DC 8 Tit For Tat - Revenge And Retaliation

SOME DYNAMICS OF CONFLICT-AFFECTED CULTURES AND SOCIETIES 8 DC 8: TIT-FOR-TAT-REVENGE AND RETALIATION Tit-for-tat urges for retaliation and revenge rapidly escalate between opponents, and between their supporters, too readily often drawn in to their actions of lawlessness. Such dynamics destroy any existing order and can generate a chaos in which all can be destroyed. Agreed and fair law and order structures are essential to the working of secure societies. Such structures hold both the offenders and those offended against to account. The offender is told that their behavior is unacceptable. Those offended against are also told that retaliation and revenge are not acceptable nor allowed.

Ideally agreed law and order both criminalises the person who carries out a violent action and, at the same time, cuts any tendency or wish by the victim, or his friends and family, to act in a violent retaliatory manner. In a conflict-affected society, in the medium-term, people and organisations need to be aware of such tendencies and establish agreements and structures to make their escalation less likely. In the longer-term such actions can only be ended through strong and agreed law and order institutions. Recognising the dynamics of vendetta and retaliation. Policing becomes a fundamental issue when the law is eroded. At the beginning of the Northern Ireland conflict the British Government felt that it had become necessary to use the army to support the civil power. In such an environment all involved readily became anxious, including the police. “I made contact with the police when we were getting the threatening phone calls. I was up in the police station and talked to the police. (The phone calls were threats to the speakers life) I went to the police, and they brought in the detectives who said ‘Be very careful because, I can assure you, these boys (those who were threatening her) don’t care what they do’. The Police Community Relations officer said to me, ‘We could come out and sit on your doorstep, but we would only draw attention to ourselves. It is up to you what you do, the decision is going to be yours whether you decide to go ahead or not. All I can say to you is, that some night you might send for us and we won’t be able to come because of where you live. The situation could be a real ambush for us, of that there is no doubt’”. (Woman in peace group) In the example above, the person was not able to gain reassurance about her safety from a police officer. At that time, the police were part of a criminal justice system that did not have the support of all parties! The officer believed that he could not successfully apprehend those who threatened her. When the law was not able to act without fear or favour, the emergence of tit-for-tat killings and local vigilante operations in Northern Ireland became tolerated, and even approved of by some. Within some facilitated groups, the experience of tit for tat made sense for many people. When speaking about these experiences in the past and present they began to understand how tit-for- tat movements emerged. They acknowledged how their views, as citizens, were so easily shaped by mutual antagonism and that they often retreated back into their identity tradition.

In a small, predominantly Catholic town, a march by a Protestant group was to take place. Community workers spoke of how for weeks before people had “been taking sides for, or against, the marchers and whether they had a right to march. We could see established community relations links dissolving before our eyes. The contagion of fear spread almost at once, driving people into their respective camps, seeking safety and moving away from their new contacts. The police were dragged into it, in terms of whether they were going to marshal the march, re-route it or ban it. No one could see them as just the police who were there to protect the law.” (Cross Community Group) From this experience, people learned how there was an absence of commonly respected authority at the community level in Northern Ireland at the time of the conflict and before the 1998 Peace Agreement, In a more secure society a respected criminal justice authority would have been able to cut the fears and diminish the threat. Without such a transcending authority, fears easily grew and the possibility of tit-for-tat exchanges grew. After some people shared their experiences of violence in Northern Ireland, other members of the facilitated group began to understand how people were often attacked for the tradition they come from, not for anything they had done themselves. Attacks were, rarely, just on the people who were directly hurt. They were a message to a much bigger group of peoplexxi. “When a close relative (a Protestant) was killed by a paramilitary group, I could feel myself moving away from the mixed friendships I had and moving more towards my immediate family circle. The unanimous way they all condemned the action, those in church and all I had known for many years, was a comfort to me. They were such a strong support for me. I even began to agree with sectarian comments they made, which I would never have associated myself with before. Through this all, my Catholic friends kept in touch, they visited me and my relatives. They were not put off by the hardening in my attitudes, or the strong feelings against Catholics that developed in the area after the shooting. They saved me from becoming bitter and, in the end, I moved back to them again and away from remaining extreme. Some of my Protestant friends moved this way too and they’re grateful the Catholic friends stuck by us.” (An adult cross- community group member) In such a situation, an attack often was understood to be against all of ‘us’. If people think that an attack upon some person, like them or close to them, was an attack upon the whole group of whom the person was representative, it had a massive effect. This was not like an isolated murder in a normal society.

DC 8: TIT-FOR-TAT-REVENGE AND RETALIATION

Summary

In the absence of agreed law and order, or strong rules and procedures in workplaces, colleges, public and civic organisations, the urges for revenge and retaliation can lie very close to the surface. This is especially true in conflict affected societies. Tit-for-tat actions, once released can quickly multiply, with supporters of each actor joining in with a growing momentum that sucks more people in. When tit-for-tat behaviors escalate, all can become victims. In such a chaos often overpowering and unwarranted violence can be exercised. Societies need strong sanctions against revenge to be upheld within an agreed law and order framework. Such a legal structure needs reinforced by the development of civic and organisational cultures that collectively hold people accountable for their actions and control their worst excesses.