In his latest chapter on the ideology of New Loyalism, former Blanket columnist and Radical Unionist commentator, DR JOHN COULTER, outlines his principles of sensible socialism as a basis to move the PUL community forward.
If New Loyalism is to give constructive leadership to the Protestant/Unionist/Loyalist (PUL) community, then it must adopt the policy of sensible socialism.
Likewise, New Loyalism cannot afford to limit itself to the Protestant working class. Like the Loyal Orders, New Loyalism must expand well beyond the urban loyalist housing estates and into the Unionist middle and upper classes.
Strategy-wise, New Loyalism must accomplish within the PUL community what Provisional Sinn Fein has achieved within the Catholic community. To eclipse the moderate nationalist SDLP, Provisional Sinn Fein rebranded itself as the voice of ‘responsible republicanism’, fooling tens of thousands of traditional middle class SDLP Catholic voters that it was a party of peace rather than the apologists for ‘an IRA war’.
The bluff worked well for Sinn Fein and the republican movement transformed itself from a fringe nationalist party in the 1982-86 Assembly with only a handful of elected representatives to being the party of partnership government in the 2007 Stormont Assembly, established by the 2006 St Andrews Agreement.
So how does New Loyalism make the same leap in the PUL community? New Loyalism has to rebrand itself not as a radical alternative to the current establishment Unionist parties, but as a comprehensive and integral part of the pro-Union community in Northern Ireland.
New Loyalism has to become the viable way forward for the pro-Union community. To achieve this, it must adopt the principles of sensible socialism, not atheistic Marxism. New Loyalism must primarily work to put the Christian faith back into the maxim of ‘For God and Ulster.’
In earlier chapters of New Loyalism, I have argued the case as to why extreme socialism bordering on communism became popular within the PUL community as a radical alternative to the Hell-fire preaching of the DUP.
Very credible loyalist theorists such as the late Gusty Spence and the late David Ervine clearly recognised the malign influence of such Hell-fire sermons on the numbers of loyalists who ended up in either jail or the cemetery.
The perception quickly arose that the DUP was prepared to encourage loyalists to ‘do their bit for Ulster’, but when it came to giving such loyalists true political cover, the DUP failed miserably.
This was in stark contrast to Sinn Fein which constantly ensured the views of the IRA inmates were the most audible political voices within the republican movement.
To be a sensible socialist does not mean embracing the atheistic ideology of rampant Marxism. New Loyalism has constantly emphasised the need for loyalists to develop and progress their relationships with the Christian Churches in Northern Ireland.
Should an initial step be that the steadily growing Progressive Unionist Party rebranded itself as a revamped version of the old Northern Ireland Labour Party?
If British Labour boss Red Ed won’t give the green light to Labour contesting elections in Ulster, then the Province’s socialists should revamp the old Northern Ireland Labour Party.
Before its demise in the 1970s, the NILP could give the Stormont-dominated Unionist Party a run for its money.
Indeed, had the Troubles not kicked off in the late 1960s, the NILP would probably have replaced the old Nationalist Party as the official Stormont Opposition.
Over the next three years, the Labour movement in Ulster will have its best opportunity for a generation of becoming a significant electoral force.
The official reason for both the British and Irish Labour parties not contesting elections in Northern Ireland is that they want to save their supposed sister party, the moderate Catholic Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) from oblivion.
But the hard reality is that the SDLP is unsalvageable. Sinn Fein, the one-time apologist for the Provisional IRA, has pulled off the impossible – eating in substantially to the SDLP’s traditional middle class Catholic vote while simultaneously holding on to its working class republican heartlands.
Within the next three years, Sinn Fein will continue to shove the SDLP into the dustbin of nationalist history.
In the Unionist community, the Right-wing is in disarray with Protestant voter apathy the order of the day. The Right has really only two parties of choice, the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) party, which is essentially an anti-DUP movement, and the fledging Ukip.
There has even been talk of a coalition, even a merger, between the TUV and Ukip.
Northern Ireland politics has now become fixated with who rules the Centre ground. With the inevitable demise of the SDLP, a huge gap is emerging on the Left for a non-sectarian Labour movement.
The existing Left parties in Northern Ireland – the Workers’ Party, Irish Republican Socialist Party, Republican Sinn Fein, 32 County Sovereignty Movement, eirgi, all have paramilitary-related baggage.
The huge leap which the PUP has to initially make is to convince the Unionist Christian and traditional DUP communities to vote for a party with links to the UVF and Red Hand Commando without being seen to snub those who both supported and served in both paramilitary groups.
A potentially politically fatal situation must not be created within the pro-Union community that a section of loyalism feels the only way its voice can be heard is through violence. Northern Ireland must not see the emergence of a dissident loyalist movement as now exists within the Catholic community.
New Loyalism’s brand of sensible socialism will see loyalism maintain its support within traditional PUL heartlands, while at the same time steadily move into the middle and upper classes of the pro-Union community.
The end game is that New Loyalism will become the dominant voice within a single, united Unionist Party.
The ace card for any new Labour movement is that the Centre ground is becoming so crowded with parties, that the vote will be fatally split, allowing a single Labour movement to take seats.
Ironically, because of Right-wing Unionist apathy, the two main Unionist parties – Peter Robinson’s DUP and Mike Nesbitt’s UUP – have had to moderate their policies and compete for Centre voters.
That Centre market has already become increasingly dominated by the non-sectarian Alliance Party, which has witnessed a steady rise in its vote since its previous low point of 1999.
If the rapid demise of the UUP and SDLP continues, Alliance is in pole position to become Northern Ireland’s third largest party after the next round of European, council and Assembly elections.
That Centre ground just got even tighter after two outspoken and high-profile liberal UUP Assembly members Basil McCrea and John McCallister left the Ulster Unionists to form their own, as yet unnamed, liberal pluralist pro-Union party.
The virtually intolerable squeeze on the Centre vote has been pushed to breaking point with the decision for the reformed Northern Ireland Tories’ decision to also brand itself as a pluralist Centre movement.
Gone are the days in the early 1990s when many Northern Ireland Conservative Associations were openly Thatcherite in their political stances.
But Northern Ireland socialists have some bitter medicine to swallow. They can either continue their uphill struggle to persuade the British Labour leadership to relent on its ‘no elections’ strategy, or they can relaunch the NILP and start winning seats.
The party’s electoral history should never be ignored. Although it never won a Commons seat, it amassed nearly 100,000 votes in the 1970 General Election.
Founded in 1924, its peak years were from 1958 to 1965. It had four Stormont MPs, all from Belfast, and was only 8,000 votes behind the dominant Unionist Party in the city.
With austerity cuts biting really hard across Northern Ireland, there certainly is both room and a demand for a well-organised Labour party.
In spite of being one of the oldest parties on the island of Ireland, the Dublin-based Irish Labour Party always made the unwise decision of not organizing and contesting elections in Ulster.
But time is not on the Labour movement’s side. It should not get bogged down on which brand of socialist ideology to follow, or which Leftist writer to hail as its hero.
The new NILP should have two principal aims – to avowedly fight the austerity cuts of either the DUP/Sinn Fein Stormont Executive or the Tory/Liberal Commons coalition, and to mobilize the Unionist and Nationalist working class back to the polling booths.
Organise, not theorise, should be the motto of the new NILP. In three years, the NILP will be the official Stormont Opposition, or yet another socialist pipedream for Northern Ireland. It is an opportunity sensible socialists must not let slip.
So what practically is the concept of sensible socialism? Surely socialism and the Christian faith are at odds? Not so. The first real socialist was Jesus Christ Himself and the first effective sensible socialist manifesto is found in the New Testament Sermon on the Mount, also known as The Beatitudes.
I strongly emphasise at this point in the chapter, the term ‘personal faith in Christ’ as opposed to ‘institutionalized religion’, which many Protestant Churches unfortunately now represent.
The modern loyalist movement, especially those who see themselves as progressive socialists, want to see the development and expansion of a pluralist and secular society in Northern Ireland under the supposed banner of a democratic socialist six-county pro-Union Ulster.
In reality, many modern loyalists despise the Protestant Church hierarchy, especially some sections of the fundamentalist wing, seeing many clerics as the modern-day equivalents of the Biblical Pharisees.
New Loyalism seeks to restore loyalist confidence in the Biblical Christian faith. Ironically, the same crisis is facing modern republicanism and its relationship with the Catholic Church leadership.
Just as loyalism abandoned the Christian God in ‘For God And Ulster’ so too, many republicans turned their back on the Catholic concept of Holy Mother Ireland.
Modern loyalism and republicanism are – ironically – both trying to cut religion out of their respective ideologies. Both seem to be singing from the same hymn sheet that Marxism and extreme socialism hold the keys to the future development of the respective communities.
This is a huge error of judgment, especially for loyalism. Having read Karl Marx’s ‘Das Capital’ from start to finish, I can only conclude there is a startling similarity between the type of ideal society which Marx is trying to create, and the Biblical Christian society which Jesus wished to create.
New Loyalism is seeking a return of Biblical Christianity as a central core of loyalist thinking by getting loyalists to focus on the New Testament account of the Sermon on the Mount by Jesus Christ as told in St Matthew’s Gospel Chapter Five. I briefly referred to this concept in an earlier article for Long Kesh Inside Out entitled Pastoral Loyalism.
In this aspect, Christ outlines a series of attributes, commonly known as The Beatitudes. There is a school of ideological thinking – to which I personally belong – which maintains that Marx based ‘Das Capital’ on The Beatitudes and his overt criticism of religion was merely a tactic ploy to disguise the fact that he had pinched his ideas from the Bible, and the words of Jesus Himself.
In reality, this is how we can conclude that Jesus Christ was the first real socialist – not Karl Marx. New Loyalism’s Christ and State ideology is, therefore, based on St Matthew’s Gospel chapter 5, verses 1 to 12. Many of the Beatitudes begin (using the Authorized King James translation) “Blessed are …”
However, when the words of Jesus are taken in a modern context, they make the basis for a realistic political agenda for New Loyalism’s sensible socialist ethos. Here are the key points which the Beatitudes highlight:
The poor in spirit (verse 3) – the need to restore national pride in society;
Those who mourn (verse 4) – the need to remember and help the victims of the conflict in Ireland;
The meek (verse 5) – the need to help the working class, and for the rich to invest their wealth in helping those less well off in society;
They which do hunger (verse 6) – the need to combat growing poverty in society, and also provide a sound educational and health system for all;
The merciful (verse 7) – the need for a fair and accountable justice system;
Pure in heart (verse 8) – the need to restore the moral fabric of society, to encourage family values and implement the concept of society’s conscience;
Peacemakers (verse 9) – the need for compromise and respect of people’s views based on the concept of accommodation, not capitulation;
Persecuted (verse 10) – the need for the PUL community to have the courage to stand up for its beliefs;
When men shall revile you (verse 11) – the need for a free press with responsible regulation.
New Loyalism is about the creation of the concept of Christian citizenship. Under this concept, compulsory voting – as exists in the Commonwealth nation of Australia – would be introduced to Northern Ireland.
A key emphasis of New Loyalism is Christian pride in the nation under the banner of ‘Northern Ireland for the Ulster British’. New Loyalism wants to combat the so-called ‘Brain Drain’ where Northern Ireland’s young people feel the need to leave the nation and not return.
New Loyalism would not only seek to keep this generation on the island, but to encourage those who have emigrated to return with their skills to the island.
In this respect, all Ulster citizens would complete a two-year compulsory National Service in the nation’s armed forces, during which time they would also learn a vocational trade.
The Christian Churches would have a role in encouraging people of all ages to develop a community service role.
In conclusion, it must again be emphasized that New Loyalism is not seeking to re-establish the rule of the fundamentalist tub-thumpers in Unionist politics. Readers of New Loyalism must not confuse having a personal faith with Jesus Christ with those who want to implement a draconian form of institutionalized, ritualistic worship.
In conclusion, the steps for the PUL community are clear – the PUP must rebrand itself as a revamped NILP with a sensible socialist, Biblically-based political agenda capable of attracting voters from all the pro-Union classes; this must then become the basis of the creation of a merged, single pro-Union movement for Northern Ireland, simply called The Unionist Party, with New Loyalism as its driving force.
