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The
Irish News recently reported that there have
been twice as many killings in the police division
based around Glasgow as in the whole of Northern Ireland
this year. In this division, which has a population
of two millions, compared to 1.7 million in Northern
Ireland, there have been 60 murders since January
1, compared to thirty in the six counties. (Irish
News 17 November 2003). This kind of information
will be used by all sort of governmental agencies
and various experts to “prove” that contrary
to received opinion, there has been and is no real
conflict in Northern Ireland.
Is
Northern Ireland a dangerous place? Many people would
believe so. The image of the province is above all
associated with political assassinations, sectarian
murders, bombings, shootings, kneecappings and other
punishment beatings. On top of that, there are the
usual dangers of illness, accidents and crime. To
have a clear picture, it is necessary to quantify
and qualify the nature and extent of those dangers.
The best source of information is the University of
Ulster's CAIN website (http://cain.ulst.ac.uk).
This website has probably the most extensive database
of official and independent statistics on various
kinds of dangers. First, how dangerous is the province
in terms of political violence? An independent and
reliable source (Malcolm Sutton's index of Troubles
related deaths) records 3523 deaths which are directly
linked to the conflict, and which occured between
14 July 1969 and 31st December 2001. The discrepancy
between this figure and the official British figure
arises because of differences of interpretation in
a small number of cases. One might point out that
3523 deaths might be small, but it is for a population
of 1,685, 267 (Census 29 April 2001). Almost two percent
of the population of Northern Ireland have been killed
or injured as a result of political violence since
1969. The equivalent ratio of victims to population
in Great Britain would have been over 100 000 killed,
and in the USA over 500 000, about ten times the number
of Americans killed during the Vietnam war. Of course,
the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland remain
a "low intensity conflict" not comparable
to major wars where hundreds of thousands if not millions
have died like in the Democratic Republic of Congo,
Liberia, Sierra Leone, etc. It is also important to
note that political violence does not occur with equal
intensity in space and time. For example, 479 died
as a result of the "security situation"
in 1972, but only 8 in 1999. And the spatial distribution
of killings is also uneven. Much of the violence has
been spatially concentrated within specific areas
(like North Belfast's infamous 'Murder Mile' where
over 25% of deaths related to the conflict happened,
or the Tyrone/Armagh 'Murder Triangle', etc) leaving
the rest of the province fairly normal.
Government
agencies have tried to downplay the scale of the conflict,
and have stressed the 'normality' of the province.
For example, they point out that the number of people
killed as a result of road accidents during the 1969-1994
period exceeds the the total number of of those who
died as a result of political violence during the
same period.(1) Compared
to the rest of the UK, Northern Ireland is the most
dangerous place to be on the road, as it has the highest
number of deaths resulting from car accidents (with
10 deaths per 100 000 of population as opposed to
6 per 100 000 in Britain). This figure is also substantially
higher than the figures for the Republic of Ireland.
Roads in Northern Ireland are more dangerous than
the conflict. But Brendan O Leary, a political scientist
from the London School of Economics has pointed out
that comparisons between deaths resulting from the
'security situation' and deaths resulting from road
traffic are fundamentally misleading.
The
contrast between deaths from political violence
and deaths from road accidents is grotesquely inappropriate.
Deaths because of political violence are an addition
to other socially caused deaths, and in functioning
and stable liberal democracies deaths caused by
road accidents should be, and usually are higher
than deaths caused by political violence. There
is nothing exceptional about Northern Ireland's
road accident/political violence ratio, except that
it is used as a distracting indicator by a police
force anxious for a good press. Citizens of liberal
democracies and the governments support private
and public transport policies which have known and
built-in risks of death. There is no comparable
way in which they explicity accept built-in risks
of death from political violence when they make
and enforce public policy. (Brendan O Leary
and John McGarry, The Politics of Antagonism,
pp.12-13)
If
governmental agencies are looking for the single most
persistent cause of premature deaths to compare with
the death rate from political violence, they should
point to the death rate from heart and respiratory
diseases. Ulster fries and Regal cigarettes are more
dangerous and lethal than local drivers or the security
forces and paramilitaries, as Northern Ireland has
a higher incidence of deaths resulting from both heart
diseases and respiratory diseases than any other part
of the UK. The province is also a dangerous place
to be born in. Northern Ireland had the highest rate
of infant mortality in the UK. However, this has been
decreasing steadily over the years, and has fallen
from 22.7 (per 1000 live and still births) in 1971
to 6.1 in the late 1990s.
Another
comparison used to 'prove' that the six counties are
not a dangerous place is that the numbers killed as
a result of political violence in Northern Ireland
are much lower than those killed in homicides in major
US and European cities. For example, Invest Northern
Ireland promotional material boasts that according
to the 2001 World Victimisation Survey, Northern Ireland
has the lowest crime victimisation rate in the world
(even lower than Lichtenstein!) and according to the
2002 Peace Monitor Report, Northern Ireland is a safer
place to live than other UK regions, many European
countries and the USA, with a death by violence rate
of 2.5 per 100 000 compared to a UK and US average
of 4.4 and 8.9 respectively. For O Leary and McGarry,
the comparison of the death rate in the Northern Ireland
conflict with the homicide rate in major US and European
cities is equally misleading. "Ordinary violent
criminality is dramatically less in Northern Ireland:
it is politically - not criminally - violent, whereas
the converse applies to the USA." On the whole,
the overall level of crime (excluding "scheduled
offences" - political violence) in Northern Ireland
is significantly lower than that in England, Scotland
and Wales, notifiable offences (per 100 000) in Northern
Ireland being less than half of that recorded in England
and Wales. In 1969, before the Troubles started, there
was a total of 600 prisoners in the North. By 29 February
1976, there were over 1500 special category status
prisoners as well as 460 others awaiting trial. In
comparison, there were less than 1300 "ordinary
decent criminals".
Overall,
comparing various 'dangers' is problematic as it raises
the spectre of incommensurability. What is there in
common between heart diseases, car accidents and political
violence apart from some vague Wittgensteinian "family
resemblances"? A more relevant question perhaps
is to ask who is most at risk from the various dangers.
The vast majority of those who died as a result of
political violence in the North were of a working
class background. The lower a person is on the social
ladder, the unhealthier this person will be and the
shorter his or her life life expectancy. A person
from a low income group is more likely to suffer from
lung cancer, coronary heart disease, stroke, respiratory
disease, obesity and violent accidents, a lower birth
weight, a poorer diet and will have a life expectancy
five years shorter than those in upper income group.
From available statistics, the conclusion is that
the poorer you are, the more dangerous life in Northern
Ireland is likely to be.
(1)
A programme on Channel 4 ("Casualties of Peace",
14 July 2003) revealed that since 1991, over 2000
British soldiers had died on duty in non-combat
situations, victims of everything from drownings
and suicides to car accidents. That is approximately
four times the amount of British soldiers (excluding
local regiments) killed during the whole of the
Troubles. Years ago, one of the NIO's favorite arguments
was that West Germany was a more dangerous place
for the British Army than Northern Ireland as more
soldiers died in car accidents there than in political
violence in the North. It is also interesting to
note that US casualties in Iraq are double of what
is usually reported because of the number of accidents,
suicides and other non-combat deaths. In early August,
according to Pentagon figures, 52 US soldiers had
been killed since President Bush declared the war
over in 1 May. But the total number of US deaths
from all causes was more than double of that, at
112. (The Guardian, 6 August 2003) But no one is
going to say that there’s not really a war
going on in Iraq because more soldiers are killed
in non-combat situations than in ambushes.
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