The bizarre rigmarole of Provo politicians and loquacious nonsense which originates in public houses and drinking clubs pushes semi-criminals and those associated with them into the front line and into the role of policeman as vigilantees.
The connection of paramilitaries and vigilantees to the policing organism is published to the press eventually. That link is concealed at the time when vigilantees are called out onto the streets by nationalist and unionist politicians.
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In Northern Ireland the vigilantee spirit is manifested in the Neighbourhood Watch. The impartial observer sees it in the behaviour of those connected to public services, hospital care. This spirit is proclaimed as the "spirit of resistance" by old hands at street crawling. In Belfast in the early 1970's it took the form of the street antics of former British soldiers.
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Vigilanteeism in the media?
Unbalanced minds and idle hands absorb political hyperbole through the local press and regional radio.
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Vigilanteeism is contemporaneous to military terror in the Irish experience.
Vigilantees were allowed into Sinn Fein to intimidate their neighbours and junk out rival groups and organisations. Vigilantees even set themselves up in opposition to those to whom they had simply taken a strong dislike,for no good or valid reason. Sensible, well-balanced people shunned vigilantees and those from whom they extorted. Eventually change came and Sinn Fein and loyalists dispensed with the services of these corner-boys.
The alternative? The State?
The bandwagon of reaction rolls forward unhindered in the police and state media in Northern Ireland.
Is it too much to expect an intelligent response from police 'targets'?
Broadly speaking,it is impossible. Sinn Fein's electorate are educational under-performers and born idlers.
Is there an "educated element" in republican resistance to colonialism?
Yes,but the patina of respectability given to corner-boys, alcoholics and drug addicts by a handful of educated people conspires to make the revolutionary-democratic and democratic public ignore the nature of Sinn Fein's core supporters. To all appearances, the foremost proponents of revolution and the cause of freedom are bar-room bards and country philosophers.
The bearing of those who would challenge this facade?
Revolutionary socialists in this country- read their publications,if you doubt me-are lost in the nineteenth century and do not view social facts clearly. They fail to see that crime gives birth to the authentic expression of vigilanteeism.
In the interests of harmony many in civil society want to steer a middle course and say a big No-No to intervening on party-political issues or coming down on one side or the other.
The social background to vigilanteeism runs thus,the closure of most manufacturing industries attests to the ordinary fact that Northern society attracts a new form of parasite, namely the medical sophomore,the drunken brawler and the chronic idiot.
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2.10.2021
"Low intensity operations". The unstable peace
In the Police and Community Safety Partnerships,the vigilantee elements created by violent disturbances are united under the rubric of the Good Friday Agreement and,through this mechanism,the small shopkeepers come into their own.
This is the Kitson approach to political stability and "policing consensus".
Kitson's Civic Committee model,the integrated response of the police and military and "civic leaders" to democratic and socialist activities is being closely monitored by the British Government and its politicians nowadays.
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The police and military organise these activities and are at one remove from paramilitary policing.
The opposition has enlisted young hotheads for the purposes of revolutionary intrigues.
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Kitson's first literary effort?
"Gangs and Counter-gangs”. In this essay,he schemed about political assassinations.
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Post-Agreement? Sinn Fein's cooperation with the FBI?
The US sent NYPD Gauleiter,Bill Bratten,a specialist in gangs and counter-gangs,to supervise medical holding centres, pharmaceutical experiments,clinical torture and vigilantees and British Army murder-gangs.
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15.1.2022
My interest in what I called community or cooperative civic arrangements originates in the summer of 1984 when I counselled such arrangements to Alex Maskey to deal with the joyriding problem in West Belfast.
In the Winter of 1984-5,I studied attempts by community volunteers to deal with what the Germans call the Crash-kids. I made a thorough study and found their activities to be quite successful but of temporary affect. It is easy to mock genuine and sincere people who get caught up in the tentacles of paramilitary activities but I found most of those who turned out on those dark, cold, wet nights in Lenadoon in the mid-eighties to be reviled by young people on the margins of society. In addition,they enjoyed no understanding from the very police force set up to protect the public. The police were acting under the orders of the Northern Ireland Office to dissuade this activity notably Dr Paul Ingram of QUB Law Faculty.
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The contemporaneous legal set-up?
The police frequently invoked legal protection for crimes ranging from intimidation to murder.
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The police and wandering legal minstrels today?
I say to them both:Go away and drown yourselves in a bog hole or jump in the river to cool down. That includes all of you retread RUC/PSNI hoods in the RUC George Cross Association and your telephone partners in vigilantee organisations.
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1.2.2022
Modern times
It would be an egregious error to associate vigilantees with Sinn Fein alone or exclusively on the unionist side with the D.U.P.
A social void has been created when vigilantees appear.
Crook and vigilantee alike will cite little interest in politics or politicians as I found out in Saint Teresa's Gardens, Dublin 8 when I lived there from December 1989 to April 1992. Back then, I was the meat in the sandwich between drugs gangs and vigilantees.
My only friends were women on the margins of society,public housing tenants and the unemployed.
The vigilàntees did not vote in the Dail election of 1992. I voted for Eric Byrne of the Labour Party,the only public representative in Dublin Central worth his keep in the Dail.
22.12.2022
Playing Devil's Advocate...
The only reason vigilantees should be mobilised is where public safety is at risk. The only 'talking part' given to him should be to alert the police to armed gangs.
The police have much too late wound in their long neck for acting on the incendiary suggestions of old bats and snoopers summoned up by Blair,Brown and their army of social workers.
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14.9.2023
A biblical perspective
Paramilitary vigilantees who follow writers and political figures around, hoping to cause a crisis of confidence and get them to lose faith in their own worth are the people who Jesus refers to as blind guides and hypocrites.
But Jesus lived a long time ago,so who are the murderers in the police and doctors dependent on to spread rumours and calumniate new thinkers in areas where police safety is at risk?
They are the ghetto police,former paramilitaries and nationalist militants, most of whom aren't worth what shite would shoot them and like to think "they are tougher than the rest".
These are the people whose lives end in great tragedy lying by a border road with a gunshot wound to the head or living on borrowed time in some shelter for dossers and layabouts in England.
Talk to the Christian Jews therefore about these Trojan horses in Ireland. (This politics-besotted nation is full of offshoots of the Irish Army, British Army and police and Gardai).
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A vigilantee is best described as a police informer or a worried citizen who does not realise that he is merely a police informer.
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In the North of Ireland,vigilantees operate on the basis of personal knowledge not objective criteria and their actions are highly leveraged,that is they are intended to elicit reciprocal assistance and confidential information.
In the South,the Gardai operations are based on vigilantees' methods and strong central direction. Gardai only help those they like and they do so quickly and effectively much to the chagrin of public commentators who are always questioning why they are never to be seen in normal circumstances.
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Vigilanteeism gave rise to the Provos and anyone involved in vigilanteeism or keeping an eye on his neighbour for the police is in favour of violence against both individuals and the state and is a dangerous man who must be monitored by police and military since in Ireland,it is the military who protect the public not the police. The police do nothing to protect anyone in any country and the reasons for their existence disappeared when hospitals and a social security system were established by the British Labour Party. Everyone knows apart from politicians that the police cause political unrest and inflamed criminal passions and private greed to "catch the criminal". Tony Blair thought that he would do that better with PR and render the police redundant but the police laced his late night today with strychnine and albumen on a hot summer's night because he was a fan of stadium rock band Meat Loaf who he modelled his student musical groups on.
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REPORT vigilantees to the police.
