Two men have pleaded guilty to possessing guns and ammunition in suspicious circumstances after they were put under PSNI surveillance following a UVF hoax bomb threat to Simon Coveney in Belfast in March 2022.
In June of that year, Winston Irvine and Robin Workman were caught moving firearms. Their pleas have sparked fresh anger and ridicule over the peace processing of loyalists, a generously-funded industry in which Irvine was a well-known figure.
Organisations where he was employed or involved have received £500,000 from Belfast City Council and £900,000 from the International Fund for Ireland (IFI) over the past decade. At the time of his arrest he was about to start work on a £258,000 Stormont-funded programme.
He hosted another event while on bail, attended by police representatives, civil servants and unionist politicians. In a final absurdity, Irvine’s first court appearance meant he missed his graduation at Maynooth, where he had completed a masters in “international peacebuilding”.
Starmer’s political image increasingly at odds with a public mood turning against liberal causes
Conor Murphy’s puzzling move to the Seanad crystallises sense of an unsettled Stormont
Daft Brexit rules have brought havoc for the Alliance Party as well as Northern shoppers
Stormont staggers on, mostly because no one can agree on an alternative
The SDLP and Alliance have once again condemned loyalism’s refusal to move on. Unionist parties have said little, through a mix of tribalism and cowardice. Sinn Féin has also been muted, as there is a limit to how much it can condemn this industry without putting its own role and favoured recipients in the frame.
At Stormont and in councils, the DUP and Sinn Féin have created systems that carve up funding between community groups on a blatant 50/50 basis. It is fitting that the late Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness were called the Chuckle Brothers. Their parties observe to the penny the Chuckle Brothers catchphrase: “to me, to you”. This requirement for symmetry prevents loyalism being penalised when it fails to meet its side of the bargain.
The SDLP discovered this as far back as 2007. Margaret Ritchie, its then leader and a Stormont minister, tried withholding £1.3 million from the UDA after it caused serious rioting. The DUP condemned Ritchie and her decision was overturned by a judge for lacking full executive approval.
Since then, the system has only become more entrenched and oblivious to criticism. A Stormont scheme that ran for much of the last decade was denounced by the SDLP as a “paramilitary slush fund”. The Northern Ireland Audit Office found “noncompliance with the most basic standards of public administration”.
The DUP and Sinn Féin have been condemned by every other party and the Audit Office for divvying up funds at Belfast City Council. Their response has been defiance and increasing secrecy. Last December, they were exposed taking almost all the funding from a special needs children’s charity to be redistributed among the usual suspects. After a month of embarrassing media coverage, they reluctantly gave a third of it back.
The British government and much of the public and voluntary sectors are largely on-board with this system, as they help to run it or share the spoils. Many people suspect that the threats against an Irish minister crossed a line for the security services, causing them to halt a gravy train that otherwise has no brakes.
The Irish government has also been co-opted. It funds the IFI and the Maynooth masters course, among many other schemes, yet even Irvine’s plea will not derail its largesse. Asked about this, the IFI said it “funds projects, not individuals, and has robust systems in place to ensure that projects deliver specific outputs that support and encourage peacebuilding activity”.
While that was too glib a dismissal, nor can the industry be dismissed as paying off bad loyalists and cynical republicans. There are sincere people on both sides, working alongside civic-minded people from wider society. The system is too large, complicated and useful to shut down, nor would it be reasonable to cut funds on a “from you, from me” basis.
Imposing discipline means being prepared to call out loyalists alone.
It might help to provide some balance by taking a more robust approach towards republican groups, where nepotism and entitlement are the least of several obvious concerns.
But the asymmetry must still be confronted. Loyalism’s crime, violence and bad faith have been in a league of its own for years. Political leadership on this must come from unionism and its parties should be challenged to provide it.
The unionist population congratulates itself on not being a mirror image of republicanism, with politics inextricably linked to a terrorist organisation. So why does the DUP carve up money as if it is the mirror image of Sinn Féin? Why are unionist politicians shy of challenging loyalism, as if in fear of their own voters?