Loyalists trying to avoid history’s traditional route

17 MAY 2013

THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED ON “THE DETAIL”

THE Detail’s Steven McCaffery attended two debates on Northern Ireland’s future this week – one involving politicians at Stormont, the other featuring loyalists at a resource centre for the unemployed.

You probably already know how one of these meetings went.

When the First Minister Peter Robinson addressed the Assembly on his plans for a shared future, it soon deteriorated into a bitter row replete with biblical-sounding insults.

The second event was held behind closed doors but saw a discussion on loyalism that was not afraid to be warts and all. Whatever about Stormont, there were no “whited sepulchres” in the function room of the Belfast Unemployed Resource Centre.

The problem with the two debates, however, was that while the Assembly quarrel ended with the publication of a blueprint on the way forward, the arguably more constructive discussion on loyalism ended with uncertainty about where to go from here.

The organisers – the Political Studies Association and the Fellowship of Messines cross-community peace project – have at least started a debate.

But 15 years after the Good Friday Agreement, it feels very late in the day for loyalism to still be finding its way.

Outsiders might have expected to have heard the perhaps predictable criticisms of republicanism and mainstream unionism, but they may have been surprised by the self-critical descriptions of Orangeism as at times being `supremacist’, the most extreme flag protestors characterised by one speaker as `fascist’, and to hear sympathy for not just Protestant but also Catholic communities hit by poverty and educational under-achievement.

The resource centre’s room was filled with a rectangular arrangement of tables, with around 40 participants discussing events under the privacy of Chatham House rules.

There were community workers, trade unionists, loyalist politicians, ex-prisoners, a republican known now for campaigning on social issues, researchers and a number of academics specialising in the study of loyalism and Protestantism.

The event, by the way, wasn’t as dry as it might sound – there were even some laughs, particularly when a debate on uniting Protestant and Catholic workers was interrupted by a mobile phone ringtone playing the old Soviet national anthem.

But if representatives of the mainstream political parties were present, they may not have found the day-long discussion a comfortable experience.

The city centre event began with a myth-busting history lesson, recalling much of what unites Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter, but which did not reflect well on today’s `political elites’.

“It appears to me that history has kind of played a three-card-trick on people here,” said Joe Bowers, chairman of the Fellowship of Messines, who helped open the event.

“What has happened to us? Why are we not all united celebrating this progressive history? Why are we left with this in-your-face, `youse ‘uns and them ‘uns’ type of politics?

“All of this is encapsulated with what we are faced with today.”

The recent crisis over the restrictions placed on flying the Union flag at Belfast City Hall which, as reported here convulsed unionism, was never far from the debate.

A speaker asked why NHS cuts had not brought more people onto the street, or sparked common cause between communities.

“The National Health Service – is that not the most important part of our British history? Is it not more important than the Union flag?

“Why are we not mobilising people around the defence of the National Health Service with the same type of determination? It is much more threatened than the Union flag.”

Focusing on the question of whether the `Protestant working class had lost out on the peace process’, some asked what the Protestant working class was?

Others recalled the withering of industries that had once been a way of life for the Protestant community in Belfast – a loss that had ended the sense of shared experience with industrial heartlands in Britain.

Uncertainties about the future were also fuelled by urban planning decisions which were  seen to have led to population movements and the decline of traditional loyalist communities such as the Shankill.

This led to references to educational under-achievement in loyalist districts and a complaint that mainstream unionists had promised to champion the issue, only to continue to support academic selection despite evidence of its negative impact.

Speakers also cited the impact of political changes brought about by a peace process described as being “designed for republicans”, with the loyalist experience of life under the power-sharing government also said to be eroding identity.

“But how,” asked another contributor, “do you respond to an identity crisis?”

The current disconnect with mainstream unionist parties was traced back to the Troubles.

Former UVF and PUP figure Gusty Spence was quoted as being encouraged towards violence by unionist political rhetoric, but was among those who from inside prison came to the belief that: “We’re in here and they’re out there, still mixing it.”

While that disaffection remains up to the present day, there was some limited hope expressed that the Unionist Forum, formed by Peter Robinson to allow discussions between all strands of unionism and loyalism, could yet bear fruit.

There were also claims, however, that Sinn Féin is engaged in a `cultural war’, bent on eroding British emblems.

There was no detailed explanation of what this meant, though nationalists have claimed it is they who struggle to see their identity reflected in public life.

And there was little mention of parades, though this is obviously a key battle ground, as was previously examined in The Detail here.

A contributor at the event later said that republicans had `lost the war’, but wanted to appear to be making gains on issues such as restricting the flying of the Union flag.

This was then linked to the familiar analysis that the Good Friday Agreement was a `victory for unionists, if only they’d realise it’.

It was a phrase that had currency in the years immediately after the 1998 peace deal, but which today, when set against the background of ongoing political change, seems to fall short of explaining the present, or framing future possibilities.

A question as to how unionism might cope with any future political change in Northern Ireland was misconstrued as a prediction that major constitutional reform was imminent.

The subsequent observation that the 1998 Agreement guaranteed Northern Ireland’s place in the UK, until a majority desired otherwise, was an accurate one.

But perhaps it underestimates the potential for loyalist disquiet over the inevitable process of continuing internal reform within Northern Ireland that is still flowing from the Good Friday Agreement.

There are further factors that could promote change, including Sinn Féin’s leading role in government at Stormont, the party’s growth in the Irish Republic (as previously reported here), plus factors such as demographic shifts placing Protestant and Catholic communities on an equal footing (as reported here).

A speaker asked if perhaps the real issue currently concerning unionists was not in fact the border, but rather the process of reform in Northern Ireland that was delivering greater political and cultural equality for nationalists.

And this prompted the suggestion that sections of unionism are undergoing an inevitable period of adjustment, which will eventually settle and stabilise.

Two others recalled growing up unaware of Irish history, including the history of Northern Ireland, neither of which was taught in the state schools they attended.

A separate contributor said discussions on how loyalists might begin to show a greater acceptance of Irish culture and identity could perhaps be developed in the Unionist Forum.

He added: “There is a supremacist attitude within Orangeism that states that we’re better, that `we’re the people’.

“And that, I think, is one of the characters that needs to be seriously addressed by ourselves.

“We are all equal.”

He added: “The flags issue raised serious concerns for me because of how it was focused around something that, let’s face it, most of us wouldn’t have even noticed, ie the flag flying over the city hall.

“I think the rallying around that flag … the conduct of it was wrong.

“It came across as supremacist, it came across as fascist … moderates [were] pushed aside.

“The `flagsters’, for want of a description or a word to call them, certainly within the wider unionist family became, quite frankly, viewed as fascists and supremacists in that their association was with members of the British National Party.”

His comments on “supremacist” views in Orangeism were echoed by others from a unionist background, though there was also agreement around the table that sectarianism was equally a problem within both the Catholic and Protestant communities, with “Protestants no more sectarian than Catholics”.

The speaker also acknowledged there were varying views within loyalism on the flag demonstrations, with others at the event known to have publicly defended the right to protest.

But he was critical of mainstream unionists he said had reacted to flag protestors with an attitude of “ignore those people, and let’s move on”.

“How does an audience like this change the political thinking in modern day Ulster Unionism and the Democratic Unionist Party, when we’re all outside of that?”

The same speaker also underlined the impact of IRA violence in the area of Belfast he had grown-up in, where he said hundreds were killed during the decades of conflict.

“The fear of republicanism is very, very real. It’s a pumping heart, certainly in that working class community that I grew-up in.”

The former loyalist paramilitaries present underlined their commitment to the peace process, but cited concerns over continuing violence by dissident republicans.

On the wider political front, it is generally held that nationalists feel more comfortable with the changes that have flowed from the peace process, but the new census figures also showed Catholics remain more likely than Protestants to be unemployed.

This reality was not lost in the loyalist discussion, where a regular theme was the clear acceptance that there were both Protestant and Catholic communities trapped in poverty, who had never enjoyed the economic benefits of the peace process.

One delegate said: “I think that the challenge that has arisen from the flags protest is, how do we tap in to that disaffection that is out there that was being suppressed by political elites saying everything was wonderful?

“And anyone that asked `why are things not changing?’, they were always criticised as being dissidents or anti-peace, or being loyalist fascists.

“I think a lot of the energy that has emerged out of the flag protests can begin to help us hold events like this and begin to question how do we move the peace process on?

“How do we begin to address those issues around the marginalised, the disadvantaged, and the poor who have not experienced the benefits of the peace process?”

As the debate drew to a close, it was noted that while they had been prepared to challenge others, and to challenge themselves, the same kind of frank discussions had to be held in wider society, where problems were too often politely ignored.

The loyalist intimidation and violence surrounding the flag crisis frightened and unnerved many people, but some of those at the discussion said that they had predicted unrest was in the pipeline and wanted to work now to deal with the underlying issues. This included dealing with the legacy of the Troubles by building a reconciliation process.

The debate recalled how Belfast’s past is littered with failed attempts to put the fight against poverty above sectarian rivalries.

No one was glossing over the challenges facing the divided city, but there also seemed to be a willingness to try to avoid history’s traditional route.

I was interested to read my review of The End of Ulster Loyalism? ‘demonstrates an inability to self-reflect’. When reviewing a book you tend not to reflect on yourself, but it is a shame Richard Reed found it ‘disappointing’. As it originally appeared in the Dublin Review of Books back in March, I hope Reed hasn’t been living with this ‘disappointment’ in storage for too long.

The historian Marc Mulholland once said in an introduction to a symposium at Queen’s University Belfast that those who thinks they are working through something new on Northern Irish Loyalism always declare, at almost every opportunity: ‘No-one has looked at or written about Loyalism’. I understand Reed places himself very much in this regrettable mould. It gives rise to an unfortunate condition where a – usually insecure – mind believes they ‘own’ a subject. This emerges more than a little in the way Reed sees my opinions as ‘dangerous’, which ‘must be resisted in the strongest terms if damage is not to accrue to the profession and to our understanding of loyalism’. Not only are these views part of any healthy debate, I suggest someone like Reed does not represent ‘the profession’ and that he is no guardian whatsoever for ‘our understanding of loyalism’ (if he was, I fear things would be in an even worse state than they are already). Aside from being an incredibly pompous thing to say of oneself, part of the problem of the mindset which takes hold is that people consider a subject ‘their territory’, leading invariably to a mediocrity which does real damage to ‘the profession’ and an ‘understanding of loyalism’. In terms of the recent study of Loyalism such a person is of course a plastic Columbus, walking the well-worn path Sarah Nelson, Jim McAuley and others did back in the 1980s and early-1990s.

In this sense Reed is correct to see himself as the slight tangent in my original review’s criticism of ‘younger academics’ who have failed to name their interviewees. Now, if no less an historian than Richard English can write a history of the IRA (2003’s Armed Struggle) and manage to name all those he talks to (including some who would have been involved in the military operations of the organization), why can this not occur in a study of Loyalism? Were Loyalists less dangerous than the Provisional, Real or Continuity IRA? Writers like Carolyn Gallagher and Martyn Frampton have completed studies of Loyalist paramilitaries and dissident republicanism respectively, managing to name almost all their interviewees.

It is not a question of ethics. As Reed seems so interested in what I have been writing, at least since March, I have a memory of an entirely connected deficiency in his own research. Reed gave the game away when he referred in his imaginatively-titled journal article ‘Blood, thunder and Rosettes’ to an interviewee as a ‘trade unionist’ who had mediated between the UVF and the Dublin Government in the early 1990s. This person was not – as Reed protests – a member of the UVF or UDA he needed to ‘protect’ (though the latter are also alluded to and bizarrely never named either). To those with any knowledge of the subject, we all know it to be the Reverend Chris Hudson who very happily talks openly to people about this experience (in Henry McDonald and Jim Cusack’s UVF book, as in several others, he was named from the start). This proves that Reed does not make the decision ethically but as part of a debilitating practice set down, copying examples from journals because he thought he should and demonstrating the regurgitation of bad habits worth confronting. He mentions Tony Novosel – and knows him ‘well’, though what this has to do with anything I’m not sure – who makes the correct choice in distinguishing between necessarily protecting those who need to conceal their identities out of ethics, with those – including Dawn Purvis and Billy Hutchinson – who are individually acknowledged in Novosel’s recent book as interviewees. Part of my objection to The End of Ulster Loyalism? was that the insights of ‘UVF Respondent’ et al were interesting and, making a mockery of the ethics argument Reed has parroted, were not related to their paramilitary activities and careers. There were political and intelligent comments from people talking about their everyday lives, and we never discover their names.

Reed sloppily misquotes the review as saying Irish Republicanism ‘is much less fragmented’ than Loyalism. My original review quite specifically stated that ‘mainstream Irish nationalism’, i.e. Sinn Féin, is much less fragmented than Loyalism. If Reed believes the Workers’ Party and dissident groups are ‘mainstream’ Irish nationalists then he is at least being consistent with his lack of knowledge thus far. Indeed, Anthony McIntyre and Ricky O’Rawe, as former members of the Provisional IRA (they’ve been named, look), have proven that it is impossible to remain a part of the mainstream party once they dissent and have suffered attacks for it as a consequence. Almost as careless is the conflation of the UVF circa 1965 with Carson and Craig’s UVF. The broader, mass movement (100,000 strong) of 1913 does not stand up to comparison with the reactivated UVF, which was structurally more exclusive in membership as well as being drawn from a primarily working-class base.

Reed has a problem with my review’s original claim that ‘Loyalist paramilitaries are not, and have never been, an authentic mouthpiece of the Protestant working class’. Doubtless Loyalist paramilitaries are authentic to their own experience and comrades. But the self-appointed ‘community leaders’ who appear on TV or radio to speak on behalf of ‘the Protestant working-class’ from a paramilitary background – who several Loyalists have assured me are often motivated financially to do so – have been rejected by no less a process than parliamentary democracy. The PUP made a breakthrough in 1998 and Hughie Smyth’s dedication to his constituency has been rewarded with a council seat for decades, but it is quite offensive and ludicrous – as my original review stated – to claim UDA men and their immediate spokesmen as oracles of the Protestant working class, as Reed has it. Many consider paramilitarism a blight on their community and the vast majority of working class Protestants have voted with their feet by not backing in large numbers candidates associated with paramilitary groups (despite the encouraging efforts of the likes of Ken Gibson and John McMichael). There may be ‘unease’ about dissident republicanism from the Protestant working class, but they do not turn round to members of Loyalist paramilitaries and request a military response. A long-established theme is that many in such communities regard the Police and security forces as adequate in a response to the dissident threat.

I would like to distance myself from the theory Reed values, which has the same shortcomings already alluded to concerning jargon. I’m fascinated to hear that Orwell has been cited so frequently in journals as an ‘arbiter of academic standards’ – I’ve read a fair few recently and have yet to see much reference at all. Commendably however, Reed talks of how we should ‘stop seeing loyalists as objects in a zoo to be stared at, and rather to see them as fellow humans’. That he thinks theory and jargon – or bad writing – is the way to transcend this is where it all collapses for him. At the moment it is Loyalists, among other disillusioned groups, who see the academic world as a zoo; its inhabitants spouting jargon which has no resonance whatsoever to their daily lives, political understanding or existence. This is one of the reasons, I suggest, why Loyalists do feel alienated – because of a world where people are writing about them in abstract language they don’t recognize or appreciate, who are so dislocated from their subject that they do not even use the real names of people. Loyalism, when written about academically, is not understood by Loyalists themselves. I am asked, who are ‘the people’ who are prevented from understanding this work because of ‘obfuscatory’ language? Personally speaking, they are every Loyalist interviewee I have ever met as well as those I speak to off the cuff at events, launches, meetings. Fascinatingly, Reed argues that when someone tries to look at the subject differently, through the eyes of ‘angry playwrights’ or ‘literary references’, that they are in fact peddling jargon – not the stuff Reed and those he has felt compelled to defend have been writing for a while now!

Those Loyalists are right to feel separate from the academic world. Who can blame them for feeling alienated given the misunderstanding, poor practice and jargon on display from those who contribute to it, and block them from entering in?

In Response To Connal Parr

I was rather disappointed to read Connal Parr’s recent review of Pete Shirlow’s End of Loyalism and his subsequent response to Shirlow’s defence, which I felt painted neither the author, nor the profession, in a particularly good light. His critique was full of holes and one gets the sense reading it that Parr was trying to be controversial for the sake of it, rather than offering a genuine academic critique. Shirlow is certainly right to recognise and lament the tendency to bicker within academia, which often comes across as wounded alpha males slogging it out. Take it to extremes and you get this rather odd response to a response that is, to my eyes at least, rather demeaning to the profession. Perhaps that is understandable given the energy and soul many of us put into our work, but it has its downsides. Not least because the social division in Northern Ireland is partly a consequence of unquestioned conviction; a problem that academia does little to solve when it fails to offer its own explanations with a little humility and self-reflection. Unfortunately there’s not a lot of either on show in Parr’s tone or critical approach; whether one agrees with the writing or not, there are probably better ways to make your point than accusing an experienced professional of ‘bad writing’.

I have some thoughts of course on Shirlow’s book, and he himself recognises there is room for development. But Parr’s response cannot be allowed to pass without comment, not least because there are some dangerous claims that must be resisted in the strongest terms if damage is not to accrue to the profession and to our understanding of loyalism.

Top of my list of worries is Parr’s persistence with his criticism of Shirlow for not naming his sources, because ‘other writers have managed it’. His original response also managed to critique the younger academics who have followed this practice (I include myself among them). In theory, the worry that we obscure the complexity of our subject matter by refusing to name our respondents is, generally speaking, fair. But this is a matter of research ethics, not editorial preference. Academics, like journalists, regularly conceal the identity of their sources, and rightly so. It is utterly wrong to suggest we should be diverted from a true regard for research ethics by the need to understand. We, as researchers, have a duty of care to protect our respondents who wish to remain anonymous. Both the UDA and UVF are illegal organisations, and so admitting to membership in print is a risk that the respondent themselves should take voluntarily, not be forced to by the researcher (who after all, owes their research, their career and their reputation to the co-operation of their respondents). If further comment were needed on just how wrong-headed this critique is, witness Parr’s failure to contemplate that whether authors are given permission or not to use interviewees names rather varies from author to author, and from project to project. In my experience interviewees with existing media profiles are more likely to give their names than those without any profile. While Parr applauded Novosel’s use of names in his latest book, knowing the author well I can assure Parr that he shares a similar commitment to protecting the identity of interviewees should they request that any author do so. I can only hope no-one reads Parr’s comments and takes his suggestions remotely seriously.

I also find Parr’s critique shot through with pure hypocrisy that, once again, demonstrates an inability to self-reflect and belies the arrogance of the tone. For instance, he criticises Shirlow for presenting a rather simplistic thesis of the black and the white (regressive and progressive forms of loyalism). In general, that is a very important criticism, no doubt, and one that should be aimed not just at academics but all those who establish public narratives of these issues. Yet Parr simultaneously claims that ‘Loyalist paramilitaries are not, and have never been, an authentic mouthpiece of the Protestant working class’. Certainly one gets that impression if one considers the media coverage of Bobby Moffett’s funeral in 2010, for example, or if one spends a long time with certain angry playwrights (who often have good cause to be angry). But the picture about support for the paramilitaries in the Protestant working-class is as complex, and the voices in support and condemnation as ‘fissile’ as anything else, at least if one looks under the cover. Yes, there are plenty within Protestant working-class communities that utterly reject paramilitarism. Yet there is continuing unease about dissident republicanism, and continuing unease about isolation and a lack of political representation that feeds a quiet, understated support for paramilitary groups. Even many of those now who reject paramilitarism might concede there have been times – and might be again – when they wouldn’t feel that way.

And there are other problems. Why, if they are totally ‘inauthentic’ parasites with no support in the ‘real’ Protestant working class are the paramilitaries still with us? If paramilitaries have never been an authentic mouthpiece of the Protestant working class, doesn’t it seem odd that so many joined the UDA and UVF at the beginning of the Troubles? Or so many supported Carson’s first UVF, or the militant organisations of the 1920s and 1930s (or did the pogroms never happen?), or the paramilitary support for the UWC? Damningly, in rushing to critique Shirlow for failing to consider historical context it seems Parr has fallen into the same trap himself, while doing much the same in simultaneously slamming Shirlow for diminishing and simplifying a varied and complex phenomenon by denying the paramilitaries any authenticity.

Let’s not even go there with Parr’s claim that republicanism is much less fragmented. That might reflect commonly held narratives, but I’m pretty sure that serious scholars of republicanism would wish to argue exactly the opposite.

Finally, I find Parr off the mark with his criticism of Shirlow’s book for its use of ‘jargon’. Again, there is the germ of a fair critique here, albeit one a little thoughtlessly deployed. I can almost overlook the rather worn use of Orwell’s much cited comment on the matter (where haven’t I seen this used? And what makes Orwell the greatest arbiter of academic standards?) and Parr’s tendency to himself sound intelligent but actually say nothing of any substance (what exactly is a jargon-loaded way of speaking by the way? Or was it meant simply as an insult?). But even so it’s a flawed critique. After all, isn’t jargon in the eye of the beholder? Doesn’t it depend on your level of initiation with a subject? Who are the ‘people’ Parr refers to who are prevented from understanding Shirlow’s thesis by its obfuscatory language? It made sense to me and would, I dare say, speak to a wide range of other academics (to whom the book was ultimately directed). And besides, isn’t Parr’s tendency to drop in literary references and cloak himself in Northern Ireland speak equally jargon-laden to the uninitiated?

I’m grateful that Parr does at least recognise that theory can be fascinating, but let’s be fair, theory does tend to be rather abstract and, at times, esoteric. And it’s very difficult – if not impossible – to write good theory that translates easily and smoothly to a general-level audience. But then isn’t lots of other academic research – including historiographies of the Troubles – rather esoteric? The beauty of theory is that it helps us make sense of very complex data by providing (warning: jargon ahead) systems, frameworks and logics, ultimately helping us to rationalize and develop a greater understanding of the complex mechanisms and processes that underpin empirical phenomenon. It also helps us to escape from these sort of circular critiques that get hung up on minor details by encouraging us to see the wider picture – i.e. how analyses of Northern Ireland speak to broader narratives of the human condition. That’s critical to seeing loyalism as a human story, which is, in turn, critical to seeing loyalists as humans. After all, as Novosel reminds us, quoting Billy Mitchell, no one came over and suddenly dropped crazy gas over Northern Ireland. Using theory that might speak to any number of contexts allows us to describe loyalism in terms of the trends and tendencies to which every human is vulnerable. Whatever else one might say about Shirlow’s offering, he should be applauded for the turn to theory; the conversation needs to be opened up to this sort of expansive analysis if we are to stop seeing loyalists as objects in a zoo to be stared at, and rather to see them as fellow humans. That, surely, is the most immediate task of the academic.

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