Category Archives: Current Affairs

LOYALISTS MUST FORM A CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT FOCUSSING ON PASSIVE RESISTANCE.

Former Blanket columnist and Radical Unionist commentator, Dr John Coulter, in his latest chapter on the ideology of New Loyalism, which is being featured exclusively on Long Kesh Inside Out, urges the PUL community to play the republicans at their own game, and form  a PUL Civil Rights Movement.

The Protestant Unionist Loyalist (PUL) community needs to take assassinated American icon Dr Martin Luther King as its political guiding star and formally launch a PUL civil rights movement.

There can be no doubting the civil rights movement worked for the nationalist community, until the entire cause was hijacked by the Provisional republican movement.

While republicans will claim Bloody Sunday in January 1972 was the straw which broke the Stormont back, leading to Tory Prime Minister Edward Heath axing the original Northern Ireland Parliament a few months later.

Had the civil rights movement not been overshadowed by the IRA campaign of terror, many in the PUL community, especially the working class, would have ultimately benefited from the then Stormont Prime Minister Terence O’Neill’s reforms.

O’Neill’s only mistake was that his reform programme in the late Sixties progressed too slowly for nationalists, and the hardline of his Unionist Party used the emerging Paisleyite movement to topple the liberal O’Neill and his co-reformers in the Ulster Unionist Party.

While many in working class loyalism view Paisleyism with distain because of the number of young Protestants who ended up in jail or an early grave because they reacted to the Hell fire sermons of the then fundamentalist driven Protestant Unionist movement, it should not be forgotten how Ian Paisley senior rose to power within the PUL community, particularly after 1971 when the DUP was formally launched.

Nationalists have been experts at presenting the image of the poverty-stricken Catholics discriminated against by the Orange Order-dominated Northern Ireland. But republicans, and indeed many in the upper classes of the Unionist community, have been very quick to air-brush the plight of working class Protestants out of the history of Northern Ireland.

As someone who grew up in Bannside and North Antrim where Paisleyism was born and blossomed politically, I saw at first hand the challenges which many working class Protestants – particularly in large rural village housing estates – had to contend with on a daily basis.

Even in the late Sixties, many Protestant working class homes did not enjoy the luxury of an inside flushing toilet. The daily slop bucket run to the bottom of a field was still the order of the day. Catholics may have been good at airing their gripes using the civil rights movement and communist-dominated People’s Democracy party.

For generations since the formation of Northern Ireland in the 1920s, the working class Protestant community had relied on the empty rhetoric of the upper class-dominated Ulster Unionist Party.

If the Protestant natives became restless about their living conditions, the Unionist aristocrats could always scare the pants of the working class PUL community by using the Orange Order to warn about yet another republican threat to drive Northern Ireland into the Rome rule of a united Ireland.

Religiously, Unionism was dominated for generations by liberal Protestants who paid strict lip service to the principles of the Orange Order in terms of their opposition to Rome, but not the Salvationist position of born-again Christianity. Such evangelicals and fundamentalists were very much in the minority regarding influence in both the Orange Order and Unionist Party.

While Ian Paisley senior was a rapidly emerging name in the Ulster Bible Belt since he launched his staunchly fundamentalist Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster in 1951, it was not until the late Sixties that he successfully managed to covert his fundamentalism into political Salvationism.

Paisleyism’s success was that it created a seemingly unholy alliance of two elements within the PUL community who until the late 1960s had been largely voiceless sections of the Unionist Party – evangelical Christians and working class Protestants.

Unionism’s aristocratic, Big House and upper middle class farming families ran both the party and the Orange Order. In spite of everyone calling themselves ‘brothers’ in the Orange lodge room, the Order was mainly a vehicle of communication between the various classes in Unionism.

It was a means by which the Unionist aristocracy could pass its views on who to select and vote for to the working class voters. Membership of the Unionist Party was almost like Irish Freemasonry – by invitation only.

In spite of the Hell fire preaching, Paisley senior’s Unionism represented practical politics. In Bannside, the heartland of O’Neill, it would have been seen as “too common” for the Prime Minister to bother helping people with facilities such as inside loos. So Paisley senior championed the practical needs of working class Protestants and got them their much-needed inside toilets.

As for the born-again Christians, Paisley senior’s Protestant Unionist movement and then the DUP gave the evangelicals the courage to challenge the liberals for positions in the Loyal Orders, especially the Orange and Black institutions.

Hardline Right-wingers within the establishment Unionist Party used the Paisleyites as political cannon fodder to topple Unionism’s liberal reformers. The Unionist Right wing and the Paisley supporting factions could work hand in glove in this campaign.

Unionist Party meetings – like membership – in the late Sixties and early Seventies were by invitation only. A Paisleyite activist I interviewed for my academic research at Queen’s University told me how upper class Unionist Party members would give him their invitations so that he and his supporters could infiltrate Unionist Party meetings and make them ungovernable.

This was especially the case in Bannside and North Antrim where many Unionist Party meetings were held traditionally in the network of Orange halls which spanned the constituencies.

The Unionist establishment families, often dubbed the Fur Coat and No Knickers Brigade, could not cope with such heckling from the Paisley supporters. Such families were used with the working class Protestants doing as they were told.

For many of these aristocratic and upper middle class Unionist families, this was the first time since the 1920s that they had been verbally challenged by fellow Unionists. The reaction of these families to this political heckling was simple – they didn’t attend future meetings.

Gradually, the Unionist Party was drive out of many Orange halls in North Antrim and branches subsequently collapsed through lack of members. Two examples from my own memoirs of this period in Unionist politics in this constituency serve to illustrate this dilemma.

Clough was at that time an exclusively Protestant village in the depth of the Bannside constituency and was an overwhelmingly Unionist stronghold of North Antrim. My father, as the local Presbyterian minister, also held the post of honorary president of the village’s Unionist Party branch.

One of the local Presbyterian elders, regarded as a Big House farming Unionist, held a senior position in the branch. The branch met in the village Orange hall. My father received a call from the RUC that he was to go to the meeting to escort the elder from the hall as it was surrounded by Paisley supporters and there was the danger of severe crowd unrest.

In spite of my father being honorary president, he was still respected as a preacher of the evangelical Salvationist Gospel and he was able to physically escort the elder through the protesters to safety. But the implications of that incident for the local Unionist Party branch were overwhelming.

To avoid further confrontations, the members abandoned the Orange hall and began meeting in members’ homes outside the village. Eventually, the branch folded and it would not be until the early Eighties that the branch was regenerated sufficiently to the point where it could once again hold its meetings in a local Orange hall.

The second example took place during the 1970 General Election campaign for the North Antrim Westminster seat which was being defended by sitting Ulster Unionist MP Henry Clark, a typical example of the aristocratic Unionist Party. His main opponent was Ian Paisley senior, who was fresh from his Stormont Bannside by-election triumph.

The headquarters for the local Clough campaign had had to be moved out of the Orange hall, and was set up in Clough’s Presbyterian manse. Even as a primary school minister’s son, I was already a Unionist activist as my one and only role was to bring sandwiches to Clark and other senior members of the campaign team.

The Paisleyite supporters had mounted a successful campaign in the area to physically prevent the Unionist Party canvassing.

As I walked into the sitting room of Clough manse, I could smell the distinctive odour of cigarette smoke. I knocked and entered the room to see three men sitting at the table – my father, the late Rev John Brown, and Clark (who was smoking).

Dad and Rev Brown were trying to calm Clark down because he had been shocked by graffiti daubed on a gable wall in the village – ‘Shoot Clark.’ While he was a big name aristocratic MP, Clark had never faced such venom from fellow Protestants in his own heartland. Clark lost the election to Paisley, and with Ian Junior retaining the seat at the last Westminster election, it is unlikely North Antrim will ever be a Commons seat again.

The PUL community must influence the Unionist leadership to take on board their pastoral cares by embarking on a programme of well-organised passive resistance. Violence, strikes, or street protests are not the way forward.

The PUL community, especially its working class, must recognise the painful reality that, at the moment, given the apathy at the ballot box in the PUL community, that the Catholic middle class is now the dominant sector in Ulster politics.

The various sessions of the Unionist Forum have largely concluded that the Union is safe when talking about a border poll, but is the Union safe itself within the UK itself? In the provision of education and health, Sinn Fein has worked the political system effectively to gain much for the Catholic community.

Enoch Powell, the late and former South Down UUP and perhaps the greatest Prime Minister the UK never had, once branded the DUP as the Protestant Sinn Fein.

While he was at that time referring to how the DUP only wanted to do things on its terms,  taken this phrase in its 2013 context, what is needed to deliver this passive resistance is a Protestant Sinn Fein movement for the PUL community.

In this respect, I want New Loyalism to adopt my Ten Commandants of passive resistance to take back Ulster for the British.

1, All shades of Unionism must ensure that every – and I mean EVERY – member of the PUL community eligible to vote is on the electoral roll.

2, That every registered voter agrees to actually vote.

3, That a Unionist Coalition be formed to decide on agreed candidates for all elections.

4, That the Christian Churches work closely with political parties and community organisations to identify the practical needs which the PUL community faces, for example, how to actually known what benefits can be claimed for, and how to complete the documentation.

5, To use the existing media for a charm offensive to get this pro-active PUL message across.

6, To work closely with the PSNI to defuse areas of tension.

7, To campaign to slash the red tape strangling the development of our health service and education sector.

8, If marches are to take place, we organise them as proper PUL civil rights marches.

9, We use the European Court of Human Rights as a weapon to ensure the Stormont Parliament abides by the decisions achieved by the PUL Civil Rights Movement.

10, To only vote for those politicians and parties which give their support to the PUL Civil Rights.

This campaign can be achieved. Sinn Fein has milked the peace process for the republican community, so the Unionist leadership has a moral obligation to ensure that a PUL community’s Civil Rights Movement campaign succeeds. Let the ghost of the Fur Coat Brigade which haunted the PUL community for generations be finally culled.

Some Comments on Recent Research in Segregated Communities in Belfast

I thought Gareth Mulvenna’s piece during the week was illuminating and presented part of a problem that can be measured and understood by different approaches and knowledge. Much of what Gareth presented seems like a perennial problem and it is vital that we are reminded that developing class consciousness is about getting beyond the fife, drum, bodran and harp. Hopefully, what is presented here is a reminder of many of the problems that exist and which are still unfortunately being reproduced.

In association with academic colleagues we have been doing a long-term study of families in Belfast segregated communities. The study is based upon an ecological, process-oriented model aims to understand the development of family life, experiences of sectarian and other crimes, the nature and impact of poverty and also emotional distress.

What arises, in the research we have completed and analysed up to 2012 which does not include present work we are doing in this area, is a picture of remaining fears and high levels of perception and experiences of sectarian violence and a significant record of mental health problems. Many of these mental health and distress issues are linked to direct experience of sectarian violence. In a sense traumatisation is still being reproduced among parents and their children despite a significant decline in sectarian and conflict-related violence. It may be even possible to suggest that those who have been traumatised are those who assert the strongest sense of identity. The link between sectarianism and poverty is thus vital and it now seems so too is the link to trauma, distress and emotional well-being. Unfortunately, young people’s sense of security is undermined by continued exposure to sectarian acts. We found that the less secure a young person is regarding sectarian violence the more likely they are to have mental health problems and aggression issues.

One of the other features of the study is that, and as shown in the recent Census, the Protestant working class are in a ‘better’ place regarding poverty and the labour market compared to the Catholic community. But what we find is that despite being poorer and in a worse off position Catholic respondents are more positive about their community, the peace process and the future of inter-community relationships. Protestant respondents feel more alienation and exclusion. I think both positions are worrying as culture as opposed to social exclusion seems to determine people’s attitudes to the future. This was also found in a study we did in Derry/Londonderry in which Protestant respondents were socially positive but more negative about politics, culture and community.

What we also have to be aware of is the twin speed of the peace process. If we look at the Life and Times survey we can see a decline in those who consider themselves to be either British or Irish. There has been a growth in mixed marriages and relationships. Fewer Catholics want Irish unification and there has been a decline in young people who consider themselves to unionist/loyalist or republican/nationalist. If we were to guess why these trends are appearing they may be due to social class and a more mixed and inclusive lifestyle among the middle-classes.

This and other research presents a series of challenges with regard to those who are culturally, economically and socially excluded. What is the politics capable of settling cultural disputes? Clearly we will never have an adequate politics of anti-poverty and the class consciousness required for that while the issue of identity remains so vital. This has been said many times and is akin to my prediction that it will get rain or get dark before morning. But it has to be the site that concerns us most as is the reproduction of emotional and mental distress. As we know the politics of resource competition undermines the space for solidarity between the poor. It seems that we have, either through academic or community knowledge, the ingredients for making a cake but have no agreed recipe. Surely, social dumping, social rejection, mental health problems, welfare cuts, family breakdown, self-harms and all the other measurements of the impairment poverty causes are agreed. So when/how do we find the recipe?

Bone of Our Bone,” “ Flesh Of Our Flesh”. A forum for former UVF/RHC Prisoners?  Not if most of the recently entered articles are anything to go by. We seem to be fast becoming, just another mundane talking shop, for all the academic nit picking and perpetually disagreeing literary hair-splitters, who have suddenly become fascinated and totally engrossed in  the arty-farty academic struggle to be first in the lofty world of academia, to finally discover the faulty gene which obviously in their lofty opinions, caused under-educated young working class Loyalists to take up arms, in defence of the democratic right of the People of Northern Ireland to decide their own future.

To use the favourite retort of my old Friend and Comrade The Late Sam Ferguson, “Get off our bloody backs and get a bloody life of your own.”

Charlie Freel.

Has the Protestant working class lost out in the Peace Process? – An overview of a one day workshop

Dr Gareth Mulvenna, Queen’s University Belfast School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy

On Wednesday 15 May I had the pleasure of attending a workshop focused on the question ‘Has the Protestant working class lost out in the Peace Process?’ This short article is a very brief summary of some of the key issues which emerged on the day. I believe the proceedings were recorded so a better appreciation of the day will emerge when these are uploaded.

The workshop was held in the Belfast Unemployed Resource Centre and was jointly organised by the Political Studies Association Irish Politics Specialist Group and the Fellowship of Messines Association. Around forty people sat around the room, forum style, to discuss this very important issue. After opening remarks by Dr Aaron Edwards and the BURC Director and Chair for the day, Brendan Mackin, the first panel commenced and sought to address the history, culture and politics of the Protestant working class.

Dr Tony Novosel, who needs no introductions round these parts, gave an historical overview of the manner in which the Protestant working class had been betrayed by ‘big house’ unionism and linked this experience with the emergence of progressive loyalism as espoused by Gusty Spence, Billy Mitchell and David Ervine. I was given the unenviable task of following Tony and spoke briefly about the sense of loss and community fragmentation which the Protestant working class in Belfast specifically had experienced during the early years of the conflict.

I felt it important to mention the negative effects of poor city planning and redevelopment on kinship networks in the Shankill Road during the early 1970s. By calling upon Ron Wiener’s seminal work The Rape and Plunder of the Shankill I spoke about the comparisons to be found with similar processes in the 1950s in London’s East End. Plans to modernise the pattern of East End life were, as Phil Cohen has noted, a disaster, and crucially the planners did not allow for any effective participation by a local working class community in the decision-making at any stage or level of planning. The misery endured by the Protestant working class in Belfast through the Belfast Urban Motorway development was compounded by deindustrialisation and violence.

Joe Bowers, Chairman of the Fellowship of Messines Association, needs no introduction. Joe rounded this session off by providing a fair and even-handed mini ‘history lesson’ invoking a range of references from the Levellers to the contemporary ‘croppies lie down’ criticism of the seminal United Irishmen. Joe crucially reminded the audience of how the welfare state and the NHS are integral parts of British working class history and bemoaned the fact that fewer working class Protestants came out to protest about cuts facing the NHS than assembled at Belfast City Hall to protest at the removal of the Union flag. Perhaps a change of focus is required?

The next session sought to investigate the challenges for Protestants in dealing with the past. Reverend Chris Hudson and Dr Graham Spencer from the University of Portsmouth delivered informed perspectives, however I felt that an opportunity to discuss issues such as HET in depth was missed. This has become a vexing issue for loyalists in particular and the state of perennially existing with a Sword of Damocles dangling above the heads of many ex-combatants has created an extremely uneasy atmosphere. Jackie McDonald made the point that in the coverage of Bobby Rogers’ arrest and conviction for a 1973 murder a picture of the youthful victim was juxtaposed with a recent photo of Bobby which Jackie balefully said ‘made him look like a paedophile’.

This led to an interesting debate about negative media representations of loyalism. The past is all about competing perspectives and I just wish more of this session had been about attitudes within Protestant working class toward the HET and dealing with the past in practical terms. That is by no means a criticism of the two speakers whose contributions were extremely important.

The panel which followed lunch was designed to investigate the feelings of the ‘Protestant/Unionist/Loyalist’ community about the Peace Process. Billy Hutchinson, Jackie McDonald and Dr Aaron Edwards debated issues which were core to the overall narrative. One metaphor that Billy used which I found useful was that if you tell a child to be scared of the dark they will find it difficult to then come to terms with the fact that there is actually nothing about the dark to be afraid of. The same process has been used by the DUP and others over the years to utilise the Protestant working class in opposition to Republicanism. Now that the DUP are in government with Sinn Fein how can they justify using the old politics of fear? It didn’t stop them at the end of last year with their pamphleteering.

The last topic discussed was that of the place of ‘Protestant/Unionist/Loyalist’ community in a ‘shared future’. Joe Law of Trademark and Prof. Jim McAuley spoke around this theme and McAuley addressed an important issue – how memory can be vital in shaping the future. Instead of celebrating a revanchist vision of the past, the Protestant working class need to bring out other enriching aspects of their culture which translate to the wider British community. British identity is an amorphous thing and the Protestant working class have much to contribute in this respect to both a ‘Great’ Britain and a better Northern Ireland.

The whole day was energetic and encouraging. A remedy was not found but by brining so many contributors from different backgrounds together a step in the right direction was taken. It was agreed afterwards that a follow-up is needed. And a follow-up to the follow-up. Perhaps, as Jackie McDonald said, we should get some of the young and disenchanted flag protestors in to listen and contribute. There is no point congratulating ourselves about a great day until those who are really on the margins are brought in from the cold.

A timely Alliance to beat Shinners: Unionist fact will have major PUL if steered right

(John Coulter, Irish Daily Star)

 

 

The Shinners need to box clever and back off from loyalists as we get deeper into the Marching Season.

Many Protestants firmly believe Sinn Féin is waging a cultural war on their Britishness, but republicans should not take heart from the political splits in Unionism.

Known as the ‘PULs’ (Protestant, Unionist, Loyalist), the Union flag protest has merely awakened a giant and many loyalist leaders believe the PULs should stamp their feet in the same way Catholics did in the Sixties over civil rights.

The Shinners’ cultural war against the PULs is simply to deflect attention away from them not achieving their united Ireland by 2016, the centenary of the failed Easter Rising.

Sinn Féin and its pals in the Stoops and Alliance need to realise that while the PULs may not speak with one voice, they are now thinking with one mind.

The PULs now see themselves as the Sixties Southern American Blacks. They have concluded that politics is war without bloodshed and the message is going out via the Unionist Forum meetings that it’s time to take this passive resistance to the Shinners and Stoops.

The PULs now have a new target in their sights because of the Belfast City Hall flag debacle, and their strategy is simple – register to vote, go out to vote and get rid of Alliance.

Maybe that’s why former UUP MLAs Basil McCrea and John McCallister didn’t jump ship to Alliance. Maybe they knew the restless PUL giant will stomp Alliance out of existence at the next elections, and their new pluralist liberal party could steal Alliance’s thunder?

There is a perception among PULs that whatever Sinn Féin wants, Sinn Féin gets. The PSNI are rounding up dozens of PULs over the flag protests, but the police attitude to republicans is one of appeasement and concession, with the IRA enjoying an amnesty about its terrorist past.

Many PULs who voted Yes in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement referendum, would vote No if such a poll was held today.

The PULs have reached the conclusion that the Belfast Agreement was to stop the Provos bombing mainland Britain. In signing the Agreement, the Provos effectively tore up their Green Book, the republican movement’s Bible of commands.

Numerous PULs have had the political confidence sucked out of them since the DUP sucked up to Sinn Féin during the 2006 St Andrews Agreement.

At many Unionist Forum shindigs, it is the DUP enduring the verbal wrath of ordinary PULs in a re-run of how the No camp slabbered at Trimble and his Yes camp UUP in the early 2000s.

Given the collapse of the Celtic Tiger in the South, the Union may be safe in a border poll, but is the Union safe within the UK?

Could ‘Loyal Ulster’ become a mini republic within an increasingly fragmented UK, especially if the Scots plump for independence?

There is no doubt the PULs have become demoralised because of republicans’ cultural war on British heritage in the North.

The PUL leadership has a moral duty to ensure loyalists re-engage with the ballot box. But before the PULs can take on the Shinners and Stoops at the polls, they must get rid of Alliance.

Many Alliance politicians rely on Unionist transfers for their seats. If PULs snub Alliance, the party is over for the middle of the road, fur coat, wine and cheese movement.

May 14, 2013________________

This article appeared in the May 13, 2013 edition of the Irish Daily Star.

I was intrigued to read what appears to be Professor Pete Shirlow’s review of my review. I do not want to go into all the points raised as I think I would be providing oxygen to something I do not wish to entertain. All my objections are contained in my actually rather generous original piece, such as highlighting the inadequacy of not revealing the names of interviewees (why for instance, in the study of Loyalism and other subjects, have other writers managed to name who they’ve been talking to?). So I will be brief in this rejoinder. Something I can start by helping with is the phrase ‘a bit of a mouse’.

Before complaining about this at length Pete professes not to know what it means. Figuratively, a mouse is something minor and insignificant. This is how I view the book’s overarching thesis that Loyalism has both ‘regressive’, i.e. ‘bad’, and ‘progressive’, i.e. ‘good’ elements. I consider this a truism and the nature of almost every ideology, political movement and individual that has ever existed in the world. It further diminishes and simplifies something which is varied and complex.

Revealingly, Peter confuses ‘intellectual’ with jargon. There are many natural intellectuals in all walks of life – I have found a number of Loyalist interviewees to be highly intellectual in their sophistication and world view – and this is not the same as jargon, which is a style of writing (or speaking). It does not mean being intelligent or clever. Similarly jargon is not a particular ‘big’ word but a way of writing (for some people it is perhaps a way of life), and has nothing to do with theory which can be fascinating. And this is where I must stick my neck out. This jargon – aside from being dreadful to read for both a scholarly and general readership – prevents people from understanding and is therefore damaging. I feel this is worth confronting because although Pete’s work suffers from it, the problem is a common one and exists in much, though by no means all, academic writing.

In his 1946 essay ‘Politics and the English Language’, George Orwell argued that sloppy jargon had potentially dangerous political consequences. Targeting in particular two theorists from the British Left – Harold Laski and G.D.H. Cole – Orwell believed bad writing could, at an extreme, lead to the late-night visitations where people are ‘shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in arctic lumber camps’. Through the elimination of ‘meaningless words’ and ‘pretentious diction’, Orwell believed, writers and society as a whole make the ‘first step towards political regeneration’. His analysis has particular resonance in Northern Ireland where repetition and a special kind of jargon have been used to retrospectively justify some very dark moments of the recent past, and – not much better – skew our understanding and recognition of a subject or issue. Of course, Pete’s The End of Ulster Loyalism? never justifies anything heinous, but the nonsensical, convoluted phraseology (an intellectual word here) Orwell complained of is prevalent throughout. This jargon, a sort of verbal waste, even makes its way into Pete’s response to my review of his book. At the end of the point-by-point rebuttal, which has an oddly rehearsed quality, he complains that I did not refer to ‘the context of idea building’ his work so prizes. Stand back for a moment and unpack that phrase. What on earth constitutes ‘idea building’? What has ‘context’ to do with it? What human concept or mental process does not involve an ‘idea’, and when are ideas ever ‘built’?

While ideologues and writers from all the major parties and traditions in Northern Ireland practice the jargon – ‘designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind’, in Orwell’s assessment – the weakest academic writing demeans and prevents people from finding out what they need to find out about. I am with Orwell on this. Each sector of the society has its part to play: the kind of jargon and pure wind found in The End of Ulster Loyalism? should be avoided in the future. Given the problems facing Loyalism and – distinctly – the Protestant working class at the moment, the times are too serious for this bad writing to continue.

Progressive Unionist Party Leader Billy Hutchinson has condemned the attack on a war memorial stone at an Orange hall in Coleraine as cowardly and sectarian.

He said, “This is a disgraceful attack designed to intimidate the protestant community and stir up trouble.  Here we are 15 years after the Good Friday Agreement and yet people continue to undertake attacks that show nothing more than a hatred for the protestant community.”

He continued, “Where is the shared future in all this?  I would ask those with influence in the Nationalist and Republican community to show leadership and to encourage people who carry out attacks like this regularly to stop doing so. It damages relationships.”

He concluded, “I would ask the PSNI to step up patrols at vulnerable Orange halls across Northern Ireland, particularly as we enter the marching season.  Tolerance and respect should be at the heart of a shared society and sectarianism should have no place.”

The PUP has enjoyed a massive surge of support, as a result of Billy Hutchinsons sincere support for the defenders of the National Standard. He has successfully tapped into the sincerely held beliefs of the vast majority of the Loyalist Working Class.

Now as a result of the latest devious act of collusion by the IRA/DUP parasites up at Stormont, with regard to retention of the already existing shrine to Republican terrorism at Long Kesh, the PUP have the perfect opportunity to also gain the support and gratitude of the thousands of innocent victims of indiscriminate Republican  terrorism and the support of every decent person in Northern Ireland, by publically broadcasting their unconditional support for the complete demolition of the whole prison.

This act of public solidarity with the genuinely innocent victims of the conflict, would be prove the sincerity of the famous apology made on our behalf by Gusty Spence and expose the DUP as Republican collaborators.