Suchergebnisse

The British state is currently taking forward deeply contentious legislation that would essentially end all legacy investigations and court cases relating to the conflict in the North of Ireland (1968–1998). Shaped by a long-term rightwing campaign to prevent any further investigation or prosecution of former British soldiers, and a wider culture of denial of the role of state collusion in the conflict, the legacy proposals are ostensibly defended on the grounds that current mechanisms do not work for victims' families. This article seeks to both challenge that narrative and to build on earlier analyses of collusion ( Race & Class 57, no. 2; 58, no. 3) to demonstrate how recently published reports of official investigations into collusion between state agents and loyalist paramilitaries have provided important information for victims' families and insights into the patterns of collusion. Such patterns can be identified in terms of state actions and omissions taking place before, during and after lethal loyalist attacks. They include providing weapons and targeting intelligence while failing to provide warnings to those being targeted; the direct involvement of serving and former members of the security forces in loyalist killings; blocking investigations, destroying records and employing (and protecting) state agents and informers involved in mass murder.

The publication of the official report into the 1994 Loughinisland massacre, when loyalist gunmen shot dead six people in a small, rural bar, provides an opportunity to examine the nature of institutionalised collusion, the state practices it involved and the sectarianised social order which made it possible during the conflict in Northern Ireland. Building on an earlier analysis of the colonial and counter-insurgency roots of collusion ( Race & Class, 57, no. 2) this article provides a commentary on the findings of the Loughinisland report and explores two issues. The first concerns new evidence (directly contradicting earlier official inquiries) of state collusion in the importation of arms used by loyalists to escalate their campaign of assassination in this period. Second, the extent to which collusive practices facilitated the actions of loyalist paramilitaries and confounded the investigation of the mass killings at Loughinisland as elsewhere. In terms of both, it will be argued, there is a need to place an understanding of collusion in the wider context of a social order shaped by long-term sectarianised social divisions and violence, embedded in localised power structures, which framed the very institutions and agencies of the state, not least the police and other state forces.

The publication of the official report into the 1994 Loughinisland massacre, when loyalist gunmen shot dead six people in a small, rural bar, provides an opportunity to examine the nature of institutionalised collusion, the state practices it involved and the sectarianised social order which made it possible during the conflict in Northern Ireland. Building on an earlier analysis of the colonial and counter-insurgency roots of collusion (Race & Class, 57, no. 2) this article provides a commentary on the findings of the Loughinisland report and explores two issues. The first concerns new evidence (directly contradicting earlier official inquiries) of state collusion in the importation of arms used by loyalists to escalate their campaign of assassination in this period. Second, the extent to which collusive practices facilitated the actions of loyalist paramilitaries and confounded the investigation of the mass killings at Loughinisland as elsewhere. In terms of both, it will be argued, there is a need to place an understanding of collusion in the wider context of a social order shaped by long-term sectarianised social divisions and violence, embedded in localised power structures, which framed the very institutions and agencies of the state, not least the police and other state forces.

Recent years have witnessed a decisive move toward centralised, hierarchal, managerialist decision-making structures in UK universities. Likewise, there is a central paradox at the heart of these changes. Centralisation, bureaucratisation and the ever greater top-down managerial control of academic life have been paralleled, and legitimated, by the language of decentralisation and freedom. This reflects the 'fundamental paradox of neoliberalism [where the] use of government intervention to establish and regulate markets' is masked by the rhetoric of the free hand of the market (Letizia, 2015, 33). Likewise, the privatisation of universities, resulting from the wholesale reduction of government funding, is paralleled by an increase of government regulation of what universities do (Docherty, 2015). Such paradoxes are echoed in the specific focus of this article. As part of the 2015 Counterterrorism and Security Act, passed in April 2015, the current UK government has placed a statutory duty, now enforceable by criminal law, upon a broad range of institutional authorities, including departments of social work, hospitals, schools and of course colleges and universities, that in their policies and practices they have 'due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism'. This is the latest in the tranche of 'anti-terror' legislation introduced since 2000 and of the Prevent stream of Contest, the government's overall counter-terrorism strategy. This paper seeks to explore the likely impact of the 'Prevent duty' on the life of the contemporary neoliberal university and the manner in which it enmeshes and deepens further a culture of compliance, restricting inquiry and speech in the name of academic freedom and promoting distrust, inequality and alienation in the name of protection and duty of care. To do so, the paper will therefore examine the two distinct but potentially complimentary threats posed by encroaching cultures of compliance within universities evident in and relevant to the Prevent duty.

There is now considerable evidence of systemic and institutionalised collusion between state forces and loyalists paramilitary groups during the Northern Ireland conflict, not least in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Focusing on a critical reading of the 2012 de Silva report into the killing of human rights lawyer, Pat Finucane, this article examines state collusive practices surrounding the handling of agents and informers as evidence of a culture of collusion extending into the highest echelons of state institutions. The article will argue that such practices evidence an approach to state counterinsurgency predicated on a "doctrine of necessity" and what can be understood as a "liberal ideology of collusion".

This article considers the nature of collusion between the British state and loyalist paramilitary organisations during the conflict in Northern Ireland in the context of British counterinsurgency theory and practices in prior colonial campaigns. It briefly outlines the nature, pattern and logic of collusion in Northern Ireland before examining some of the key works of British counterinsurgency theorists – Charles Callwell, Charles Gwynn and Frank Kitson – reflecting on earlier imperial experiences. Collusion is understood as an expedient coercive state practice, premised on a 'doctrine of necessity', designed to remove 'enemies' and induce fear in a target population via a strategy of assassination in which the appearance of adherence to the rule of law is a political end shaping the specific forms of state violence involved. Such a practice, the author argues, is not an aberration in the tradition of British state counterinsurgency violence, it is exemplary.

This article considers the nature of collusion between the British state and loyalist paramilitary organisations during the conflict in Northern Ireland in the context of British counterinsurgency theory and practices in prior colonial campaigns. It briefly outlines the nature, pattern and logic of collusion in Northern Ireland before examining some of the key works of British counterinsurgency theorists – Charles Callwell, Charles Gwynn and Frank Kitson – reflecting on earlier imperial experiences. Collusion is understood as an expedient coercive state practice, premised on a 'doctrine of necessity', designed to remove 'enemies' and induce fear in a target population via a strategy of assassination in which the appearance of adherence to the rule of law is a political end shaping the specific forms of state violence involved. Such a practice, the author argues, is not an aberration in the tradition of British state counterinsurgency violence, it is exemplary.

This article critically examines the issue of collusion as part of truth recovery and post-conflict transition in Northern Ireland. As state crime, collusion involves state agents (military, intelligence, police) engaging with non-state agents in wrongful acts often of (or linked to) non-state political violence. A key element of the conflict in the North, and a contentious dimension of post-conflict transitional justice, collusion is also understood as exemplifying the "state of exception" (Agamben 2005) and state practices of denial (Cohen 2001). After characterizing the nature and role of collusion, the article critically analyses the record of various official truth recovery mechanisms established since 1998, in re-investigating cases of alleged collusion by focussing on particular cases (most involving allegation of collusion with loyalists). Ultimately, it is argued, though important information about collusion has been revealed, current processes constitute the state management of truth recovery and illuminate the limits and nature of state practice in dealing with state violence and state crime.

In what sense might the authoritarian practices and suspension of legal norms as means to combat the supposed threat of "terrorism," within and by contemporary western democratic states, be understood as a problem of and not for democracy? That question lies at the heart of this article. It will be explored through the theoretical frame offered in the work of Giorgio Agamben on the state of exception and the example of British state collusion in non-state violence in the North of Ireland. The North of Ireland provides a particularly illuminating case study to explore how the state of exception—the suspension of law and of legal norms and the exercise of arbitrary decision—has increasingly become a paradigm of contemporary governance. In so doing it brings into question not only the traditional conceptualization of the "democratic dilemma" of liberal democratic states "confronting terrorism" but also challenge dominant paradigms of transitional justice that generally fail to problematize the liberal democratic order. After outlining Agamben's understanding of the state of exception the article will chart the development of "exceptional measures" and the creation of a permanent state of emergency in the North, before critically exploring the role of collusion as an aspect of counter-insurgency during the recent conflict. The paper will argue that the normalization of exceptional measures, combined with the need to delimit the explicitness of constitutional provision for the same, provided a context for the emergence of collusion as a paradigm case for the increasing replication of colonial practices into the core activity of the contemporary democratic state.