Editorial: A very welcome milestone in Northern Ireland - 2023 sees no security-related killings

For the first year since the onset of the Troubles, no-one was killed in a security-related incident.

What this means, in effect, is that no-one was killed by terrorists in 2023.

During the Troubles 90% of those who lost their lives did so at the hands of paramilitaries. A further 10% of the dead, tragically, were killed by the state.

But the latter killings were mostly prior to 1975, in the chaotic and most dangerous years of the violence.

As the security forces became better trained and more experienced, and as they brought the situation under control, there were decreasing numbers of state killings.

Since the second IRA ceasefire of 1997, most security-related killings have been carried out by dissident republicans, or by both republican and loyalist terrorists who have carried out feud or gangster killings.

That is why it is fair to say that had their been a killing last year, it would almost certainly have been at the hands of paramilitaries.

There almost was such a killing, of Detective Chief Inspector John Caldwell in Omagh. So this welcome milestone of no deaths in 2023 is not a cause for complacency.

Also, by some measures paramilitary activity is said to be up.

Even so, there is reason to be optimistic. There is an American psychologist Steven Pinker who says that the world, despite the recent wars, is much less violent than it was hundreds of years ago, or even a century ago.

Meanwhile, in Northern Ireland road deaths have been relentlessly falling over the medium term (not last year). And life expectancy is increasing. These are all different types of death, but the point is that human progress is not, as some observers claim, an illusion.

It might just be that Northern Ireland is becoming ever less likely to resort to violence. Let’s hope so.