Agency confirmed that Ireland has a particular problem. In Ireland 17 per cent of immigrants said they had faced discrimination at work because of their background, whereas on average in the EU less than one in 10 had. 38 per cent said they had been harassed, though in the EU it was less than a quarter. In Ireland, 8 per cent had had suffered racist violence compared to 3 per cent in the EU. In Ireland in 2020 we

The wily Trade Commissioner’s future rests on a report into his implausible explanations from the circumspect but stringent EU Commission President. By Jonathan Baxter. National morale had already been starting to crack before more than 80 attendees sat down for dinner at the Clifden Station House Hotel. As a result, this was never going to be a story that could be waited-out and wished-away. Yet that is exactly what one of Ireland’s most influential politicians has been manoeuvring towards. In the first three months of the pandemic, Irish people were among the most positive in the world in rating their government’s response to the crisis. A large part of that was due to the trust and credibility that Leo Varadkar and Simon Harris generated. It was impressive. So often criticised as elitist and out of touch, Fine Gael had managed to position themselves as the guardians of the people. There were mistakes and disapproval but never enough to bring the position of the government into question. When British anger erupted over Dominic Cummings in May, there was some gratitude that we in Ireland did not have to suffer such a personality. That has now changed with Fine Gael’s Phil Hogan and his stuttering three-stage response to fury over his choice to attend the Oireachtas Golf Society dinner in Galway. His initial statement included no apology, instead diverting blame to the Irish Hotels’ Federation. The lack of personal responsibility – so emphasised by public health frontmen Dr Tony Holohan and Dr Ronan Glynn – was evident and damning.  His second response was a textbook political non-apology, stating he apologised “for any distress caused by his attendance”. This artful placement of “any” instead of “the” was another refusal to meet public anger with a real, direct and humble apology. It was a simple but deliberate choice, and one which has no favourable interpretation. On Sunday, Hogan issued a third statement and second apology. This time he apologised “fully and unreservedly”, stating his actions “touched a nerve” and that he was “extremely sorry”. It seemed he was on the right track. It was inevitably too, he said, “fulsome” a word that is so widely misused that most people have forgotten it means insincere. But then came the choice to state that he recognised “the issue is far bigger than compliance with rules and regulations and adherence to legalities and procedures.” Within that is a subtle suggestion that he had not broken any rules. Even if that were true, the need to include such a point is another example of hubris on Hogan’s part. Very few politicians are willing to jump before they’re pushed and resign out of a principled acknowledgement of wrongdoing. Hogan is not unusual in that respect. But there is a tipping point when the consequences of not resigning are greater than any benefit of staying on.  The intervention by Michéal Martin and Leo Varadkar in asking Hogan to “consider his position” was initially significant but later recast. On RTE Radio 1’s Sunday ‘This Week’ programme, Varadkar said Hogan must apologise, explain himself and – only if the explanation was wanting – consider his position. Antagonism was waning where it mattered.  Retribution was quick for others but Hogan is prevaricating.  He doesn’t want to step down, either because he feels he doesn’t need to or his importance in the European Commission is too great. But ultimately the Trade Commissioner is prevaricating because he can. Big Phil is too big to fail. Fianna Fáil backbencher Jim O’Callaghan suggested to This Week that the balance lay with retaining his expertise where it was unlikely any Irish replacement for him would retain his portfolio. This seemed to be weighing apples against oranges: ethics against pragmatism. Micheál Martin’s stance too was unclear or at least without vigour. The Irish Times, whose views on these things is respected among some of the people who will take decisions on Hogan, seems on balance to be suggesting the Big Man should go. The calculations for Hogan’s fellow attendees Dara Calleary and Jerry Buttimer, or at least their respective parties, was clear. They were not going to get out of this scandal intact and offered what they thought was a proportionate sacrifice in resigning from an elevated position in the Oireachtas. While both remain in place as elected representatives, they have lost their offices. The public has been satisfied. The position is different with Phil Hogan and Supreme Court judge Séamus Woulfe who, only appointed to the highest judicial authority in July, also attended the dinner. Separation of powers make a government move against Woulfe unrealistic while Hogan has no title or role within the Oireachtas to resign from.  Beyond their signal to the public that Hogan’s action were unacceptable, neither Martin or Varadkar hold much power over Hogan. Varadkar could expel him from Fine Gael but, as European Commissioner for Trade, Hogan serves the EU, not the appointing member state. The real power over Hogan rests with his boss, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Technically dismissal requires an adjudication of the European Court of Justice but no-one believes that he would not jump if von der Leyen demanded it. At that point, even the most stubborn and arrogant politician would have no option but to resign.  At the time of writing and according to high-ranking sources, the Irish government is awaiting Von der Leyen to receive the trade commissioner’s report before deciding on Hogan’s future. Her decision will have to take into account that Hogan appears to have lied about observance of national quarantine restrictions. His European Commission spokesperson initially said compliance was complete but it now emerges he returned to locked-down Kildare to collect “personal belongings and essential work documents”. Why did he need to do this? It is implausible he could not have taken his work material with him when he left pre-lockdown Kildare for Kilkenny. And that is to assume some significant purpose of his return was genuinely work-related.  The EU has an acuter eye for

The current political administration in Britain attacks the Civil Service (by cull) and the Judiciary (by murmuring) while tightening the grip of the Executive, particularly through unelected advisers and ‘specialists’. By Christopher Stanley For readers of Village the names of Gina Miller and Shamina Begum may not immediately be recognised. They are two women with British citizenship. That is probably all they have in common. But both have made headlines in the British press by way of their (ab)use of the courts. They have atttracted notoriety within parts of the British media and have now provoked the hositility of the  Conservative government or rather its Executive (right) wing in the Cabinet Office. Their actions may have dangerous constitutional consequences, not by any fault of their own but by the reaction of unelected officialdom (SPADS), including media commentators (The Daily Telegraph and The Spectator) and right-wing think-tank ‘influencers’ (intellectuals) such as Policy Exchange.  My last post for Village examined an apparent  constitutional ‘crisis’ in Britain. This ‘crisis’ was presented from the perspective of “The Narrow Ground” of Northern Ireland. However, it was also written as a warning to other advanced democracies tempted to tamper with the constitutional machinery of their systems of governance and also to identify emerging trends in the governance of complex societies under threat from ‘emergency’ situations including terrorism, fiscal downturn and pandemics.  For Northern Ireland, any tinkering with the British constitutional settlement (actually English constitutional convention within a devolved jurisdictional structure) must be considered in terms of The Belfast/Good Friday Agreement 1998 (GFA98), the expectations of all people in Northern Ireland and the current political arrangements including the maintenance of the security of what is a politically and economically fragile society.  A semblance of stability at Stormont has only recently been restored.  Northern Ireland has its own ‘particular circumstances’ and within the fabric of its society is a commitment to human rights and the Rule of Law, of which the judiciary are the principal guardians.  I have been critical of the most recent Whitehall proposals for Northern Ireland which, if implemented, would, I suggested, undermine the commitment to human rights and the Rule of Law for Northern Ireland. These proposals could lead to valid legal challenge (or disruptive ‘political litigation’?), dissent and fracture (see: The Pall is Lifting written for readers of Village). As ever Whitehall-thinking and Westminster-ideology ignore the subtleties required to secure the peace process in Northern Ireland. [i] Where do Gina Miller and Shamina Begum figure in this view from The Narrow Ground? In short, their cases are being used as an excuse by the Conservative government to reign in “excessive” judicial power. This is part of a process of radical response to the apparent constitutional “crisis” which, if implemented, would further increase dominance by the Executive over the Legislature (Parliament) and the Judiciary.  This is happening on the false pretext of restoring Parliamentary Sovereignty which is the none too subtle sleight of hand within an Elective Dictatorship by which the roles of Parliament and the Judiciary within the dynamic of the Separation of Powers are dangerously diminished, undermining accountability and transparency by limiting scrutiny of Executive discretionary powers. It severs the trust – the fiduciary relationship – required between those who govern and those who are governed and blurs government for the public good, needed now more than ever in an era of uncertainty and emergency.  [ii] Why should Westminster Politicians and Whitehall Ministers, Civil Service Mandarins and Cummings-Type SPADS be careful when Murmuring Judges?  Murmuring judges is an offence in Scottish law (called Scandalising Judges in English law) and is the act of causing offence to judges, accusing them of corruption – or indulging in judicial overreach (See: BBC News 10 12 2012). Judicial overreach or the exercise excessive judicial power is the present scourge of some in the current British government, of their advisers and their friends in right-wing neo-liberal think-tanks such as Policy Exchange whose express role is Protecting the Constitution: “The rise of judicial power in the UK in recent years is a striking change in our constitutional arrangements – in how we are governed – a change that threatens good government, parliamentary democracy, and the rule of law. The expansion of judicial power is a function both of Parliament’s decision to confer new powers on courts, most notably by enacting the Human Rights Act 1998, and of the changing ways in which many judges, lawyers and scholars now understand the idea of judicial power. Parliament is responsible for maintaining the balance of the constitution and should restate limits on judicial power, restoring the political constitution and the common law tradition.  The Government has been elected on a manifesto commitment “to look at the broader aspects of our constitution: the relationship between the Government, Parliament and the courts”, to “update the Human Rights Act and administrative law to ensure that there is a proper balance between the rights of individuals, our vital national security and effective government” and to “ensure that judicial review … is not abused to conduct politics by another means or to create needless delays” (page 7). Gina Miller’s ‘offence’ was (on two occasions) to challenge the British government regarding exiting from the EU. On both occasions the UK Supreme Court (UKSC) upheld her application.  In R (Miller) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union [2017] UKSC 5 the court ruled that fresh legislation had to be enacted before the Government could trigger Article 50 and begin the process of the UK leaving the EU.  In Miller (No 2) [2019] UKSC 41 following the prorogation of Parliament — a step formally brought about by the Queen on the advice of the Prime Minister — the court was ask to determine whether that advice, and the resulting prorogation, was unlawful.  The court held that the issues raised by the case were properly justiciable and concluded that the advice and the prorogation were unlawful.  The UKSC held that the prorogation prerogative does not extend to a situation where a fundamental constitutional principle would be impinged upon without a reasonable justification.  Shamina Begum’s ‘offence’ was more straightforward. She is a British-born woman