WHAT HAS PANDERING TO THE UVF ACHIEVED?

Posted By: July 20, 2013

WHAT HAS PANDERING TO THE UVF ACHIEVED?
Newt Emerson. Irish News ( Belfast). Saturday, July 20, 2013
WHAT did the PSNI’s top brass get for six months of pandering to the UVF [  Ulster
Volunteer Force, the Protestant /Unionist paramilitary oranization]? Four blast
bombs thrown at its officers in east Belfast would appear to be the reply. So much
for the phone numbers exchanged on that dirty weekend in Wales, the careful
reticence over drug deaths, the scrapping of the flags protocol once ‘1913 UVF’
flags appeared, the unsubtle arrest of every flag protest leader except UVF-linked
‘spokespersons’ and the blatant subcontracting of public order to an illegal
organisation. It is an awkward fact of life in Northern Ireland that you can never
rule out results from paramilitary appeasement but senior officers were warned often
enough by their own rank and file that the east Belfast UVF is beyond all
processing. The PSNI is now suggesting Orange Order leaders could be arrested for
inciting violence. This only makes the refusal to arrest UVF leaders all the more
obvious.

■■■

LOYALIST delinquency aside, the past week has been a triumph for the PSNI. It has
also been rather a success for the DUP, which is now back on the ground in parts of
Belfast it was chased out of during the flag protests. Meanwhile, in stark contrast
to its Ardoyne confrontation, the Orange Order has agreed to “willingly and actively
participate” in the five-party talks on flags and parading chaired by US diplomat
Richard Haass. This can only mean agreeing to replace the Parades Commission with a
Stormont-designed successor, enabling the DUP to claim it has solved parading to
everyone’s satisfaction.

In fact, things could not have worked out better for the DUP if it had sat down with
Belfast’s Orangemen and planned them.