Sandra McEvoy. Security Studies. Volume 18, Issue 2, April-June 2009.
The question [of why I committed acts of paramilitary violence] was put to me umpteen times at different places … And I turn around and says [sic] “Me and my kind were there so that you and your kind could go to bed at night and sleep. That is why we were there. That’s why we the women were there at that time, so that you and your kind … You want to go in and close your doors and close blinds and go to your bed and sleep while me and the like of me are out?” … It was something that you felt you had to do. You were there. It was your duty. It was your duty to do it. — Anonymous interviewee, interview by Sandra McEvoy, Belfast, April 2006.
The sense of fear, frustration, concern, and duty that “Lynn” expresses in our interview in April 2006 succinctly summarizes the sentiments of many politically violent Loyalist women with whom I spoke. Lynn’s response to my inquiries about her participation in a Loyalist paramilitary organization (LPO) also affirms her belief that, in part, women were responsible for defending their communities from armed Republicanism.
Utilizing data collected by the author in a 2006 empirical study of women’s participation in LPOs, the aim of this article is to reframe the security debate by taking a deeper and more thoughtful look at the threat that women combatants already pose to security and to solidify the connection between this threat and processes of conflict resolution. Analysis of the insights, experiences, and responses of Protestant women members and supporters of three paramilitary organizations in Northern Ireland to peace legislation proposed by the British government will reveal the importance of incorporating women combatant voices in these processes. The empirical nature of the study provides a unique starting point from which the article then engages in both the practical and theoretical implications of excluding politically violent women from security studies and IR scholarship.
Gendering Security
As Laura Sjoberg and Caron Gentry convincingly argue, analysis of women’s uses of politicized violence in global politics is needed if women’s experience of war and conflict beyond their status as victims is to be better understood. A growing field of feminist international relations provides key tools to explore the role that female combatants play in conflict and conflict resolution practices. Feminist political scientists Cynthia Enloe, Ann Tickner, V. Spike Peterson, and Christine Sylvester (to name only a few) question what field of knowledge international relations could rightly lay claim to without consideration of the role that gender plays in the workings of the state. As Enloe asserts,
feminist-informed investigations by academic and activist researchers have revealed that many forms of public power and private power are dependent for their operation, legitimation and perpetuation upon … controlling popular notions of femininity and masculinity. It therefore follows that if we do not become seriously interested in the conditions and lives of women, we are likely to craft analyses of international power dynamics that are at best incomplete, at worst faulty and unreliable.
In fact, it is the “control” of “popular notions of femininity and masculinity” that make inquiry of women’s threat to security all the more important. It is important not only because such inquiries make us smarter about those women who wield political violence but also about the male heads of state, generals, diplomats, social commentators, religious leaders, and others that facilitate, encourage, or deny it. Moreover, embracing the reality of women’s diverse participation in armed political conflict and incorporating these insights about combatant women into the dialogue about security may help to reduce the widespread “understanding that women are irrelevant to the making and fighting of wars.”
A gender-informed examination of security also complicates our understanding of power relationships previously considered straightforward, especially the relationship between the public and private sphere. For example, in the case of women combatants we might ask whether women’s manufacturing of petrol bombs in their homes for the use of paramilitary organizations is a public or private activity. Further, is the use of her home to conceal bombs and other munitions of public or private concern? Feminist inquiry allows us to appreciate the “causal link between power in private spaces and power in public spaces” further revealing the complexity of women’s lives in areas living with conflict (emphasis in the original). Women who wield violence, even as mothers, sisters, aunts, nieces, and grandmothers, can be seen not as paradoxes but as complex actors in a complex world.
When Some Women are “Threats” to International Security
Often, the reporting on women who wield political violence portrays these women as nonthinking, easily manipulated, and overly emotional. When women (and especially mothers) are examined as perpetrators of political violence, the focus of observers and analysts typically is on the seemingly unnatural or surprising idea that someone that has the ability to bring a life into the world would have the desire to take a life. Scholars’ gendered assumptions about women’s relationship to armed conflict permeate their work; in many portrayals, women are stripped of their agency and fashioned into ruthless and crazed killers or as unthinking, easily manipulated, and overly emotional. For example, Russian popular media has labeled women perpetrators in the Russian/Chechen conflict as “zombies” and “black widows,” characterizing them as deadly, but at the same time easily manipulated and not in control of their decisions.
The apparent confusion among observers over why women wield political violence is evident in a survey conducted in 2003 by the Public Opinion Foundation of the All-Russia Center for the Study of Public Opinion. The survey found that 84 percent of Russians surveyed believed that female suicide bombers were controlled by someone else; only 3 percent believed that the women acted independently. These public opinions run counter to research suggesting that women have at least some if not full agency in their suicide attacks. Still, Stack-O’Connor rightly notes that such viewpoints are consistent in the West where women are again perceived to be “forced” into terrorism rather than rational political actors who make independent decisions to participate in armed groups.
Whatever the motivations attributed to them, however, the visibility of women suicide terrorists has increased substantially in recent years. For example, in a 13 December 2005 editorial in the Baltimore Sun, Farhana Ali, Associate International Policy Analyst at the RAND Corporation stated, “Two recent attacks by female suicide bombers have put the world on notice that Muslim women are playing an increasingly important role in this form of terrorism.” Ali estimates that between 2000 and 2005 about fifty women from Palestine, Iraq, Chechnya, Jordan, and Uzbekistan have carried out such attacks and that the number is growing.” While Ali acknowledges that the number of female jihadists is small in comparison to men who have carried out terror actions, she rightly affirms that “an attack by a woman in one location could have a rippling effect and serve as a motivator for other women.”
Still, in both the policy and academic arenas, attention to women’s violence seems to be associated with their actions in the Middle East and for causes related to radical Islamic terror groups. Women’s participation in political violence is not limited by geography or religion, however; women have engaged in violence throughout history and across diverse political conflicts. One place where women’s participation in political violence has been notable, but neglected, is in Loyalist paramilitary organizations in Northern Ireland. The lack of scholarly attention to Protestant women’s participation in the conflict in Northern Ireland appears all the more curious given the intense scrutiny scholars of comparative politics and international relations have used in looking at a number of other facets of that political situation.
Investigating Loyalist Women as Threats to Security
Investigations of men’s longtime participation in Loyalist paramilitary organizations (LPOs) in Northern Ireland are extensive. Examinations of men’s participation in LPOs range from investigations of their experiences of imprisonment, to those of their reintegration to society following imprisonment, to their motivations for paramilitary participation, to their roles as founders of LPOs, to their processes of identity formation within Loyalist groups. However, there is a glaring absence of Loyalist women’s presence in LPOs. While a few authors acknowledge that women did take part in Northern Irish Loyalist paramilitaries, even then, those women’s actions, motivations, social networks, and political analyses are not studied in depth. As a result, information about the nature of, and degree to which, women historically participated in LPOs is highly limited.
This study aims to begin to fill the knowledge gap about women’s participation in Loyalist paramilitary organizations using the reflections of women participants in LPOs concerning their experiences as combatants and their ideas about the British government’s attempts to negotiate agreements to bring an end to the conflict in Northern Ireland.
I collected these reflections through interviews with women participants in LPOs. My initial success in reaching women who participated in LPOs was limited, and I learned quickly that access to these women was highly regulated by Loyalist men. In the early stages of the fieldwork I was told by men affiliated with LPOs that “the women were never there.” When I asked if I could talk to any of the women that “might have been there” the response was frequently, “what women are you talking about?” Convincing male members of LPOs and their associates that I was trustworthy was crucial to obtaining interviews with women participants.
One asset in my ability to access and be trusted by my participants is my familial connections to Northern Ireland and numerous visits to Belfast. This background provided a familiarity with the history, streets, and vernacular of the city. The fact that my parents lived in Loyalist areas before their immigration to the United States and that my grandfather was a member of a number of Orange Lodges and a former member of the disbanded Ulster Specials Constabulary or “B Specials” made my credibility in Loyalist areas all the more reliable. Snowball sampling was used to locate interviewees and was a particularly important method of locating potential study participants.
Even after I located women participants, the challenges of conducting research into the presence and participation of women in LPOs were considerable, especially in light of the sensitive nature of the research questions that I hoped to pose to the participants and the difficulties I experienced as a result of conducting fieldwork in a low-intensity conflict zone. Challenges to the participants included: (1) acknowledgment of their participation in illegal activities or organizations, (2) hesitancy on the part of women to speak about their experiences in LPOs may be considered disloyal to their current or former group, and (3) the potential that recalling such participation may be emotionally or psychologically traumatic. Further complicating the collection of information were concerns by the participants that I was a reporter or a member of the security forces. Still, I was able to perform thirty interviews with women participants.
The interview protocol consisted of approximately fifty open-ended questions that inquired into three general themes including: (1) women’s motivations to participate in Loyalist paramilitary organizations; (2) internal group dynamics; and (3) where applicable, women’s experiences of their participation in relation to their status as mothers. Sample questions include: “What motivated you to become active in the group? Was there a particular moment or event that inspired you to join?” and “What risks (if any) were involved in becoming part of the group?” Interviews were tape recorded, transcribed, and edited to remove identifying information about individuals. While proofreading the accompanying transcript, the recordings were listened to again and then analyzed using thematic coding.
The participants in the study ranged in age from thirty-four to sixty-five and were affiliated to three different Loyalist paramilitary groups. Four women lived in rural areas and the remaining twenty-six in or around the city of Belfast. All women held at least a high school equivalency, with smaller numbers of the sample holding technical or secretarial training, and a few with some college training. Twenty-five of the women were married, and five were either single or divorced. All but one participant had children. In one case a mother and her daughter were interviewed, which provided a unique intergenerational perspective to the questions posed by the study. All of the interviewees came from the working class.
Several common themes emerged in the conversations with Loyalist women paramilitaries. The first was the rejection of a widely held stereotype that, as a group, Protestants live among the comfortable middle-class population in Northern Ireland. Objections to this stereotype were mentioned in every interview and often repeated more than once. Participants linked these objections to their disapproval of Unionist leaders like Ian Paisley who lend credibility to the conception that Protestants are from the middle to upper-middle class. In almost every case, participants in the study viewed Paisley as protecting middle-class interests while ignoring the needs of Loyalist paramilitaries, which come almost exclusively from the working class.
Another common theme in the interviews was respondents’ anger and frustration at the British government’s successive attempts to formalize peace legislation in the province. It was common during the interviews for the women to express their anger and frustration with the government or the impact of the legislation on them and their families, even when the questions posed were intended to illicit information seemingly not related to agreements. At the completion of the study, coding of the data revealed that every respondent commented on the agreements on at least one occasion. In some cases, women mentioned the agreements more than once. Given the common stereotype that women have an interest in peaceful and negotiated settlements to conflicts, these women’s objections to the British government’s attempts to make and formalize peace was a particularly unexpected but significant finding.
The third common theme across the interviews was the women’s active participation in LPOs. Throughout the interviews, participants discussed their varied contributions to the LPO they supported. While a number of smaller LPOs developed in the thirty-year period of the Troubles, two main organizations have dominated the political landscape: the Ulster Defense Association (UDA) and the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). Although their methodology was often different, both groups have had generally the same aims: (1) to defend Protestant communities from Irish Republican Army (IRA) violence, (2) to act as mouthpieces for working-class Protestants and Loyalists, and (3) to defend the union between the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland.
The largest LPO is the UDA (which was legal until 1992). Formed in 1971, its membership was originally made up of a number of vigilante groups or defense associations. Ongoing Republican violence, the disbanding of the Royal Ulster Constabulary in 1970, and the disarming of the police force soon thereafter hastened the development of the group. In 1972 it was estimated that the group had as many as forty thousand to fifty thousand members.
The second main LPO is the much smaller, more violent, and secretive Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). Many members of the UVF trace their roots to the Thirty-Sixth Ulster Division, a battalion of Northern Irish soldiers who fought for the British during World War II, and in large measure the group considers itself an extension of that brave fighting force. Estimates of the group’s total membership are difficult to substantiate but were generally understood to have about 1,500 members in 1972.
Women joined these organizations in smaller numbers compared to their male counterparts. My fieldwork revealed that in the case of the UDA, women formed their own units in Protestant communities throughout Northern Ireland. This study documented approximately two dozen active women’s units at various times throughout the conflict with a combined membership as high as three thousand women. Alternatively, there does not appear to be any evidence of a formal separate women’s unit in the UVF. Women in this LPO worked secretly and in small numbers alongside male counterparts. Estimates are that at most women accounted for 2 percent of the UVF membership across the thirty-year conflict.
Women’s tasks in these all-volunteer groups included: transporting arms, munitions, and intelligence in baby carriages, purses, cars, and on their bodies; conducting surveillance; cleaning crime scenes and destroying evidence of paramilitary crimes; storing arms and munitions in their homes; transporting LPO contraband into and out of detention facilities; serving as funeral honor guards; carrying out punishment beatings on behalf of the organization; and armed robbery.
Northern Irish Loyalist Women Combatants’ Reflections on Peace Agreements: 1974, 1985, 1998, and 2007
As mentioned above, one of the surprising findings in these interviews was that women members of LPOs found the agreements intended to bring peace to Northern Ireland problematic and objectionable. These interviews demonstrated that women’s historic and continual exclusion from formal politics in Northern Ireland should not be read as an indictor that women did not have ideas and beliefs related to the successive peace agreements. Instead, women and their opinions were left out of the bargaining processes. This is especially true within extreme Loyalism. Though I never specifically asked any interviewee for an opinion about any agreement, the interviewed women consistently expressed strong opinions about each of the agreements in response to more general questions. These women viewed the existence and content of these agreements as central to their involvement in paramilitary groups, despite (or perhaps because of) their having been systematically left out of the negotiating process.
Between 1974 and 2007, the British and Irish governments made four separate attempts to bring political stability and reduce armed conflict in Northern Ireland. The primary avenue for that endeavor was through a variety of cross-border initiatives or agreements that at various times intended to devolve power, create a power-sharing executive and reform Northern Ireland’s social and political structures. From the perspective of the majority of the Loyalist population, these agreements (often referred to as “disagreements”) were unacceptable compromises that served to reward Republicans for violence against the British state. In over thirty years of conflict, senior policy scholars and political party leaders have either excluded such women wholesale from their thinking on conflict and its resolution or have assumed that their views mirrored that of their male counterparts. The material from my interviews reveals that women not only objected to each of these agreements, but also went to substantial lengths in order to prevent their passage and/or interrupt their implementation.
The Sunningdale Agreement—December 1974
Between 1968 and 1974, six years of bloody conflict between Republican and Loyalists/British troops, which later came to be known as “the Troubles,” took their toll on the Northern Irish population and drained the political will of the government of the United Kingdom. Policy makers in the Heath government were finding the conflict in the province expensive and politically costly for its elected officials. With tensions continuing to rise, the British and Irish governments attempted to devolve government in Northern Ireland, which they hoped would bring some measure of peace to the province. Designed to allow Unionists, Social Democrats, and the Alliance party to share power, terms of the proposed agreement were discussed at a conference at a Civil Service College at Sunningdale in December 1974. This new political framework, intended to establish an “Irish Dimension” between Britain and the Republic of Ireland, set forth a series of articles related to the future governance of Northern Ireland. In sum, the articles sought to codify the idea that if the majority of the province expressed a desire to become a united Ireland it could be realized and supported by the governments of the United Kingdom and the Irish Republic. From this cross-border relationship a new Council of Ireland would be established comprised of representatives from both governments that would address a diverse range of cultural, social, and public interests common to both countries.
The proposal to invite the Irish Republic into the affairs of Northern Ireland was confusing to many Loyalists, and it become clear that “without a doubt the British and Irish states aimed to dilute their claims of sovereignty regarding Northern Ireland.” Loyalists were incensed and immediately opposed Sunningdale. A notable feature to their opposition was the fourteen-day strike in May of 1974. Over two weeks the City of Belfast, and in many of its surrounding areas, Loyalists shut down the power station at Ballylumford, Belfast’s aircraft and shipyard factories, and even small businesses bringing production in Northern Ireland to a halt. The strike was led by the Ulster Workers Council (UWC) and assisted by the Loyalist Association of Workers (LAW) (which had a significant number of women members) and the two main LPOs, the UDA and the UVF. Ultimately the pressure placed on Unionist leaders to withdraw from the negotiations was so great that the conference was dissolved, signifying Loyalist unity against cross-border initiatives.
For some Protestant women, the agreement served as a motivator to become involved in paramilitary organizations. One woman who was concerned with the toll that the agreement would take on her rural community joined the local unit of the Women’s UDA, which served a central role in protecting and providing basic necessities to Protestant communities throughout the Troubles. In her twenties, married and with children when she joined the organization in 1974, she recalled:
Respondent: That was the time whenever they tried to force that other agreement, not the Anglo-Irish one … the ….
Interviewer: Sunningdale?
Respondent: Yes, because that was the reason why I got involved.
Notably, this woman uses the term “force” as she references the Sunningdale Agreement. That is, she saw the agreement not as an agreement, but as a solution imposed by outsiders. Mentioning another agreement, the Anglo-Irish one, she suggests that the many agreements that the government has proposed seem to merge together in her mind in the sense that she perceives that each has been imposed upon the population rather than agreed to by its citizens. What the interviewee does state with clarity is that it was because of the agreement and its effects on her Loyalist community that she chose to join the Women’s UDA.
Throughout other interviews, women consistently expressed their sense of perceived threat that the agreements posed to themselves as well as their communities. During an interview with another former member of the Women’s UDA, a woman I call “Chloe” was asked why she and other women participated in supporting paramilitary activities during the period before and after the Sunningdale Agreement. She responded:
As I say, because we felt at risk, you know? We felt hard done by. You could see your whole culture and your whole way of life just going down the drain and becoming a united Ireland. You know? You could just see that. You can see that to this very day we are all still very, very frustrated. You could see that then. You can still see it.
Chloe repeatedly states her fear of her Protestant culture being degraded by further advances by Republicans to form a united Ireland under a Dublin-lead government and saw Sunningdale as just a first but decisive step in this process. Interviewees like Chloe felt overwhelmingly that this possibility was not only real but with the passing of each agreement that a united Ireland was gradually becoming a reality. During our interview it appeared that her concern that a united Ireland could be realized was as present for her then in July 2006 as they were during the period of the Sunningdale negotiations in December 1974. In almost a refrain, she states, “You could just see that. You could see that then and you can still see it …” and, “You can see that to this very day” suggesting that the position of threat that this Loyalist woman sees has not shifted in the thirty-two years since the agreement was first proposed. As my discussions with Loyalist women combatants continued throughout 2006, I would come to understand that this perspective was consistent across women and across agreements.
One response to the attempt of the British and Irish governments in 1985 was to pass another agreement, which was called the Anglo-Irish Agreement (AIA). This triggered the mobilization of Loyalist women to oppose a cross-border relationship. What is also clear is that the governments’ attempts to bring peace to Northern Ireland via the negotiation of the Sunningdale Agreement were a failure. The testimony of these women reveals that women members of paramilitary organizations played an important but often overlooked role in this failure.
Anglo-Irish Agreement—November 1985
Some ten years following the stunning failure of the Sunningdale conference and with the Troubles continuing to rage in Northern Ireland, in November of 1985 the British and Irish governments again attempted to bring some form of political settlement to Northern Ireland that they hoped would bring a resolution to the conflict. Again, the British and Irish governments sought to solidify an official relationship with one another. Negotiated by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Garret FitzGerald, the AIA contained a series of thirteen articles designed to address cross border cooperation and political, security, and legal matters between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Although Sunningdale proved that Loyalists’ all-male leadership would not tolerate any negotiation with, or inclusion of, the Republic of Ireland in the political future of Northern Ireland, a number of the articles were of particular concern to major sectors of the Loyalist community. Articles five and six mirrored the aims of the previous agreement, which stated that the two governments of Britain and Ireland would support any future wish by the people of Northern Ireland to enter into a united Ireland. Not surprisingly, many Nationalists in both the North and the South saw this as an important development. However, Unionists (those Protestants who wish to maintain the union between Northern Ireland and Britain) were outraged with the terms of the agreement and began a long campaign to have the AIA withdrawn. For many Loyalists the signing of the AIA marked the second official occasion in which their government would concede to Republican violence, which in essence proved that “violence pays.”
The extent to which AIA failed to bring peace or stability to Northern Ireland is reflected in the increase in violence following its passage. Reflecting on the state of relations between the warring factions and the anger it induced from the Loyalist population, Bairner noted:
The signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement on 15 November 1985, was but the latest in a series of initiatives which, whilst offering prospects of peace to the optimistic, raise the possibility that violence will escalate. The twelve months since the Agreement was concluded will be remembered as the worst period of Protestant paramilitary violence since 1975-6.
Much of this violence in 1985 and early 1986 was attributed to Loyalists who, in response to AIA, began to form groups; some of these new groups had affiliations to existing Loyalist paramilitary organizations and took opposition to the agreement as their mission. Two such groups were the Ulster Clubs, formed in the autumn of 1985, and the Ulster Resistance, formed in November 1986. The spokesperson for the Ulster Clubs called for a “people’s army to make this country ungovernable to bring this government to its knees.” In addition to paramilitary violence, an estimated one hundred thousand people gathered in protest against the agreement at Belfast City Hall on 23 November 1985. Chanting the slogan for the anti-agreement movement “Ulster Says NO!” many Protestants were certain that further attempts by the British government to push through the agreement would be abandoned. In poetry that she read aloud to me during the interview, one former member of the Women’s UDA and member of the Ulster Clubs expressed her anger with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who negotiated the agreement on behalf of Northern Ireland. Entitled “Ulster Says NO!” the poem was written around 2002. In part, it reads:
If I could tell you a story of what happened long ago, but do you really think it matters that Ulster still says no? And sometimes I would ask myself, “Do people really care?” For standing at the City Hall they told us to beware. They said tell Maggie Thatcher that Ulster’s not for sale, and then they sat in talks with Dublin, but did anybody wail? For if they did it went unheard on deaf ears it did fall. So again I have to ask myself, does it matter? Not at all. Are people really stupid, so blind they cannot see, that Dublin they mean business and a united Ireland we will be? So get up off your arm chair and get on the streets and shout and show them that we mean business for we want Dublin out.
Notable in the poem is this Loyalist women’s reference to the campaign against the agreement; she emphasizes that (Ulster still says no). Also prominent in the poem is this Loyalist woman’s doubt that “anyone cares” that Britain is revoking its claim to Northern Ireland, and she poses the rhetorical question “Did anybody wail?” In a sort of sad lament, she answers her own question by stating “not at all.” The respondent highlights a largely overlooked sentiment among these Loyalist women related to their feelings of almost disbelief that their government would betray them by again entering into talks with “Dublin” and “selling” Northern Ireland. As this respondent looks retrospectively at Unionist reaction to the AIA, she again conveys a sense of despair in the proposed agreement. Like their response to the Sunningdale conference before it, Unionists and Loyalists organized a massive, widespread general strike called the “Day of Action” where factories and shops were closed and public transportation and air travel was interrupted again. By February 1987, the articles proposed under the AIA were still not formalized. Unknown to Unionists at the time, many of these same provisions would be carried over and implemented in the next agreement posed by the British government, the Belfast Agreement of 1998.
The Belfast (or Good Friday) Agreement—May 1998
Just as Sunningdale and the Anglo-Irish Agreement before it, the Belfast Agreement was designed by the British and Irish governments to create devolved democratic institutions for Northern Ireland and further consolidate the role of the North/South Council. However, unlike the two previous agreements, the Belfast Agreement sought to decommission all paramilitaries’ weapons, to reform Northern Irish policing, and to release political prisoners. Widely reported as a new beginning for the province, the referendum passed with over 71 percent of voters voting “yes.” But some observers noted that aspects of the referendum may not have been greeted with the excitement in all sectors of the province in the ways that the election results suggested. For instance, in their 2006 study of violence and segregation in Northern Ireland, Peter Shirlow and Brendan Murtagh stated:
Somewhat peculiarly, the vote was not broken down by electoral ward as is commonplace in elections. The suspension of this practice was undertaken owing to fears that any such spatial breakdown would indicate that the majority of unionists had voted against the agreement. At best 51 percent of unionist electorate supported the Agreement. It was also assumed that a vote breakdown would have indicated that there was a small but significant rejectionist vote within certain republican-dominated communities.
It would appear that the British government ministers and other political leaders feared that if detailed information regarding the specific sectors/communities within various Unionist parties that did not support the referendum became public, it could jeopardize the agreement. Indeed, in my own research in Loyalist communities in Northern Ireland, many Loyalists report that the agreement did not represent the interests of their community. Rather than unifying the population in a combined sense of hope for the future, for many Loyalists the agreement assured future division “… the Belfast Agreement copper-fastened the importance of groups and in so doing denied not only the heterogeneous nature of Northern Irish society but also the assembly of diverse voices within groups. Political change furthered the exclusive against the exceptional and undermined the rationale of alternative political identities.” The agreement also filled many on the ground with the sense the British government had failed its loyal citizens. For example, one Loyalist woman community worker who was interviewed in a study of Loyalist reactions to the proposal for the formation of a truth and reconciliation commission in Northern Ireland said,
The Belfast Agreement was like the shooting and the bombing all over again. The government took away the belief that at least the people died for a reason. We’ve been kicked in the teeth, not once but twice; once by the perpetrators and the second time by our own government.
In another interview, a woman who was a former member of the Ulster Volunteer Force referenced the intense sense of anger and disappointment that she continues to feel toward elected Unionist politicians. She feels so mistreated by the Northern Irish/British government that she is unwilling to fly the Northern Irish/Ulster flag. She feels that Unionist political representatives have historically failed to protect Protestant/Loyalist interests. In the following exchange, the respondent specifically names David Trimble (the former leader of the Ulster Unionist Party and chief negotiator for Protestants in the 1998 Belfast Agreement talks) as being responsible for abandoning Loyalist interests in Northern Ireland. Her anger toward both Britain and Unionist politicians combined with her sense of disappointment and frustration was unmistakable. Out of this anger she now believes Northern Ireland should voluntarily separate itself from the United Kingdom and become an independent state. She stated,
The Ulster flag? Well, the way that I look at it, Trimble, he was the man that was standing for us, and look what he has worked us into now. And I am not part of that. I believe in Ulster going on her own if she could, but she couldn’t. But I think she should try it anyway.
An especially notable and gendered element of this respondent’s account of the Ulster flag and her idea that Northern Ireland separate itself from Britain is that she refers to Ulster as female. In stating her own belief that “Ulster should go on her own” and that while it is unlikely that such a political arrangement would be realized “she should try it anyway.” This respondent’s reference to Ulster in the feminine is not in itself unusual. Historically, the Northern Irish Protestant dominance within the United Kingdom nation has been infused by its adherents with femininity, most often as “mother.” That is, just as Russian nationalists have referred to their nation as “Mother Russia” and Irish Nationalists have referred to their nation as “Mother Ireland,” so too have many present day Loyalists and Unionists referred to their nation within the United Kingdom in the feminine. From the field of political psychology, David Winter discusses the ways in which it has traditionally been seen as men’s role to protect the gendered nation is generally depicted at vulnerable and “defenseless.” However, in this respondent’s description of Ulster, a woman (in this case a combatant woman) has taken the responsibility to protect “her.” In other words, traditional nationalist discourse characterizes a state as a woman being fought for by its men. In this discourse, the state is a woman being fought for by its women.
For other women members of LPOs interviewed for the study there was a sense of confusion about what effect the Belfast Agreement would have on their lives. The complete restructuring of the police force (the Protestant dominated Royal Ulster Constabulary or RUC) was one such unintended result.
… [People] like me, they didn’t understand all the implications. I knew the police force was going to get a good shake up. But I didn’t realize how much and that we would lose the RUC all together and that they would be discredited all over the world. After thirty years, we had had enough, and most moderates voted for the GFA [Good Friday Agreement], but we didn’t realize the price we would have to pay.
Another respondent took issue with the ways the agreement invited members of Sinn Fein (the largest nationalist party in Northern Ireland), Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, to take seats in a power-sharing government, given their background as leading members of the paramilitary organization the Provisional Irish Republican Army. The interviewee “resented” the invitation and makes reference to the U.S. “War on Terror” to illustrate her point to the interviewer, her American interviewer. When asked about the agreement she stated:
We resented the fact that they were being brought into government. And they were still out there murdering and killing British soldiers and the British population—and the British government expected us to sit. You know, and take it and sit on [it] government-like. Can you imagine Bush and the likes sitting on the government with al Qaeda after the 9/11? But that’s what they expected us just to do to sit down and say “Carry on.” You know?
St. Andrews’ Agreement—March 2007
Despite the optimistic news reports related to the signing of the St. Andrews’ Agreement on 26 March 2007 and the withdrawal of British troops on 31 July 2007, for many in Northern Ireland the political and religious conflict in the province continues. So while news bulletins no longer report bombings, shootings, and riots with the same frequency, the degree of discontent (particularly at the street level) remains, and sustained peace in Northern Ireland has not yet been fully realized. For example on 31 July 2007, Roman Catholics and Protestants clashed over Republican plans to march through the largely Protestant community of Ballymena. In a separate incident outside of Belfast, two hundred members and supporters of the UDA staged a massive riot in response to police searches of homes of some of its members. While this type of Loyalist paramilitary violence is mundane compared to the level and scope of violence during the height of the Northern Irish conflict, sectarian tensions remain.
Although my fieldwork in Northern Ireland concluded in August 2006, the signing of the St. Andrews’ Agreement by the British and Irish governments in March 2007 has been part of ongoing discussions between one of the study’s key informants in Northern Ireland and me. When asked about her reaction to the signing of the agreement, this former member of the Women’s UDA sense of disdain and disappointment with the most recent agreement was consistent with her feelings about the three previous “disagreements.” Characterizing the agreement as “just another paper,” she said,
The St. Andrews’ agreement? No one really knew anything about it or paid much attention, even though it was on the news. It was just another paper, another way for the British Government to threaten—it better work or else all power would be taken from us for the foreseeable future. We know Paisley did a double take so he could become First Minister. Although he lost some votes because of it, there really wasn’t any decent Unionist to vote for against his party …. Like most people here, I have no faith in the different groups and no faith in the politicians. All spin, we don’t know what the truth is anymore.
This interviewee expresses a cumulative sense of distrust, despair, and failure that all of the women engaged in the study stated they felt. This is palatable in this respondent’s assertion that “I have no faith in the different groups and no faith in the politicians,” and “we don’t know what the truth is anymore.” It is out of such despair that arguably a degree of radicalization developed in these women and sustained their participation in LPOs and further complicated and compromised these agreements. The testimony of women combatants may also suggest a realization that their government is not prepared to reward Loyalists for their fight against armed Republicanism by guaranteeing the continued union with Northern Ireland. Rolston asserts
The most difficult realization for loyalists to confront is the fact that, having believed that they were central to the state’s war against insurgency, they now find themselves abandoned … The state may judge itself to be acting pragmatically, but for loyalists, it is the state which has abandoned the principles to which they still adhere … continuing to view the state as theirs, there is little that loyalists can do to take the state to task over its betrayal. The most they can do is protest about political advances, real or imaginary, made by republicans and nationalists as a result of the Belfast Agreement.
In response to this perceived abandonment, some women interviewed were motivated to join LPOs. When asked why she participated in her local branch of the Women’s UDA, one woman affirmed her belief that not only was the group something that she believed in, but the social welfare that the group provided was essential given the injustices being wrought against Protestants not only by the IRA, but also by the British government. Another interviewee emphasized that it was not only the Republican population that suffered political and economic isolation in Northern Ireland in the 1970s and 1980s, but large portions of the Protestant population as well. In her view this economic suffering is not something that some outside of Northern Ireland wanted to acknowledge, adding to her anger toward the British government and further alienating her from their political maneuvering related to peace agreements. She stated,
I just, I just found it fighting for something that I believed in. And the injustice that went on, and it did. I mean everybody said “Oh this happened to the Republicans and that happened to the Republicans.” They did not see what was happening to us. And they did not even want to know what was happening to us.
These women’s perspectives not only illustrate the central role of the LPOs in their lives and their communities, but also the significant role that women played in these organizations over the period of the Troubles.
Locating “Women” in the Dialogue on Conflict
Within the last decade, feminist scholars of International Relations have documented the many ways in which women’s concerns, ideas, and hopes have been habitually excluded from many of the places and spaces where male political leaders and representatives conduct peace negotiations. Feminists have noted “… in most conflict-ridden societies, male dominance and advantages over women are issues rarely ever found on the negotiating agenda.” That is, the dominance of male visions of post-conflict society frequently trumps women’s concerns or ideas about how a society might take shape following conflict, a dynamic that has consequences for the post-conflict distribution of resources as well.
Azza Karam, Senior Policy Research Advisor at the United Nations Development Program, outlines nine ways that women’s lives are reshaped by conflict including: (1) sudden accession to household head with limited resources, (2) mobilized as soldiers in patriarchal militaries, (3) subjected to increased medical and social vulnerability, (4) shouldered increased security risks in disintegrating polities, (5) confronted increased sexualized violence, (6) negotiated family disruptions, (7) disadvantaged refugees, (8) experienced increased violence against women in domestic space, and (9) war-structured sexual work.
On the basis of these diverse ways that women experience conflict, Karam argues that sustainable peace projects cannot rationally exclude significant portions of any population that suffers under conflict (read as women) and that their inclusion must go beyond token efforts for women’s appeasement. For Karam, the inclusion of women in peace processes is a logical and moral imperative, one that goes beyond the symbolic inclusion of a few high-profile women at the negotiation table to an integral part of even the most diverse societies, even allowing such societies the opportunity to evolve.
These theoretical arguments have been echoed in the policy world with the passage of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Beijing Platform for Action (passed in 1995), and United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (passed in 2000). These international agreements, both individually and collectively, represent paradigmatic shifts in thinking about the central role of women in conflict and post-conflict environments.
This emphasis on including women in peace processes has affected the peace negotiations around the conflict in Northern Ireland. Some women were present at the negotiation table. One of the most prominent women present in the negotiations surrounding the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) in 1998 was Mo Mowlam, then the United Kingdom Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Mowlam has often been considered an important broker of the GFA, and she was central to facilitating conversations between representatives from the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland.
Also, the nonpartisan but short-lived political party, the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition (NIWC), did contribute to disrupting the highly patriarchal politics at play in the negotiation of the GFA. Still, the NIWC served as a buffer between Unionists and Republicans and therefore had little opportunity or support to advance their own progressive, women-centered political agenda.
In other words, there were two distinctive features of representation of women at the peace negotiation table for the GFA. The first is that it was non-partisan, peace-brokering women who were included, rather than partisans and combatants. The second is that the women who participated were either unwilling or unable to pursue seriously the consideration of women’s issues by the negotiators. The remainder of this article argues that the conflict in Northern Ireland serves as a theoretical and practical example of a serious flaw in both feminist analysis and policy work that encourages the inclusion of women in peace-building processes. A crucial question that neither feminist theorists nor policy makers have really addressed, however, is whether the women being included in peace processes are representative of all women, or if they are a particular type of woman.
Many of the theoretical arguments and policy provisions for women’s inclusion justify it by linking femininity and peace. For example, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 recommends women be included in peacebuilding processes “because women are key to international peace and security,” implying that it is women’s peacefulness that makes them a useful addition to negotiations. This assumed link between femininity and peacefulness creates a selection effect for the sort of women who are allowed to participate in peace processes. Women included in peace processes are often those women who play roles traditionally associated with femininity, advocating for and brokering peace agreements rather than being invested in the conflict.
In Northern Ireland, combatant women are being systematically excluded from peace processes. The exclusion of combatant women from peace processes reifies gender stereotypes, while marginalizing a part of the population that feminists have sought to empower. Gender subordination, however, is not the only impact of the exclusion of combatant women from peace processes. The absence of combatant women at the bargaining table, as the Northern Ireland conflict demonstrates, risks the negotiation of unrepresentative and untenable agreements.
Combatant Women as Key to Gaining Security—the Impacts of Leaving LPO Women Out
One key feature of the exclusion of combatant women in the Northern Ireland peace process is that they were not only excluded by the British government, but also by their opponents, and/or the formal organizers of peace talks. Their role in the conflict was denied by their own male LPO comrades. In this context it became routine to deny politically violent women recognition of their contributions to the defense of Ulster. Even though the women I interviewed played crucial roles in a conflict that has dominated their lives for decades, the denial of their existence by their own partisans provides a structural barrier to the representation of any unique interests they might have. Further, regardless of their unique interests, the exclusion of these women is a relic of the patriarchy not only of the governments at the table but also of the political parties and paramilitary organizations in which they participate. The inclusion of these women, then, can disrupt the patriarchy both of high politics and of armed nonstate groups, providing not only alternative pathways to women’s liberation but also alternative pathways to peace.
The exclusion of women, in this view, is symptomatic of hierarchal and masculinized norms and practices that in themselves reaffirm women’s feminized and subservient position in scholarly and policy thinking about solutions to conflict. In this understanding, investigations about conflict and conflict resolution must start with a consideration of gender and power if, as Sjoberg suggests in the introduction to this special issue, we are to be more “descriptively accurate and predictably powerful” in our understanding of global politics.
This is clear from the other consequences of excluding LPO women. From the evidence gathered in my interviews, it appears that the exclusion of LPO women in consecutive peacebuilding and conflict resolution processes in Northern Ireland was a missed opportunity for the governments of Britain and the Republic of Ireland. Despite there being little change in the views of the majority of Loyalists on their desire to remain part of the United Kingdom, the British government pressed forward with the attempt to develop an “Irish dimension” in the future governance of the province. Without attending to the concerns of these LPO women that their national, religious, and cultural identities were gradually being degraded with the signing of the agreements, in a very tangible way these agreements failed to address the needs of a sometimes violent and critical constituency in the province. Instead of gaining benefits, security, or confidence via the agreements, the widespread feeling among these LPO women was one of loss. Without the recognition of these issues the conflict and tension in the province continues, not only between opposing Loyalist and Republican communities, but also within Loyalist communities whose future political path has become clouded since the signing of the GFA. Shirlow and Murtagh reinforce this idea stating
… the failure to resolve ethno-sectarian tensions at the ground level and within the most marginalized and deprived communities in Belfast is indicative of a continual refusal to tackle the nature of underlying tensions and realities…. Beliefs and practices … inequality both in materials and cultural terms remains as an ever-present force that shapes the reality of wider divisions.
In other words, the exclusion of LPO women created an addition fractionalization within Northern Ireland, and an additional constituency that felt disenfranchised not only by their own government and the British government, but also by their own representatives in the peace process.
A second issue that the inclusion of LPO women into peace and conflict resolution processes would have revealed was the critical role that class alienation played in fomenting Protestant and Loyalist opposition to the agreements. As those most likely to bear the financial burden of war on the home, women would have been excellent barometers of the social and economic conditions of Protestant Northern Ireland. As stated earlier, working-class Loyalists were at the center of ongoing efforts to mobilize strikes against Sunningdale and Anglo-Irish Agreements, while middle- and upper-class Unionists represented their cause at the peace table. The particular sensitivity that Loyalist women have to issues of class could have given negotiators foresight into a potential pitfall with the agreement. The remarkable influence of working-class Loyalists over a large majority of the Northern Irish community and their control of powerful LPOs was not fully appreciated or recognized by British negotiators. As interviewees testified, British apathy toward working-class Protestants (particularly hard-working Protestant families) was an insult that could not be overlooked by politically violent Loyalists. As each of the peace agreements were negotiated and as these Loyalist women continued to feel excluded, the class and gender conflicts remained unresolved.
Finally, and along those lines, the inclusion of LPO women, both in the peace negotiations and in the study of the success or failure of the agreements that came out of them, would produce substantially different results. The LPO women I interviewed would have objected to all four agreements as they were negotiated. Whether or not they would have successfully altered the agreements or prevented their passage, these women’s opinions would have altered the discourse in the peace negotiations substantially and brought issues to the table that were not centrally featured in the negotiations without their voices. Further, the interviews I conducted indicate that the common claims that the agreements have successfully brought peace to Northern Ireland are, to a large extent, erroneous. As the testimonies of these LPO women affirm, the fact that four consecutive attempts were made by the governments of Britain and the Republic of Ireland is in many ways indicative of the failure of this legislation versus it success.
Looking Toward the Future of Women in Peace Negotiations
The feminist question “where are the women?” in peace negotiations has inspired substantial effort in the scholarly and policy worlds to put women at the table at peace negotiations. However, this article argues that it is important not only to ask where the women are, but also to ask where the combatant women are during the peacebuilding process. Three key arguments suggest that this is an important intervention. First, combatant women are a violent constituency capable of disrupting the success of any negotiated peace. In other words, they, like any other combatants, are a security threat that needs to be included efforts to de-escalate the conflict. Second, combatant women may have unique insights (for example, the class conflict issue) and interests (for example, in gender rights) useful to the negotiation of a representative and effective peace agreement. Third, the inclusion of combatant women in peace negotiations interrupts gendered stereotypes of women as necessarily peaceful, as well as patriarchal traditions of their governments and their political and paramilitary organizations.
Ultimately, the utility of contributing the perspectives of women combatants in conflict resolution processes is untested—combatant women have not been tangibly included in the peace negotiation processes in Northern Ireland or elsewhere in the world. However, the potential benefits are promising. The research and curiosity of feminist scholars has cautioned that the incorporation of women’s voices is not a panacea. Simply considering women does not in itself resolve conflict without an acknowledgment of the many ways that masculine politics has sown distrust and political alienation among this segment of the Northern Irish population. Interviews with women members of LPOs have revealed what scholars have previously been hesitant to acknowledge—that where women stand on the multiple and complex issues surrounding political conflict has an impact on peace and security.
The testimony of Loyalist women that have wielded political violence in Northern Ireland has not only exposed the fatal error that British negotiators committed in omitting the ideas and perspectives of women combatants in the thirty years of the Troubles, but also gives notice to other negotiators—male and female—that there is a gendered dimension to security. More thoughtful considerations should also serve to make us all smarter about what role women played in the Hamas takeover of the West Bank in June 2007, the ongoing role women are playing in the violent separatist campaigns in Chechnya and Sri Lanka, and how women may have shaped the deadly outcome of the siege of the Red Mosque in Pakistan in July 2007. As women continue to register their political perspectives through the use of political violence, there is now hope that the peacebuilding and security community will have new tools from which they can draw to reduce and better understand the violence—and perhaps avoid it all together.