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No
one concerned with history or politics can remain
unaware of the enormous role that political violence
has always played in human affairs. Traditional research
has focused on the causes of political violence and
the response of the authorities in order to prevent
any future episodes. Analyses have tended to be divided
into two camps with liberals rejecting the notion
that violence can be permissible in the confines of
liberal democracies and radicals endorsing the selective
use of violence on democratic or humanitarian grounds.
It was the radical challenge to the dominant liberal
orthodoxy concerning violence that generated much
of the re-evaluation of the concept of political violence.
For
liberals, violence for political ends is never justified
in liberal democracies. However, its use is permissible
against "dictatorships" and other authoritarian
regimes when it is used to defend human rights and
to push for reform. This concession underlies liberal
support for Black liberation in apartheid South Africa
and is itself present in the histories of many liberal
democracies that emerged after violent struggles with
absolutism, such as the United States. Liberals insist
that a liberal, democratic government protects the
rights of all its citizens and provides them with
the opportunity for their political views to be heard.
In the case of liberal democracy, they argue, political
violence is intolerable.
In reality, inequalities are far more common within
liberal democracies than the liberal view admits.
The race riots that ignited in Britain during the
early 1980's were carried out in response to the social
and economic status of the Black population, while
the secondary position of Irish Catholics under devolved
government in the North of Ireland also upsets the
liberal argument. The difficulties of race relations
in the United States also undermine the liberal rule.
This anomalous position led to a radical development
of the concept of violence and of its use. Radicals
ask whether the ends justified the means, whether
violence that is used for political ends can be justified
if the consequences are good enough on balance. Broadening
the term beyond its normal range of application, radicals
argued that violence against the state should not
be singled out for condemnation. Radicals also argue
that any concept of violence should encompass 'class
warfare', meaning circumstances detrimental to the
human condition such as inequality, poverty and exploitation.
However, this definition can be problematic, in that
causing human misery by neglect cannot be equated
with a deliberate act of aggression with the aim of
causing death or harm to another human being. The
radical tendency to widen the scope is in danger of
deconstructing the concept of violence into oblivion.
However,
those within societies undergoing political turmoil,
whether ethnically divided or under colonial rule,
argue that the main issues when discussing violence
is the legitimacy of the action and the fine line
between force and violence. According to the anti-colonial
theorist, Frantz Fanon, political violence is a necessary
device that helps to destroy the inferiority complex
of the colonised and is therefore essential to the
process of de-colonisation and even to confirmation
of selfhood.
Violence
will be claimed and taken over by the native at the
moment when deciding to embody history in his own
person, he surges into forbidden quarters.
Fanon
also argues that any violence perpetrated by the 'oppressed'
should be seen in the context of violence by the 'settler',
'Colonialism is violence in its natural state,
and will only yield when confronted by greater violence.'
Fanon's work was to have a great impact on the Algerian
anti-colonial struggle and exercised an enormous influence
on the development of African nationalism in the 1950's
and 1960's.
Although
most liberal theorists reject the Tolstoyan view that
violence is morally prohibited no matter what the
circumstances, acceptable violence is normally qualified
on grounds of legitimacy. There exists a dual dichotomy
in the debate concerning legitimate and illegitimate
violence. The distinguishing features separating violence
from force are that violence suggests illegitimate,
illegal, arbitrary, unpredictable and aggressive actions.
References to "force" are used in most societies
when describing the actions of government agencies
enforcing the law such as the army and police. Force
is legitimate, regulated, reactive and defensive.
Therefore, 'violence' is a socially constructed term
and ones attitude on the concept will depend on and
reflect ones political outlook.
In a deeply divided society ones conception of violence
will reflect how one views the legitimacy of the State
and its institutions and thus political violence.
The formula devised by radicals and liberals does
not hold up in this unstable political playing field.
One case study is the North of Ireland where a protracted
violent conflict lasting for over 30 years and costing
in excess of 3,000 lives. In this scenario, mutually
exclusive 'national' aspirations have ruled out any
practice of the 'normal' politics of accommodation
that is characteristic of other western liberal democracies,
The
Government of Ireland Act (1921) that partitioned
Ireland created the conditions necessary for future
incidents of political violence. The consolidation
of two fledgling states by attempts to restore public
order and establishing a sense of legitimacy rested
mostly on respective religious hegemony. Often the
political violence that erupted in the late 1960's
is accredited with being the result of a Catholic
civil rights campaign and the subsequent violent reaction
by the ruling Unionist community. However, political
violence in the North is endemic and will remain perpetual
until the question of legitimacy is resolved.
Legitimacy is also a recurring theme in other conflicts
that have dominated international relations. The Palestinian/Israeli
conflict originates in a dispute over legitimacy.
This conflict centres on the question of whether the
creation of the Israeli State in 1948 was legal. The
Palestinians who claimed the area as their homeland
consistently rejected to recognise the existence of
the State of Israel. Only in the late 1980's during
the early days of the recent Middle East peace process
did the PLO leader Yassar Arafat acknowledged the
existence of the State, much to the contention of
many fellow Palestinians. The Zionist settlers have
also consistently refused to recognise the grievances
of the Palestinian inhabitants of the area thus the
two sides remaining implacably opposed for decades.
Political
violence has been a common feature in the region ranging
from small skirmishes between rival factions, counter-
insurgency and full-scale wars. Ian Lustick argues
that the violence between the Palestinians and the
Israelis was for many years 'solipsistic'. It is a
striking fact that in the development of both Zionist
and Palestinian Nationalism, the purpose of inflicting
death believed to serve the psychological needs on
whose behalf the violence was being carried out. This
coincides with the Fanon theory of the development
of a national consciousness through warfare. The Apartheid
ethos of racial subjugation that has characterised
the politics of the post-1910 South African regime
until the free democratic elections in 1994, coupled
with the lack of internal and international legitimacy
has led to the history of political violence there.
The question of legitimacy arises also when looking
at the use of political violence. Not wishing to support
violence for its own sake, most advocates argue that
it is not enough merely to show that the State itself
is inherently bad and may have done things that are
tantamount to violence. It is also necessary to show
that violent action against authorities can be politically
effective even in liberal democracies. Therefore,
the relationship between violence and power is very
strong. The use of violence can be very effective
when attempting to seize power or influencing the
policies of governments. It can also bring attention
to a particular cause or grievance better than the
use of other tactics such as civil disobedience.
Hannah
Arendt contends that the essence of power is the effectiveness
of command then there is no greater power than that
which grows from the barrel of a gun. However, she
also warns that the practice of political violence
can lead to a situation where the means overwhelms
the end. If the intended goals are not achieved with
a short period of time the more often than not the
exercise will end in failure. This is certainly evident
in the way that the Provisional IRA and Sinn Féin
and the PLO, after decades of 'armed struggle', have
engaged in their respective “peace processes”
and ultimately compromised their basic demands. However,
it is argued that it can severely limit the perpetrator
involvement in the 'normal' political arena. One means
of side stepping this obstacle is the use of a broad
political movement as in the case of Northern Ireland
and the expansion of Provisional Sinn Féin
in the early 1980's and its absorption into the establishment
in the 1990’s.
There
is no doubt that the issue of political violence has
been to the fore of international relations since
the ending of the Second World War. Concerns over
political stability and internal security have dominated
the political policies of most liberal democracies.
The rising tide of anti-colonial struggles particularly
in Africa and the increasing uncertainty over the
stability of one-party governments, in the cases of
South Africa and the North of Ireland, forced the
issue of political violence onto the political agenda.
Political violence gained a greater importance to
a generation that grew up under the shadow of the
atom bomb and other huge technological advances in
warfare.
Alongside
this development was the attempt by political theorists
to analyse the actual concept of violence and define
on moral grounds a basis for its use. What is evident
when looking at divided societies is that the application
of the concept can be manipulated to suit the goals
of any particular side. To the insurgent the violence
he or she employs is not violence in the crudest sense
but, instead, is 'armed struggle' that is morally
justified in the face of injustice. To the authorities
the actions of the insurgents are defined as illegal
terrorism whilst the methods employed by its agents,
such as the police or army, are defended as “necessary”
force. Despite the radical re-examination of the concept
those who set the agenda for international relations,
namely the United States and Britain, tend to abide
by the liberal conception. It follows, then, that
violence is the illegal use of force or threat against
a person or property and, formulated as such, is quite
distinct from both the illegal use of force of the
State and from the potentially harmful but unintended
effects of economic systems. In deeply divided societies
such as the North of Ireland this distinction simply
breaks down.
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