{"id":1352,"date":"2013-02-11T08:57:32","date_gmt":"2013-02-11T08:57:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.longkeshinsideout.co.uk\/?p=1352"},"modified":"2013-02-11T08:58:00","modified_gmt":"2013-02-11T08:58:00","slug":"new-loyalism-combating-the-cancer-of-the-three-cs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.longkeshinsideout.co.uk\/?p=1352","title":{"rendered":"New Loyalism..Combating The Cancer Of The Three “C”s."},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
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NEW LOYALISM \u2013 COMBATING THE CANCER OF THE THREE \u00a0 \u2018C\u2019s<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Former Blanket columnist, Dr John Coulter, in \u00a0 the latest in his exclusive series, outlines the case why his ideology of New \u00a0 Loyalism should embrace Biblical Christianity as its core belief rather than \u00a0 trying to create a secular society in Northern Ireland. <\/strong><\/p>\n

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New \u00a0 Loyalism radically needs to put God back into the famous maxim \u2013 For God And \u00a0 Ulster.<\/p>\n

I am attempting through New Loyalism to \u00a0 give the loyalist community a fresh direction and a solution to the political \u00a0 and social cancer which has bedeviled it since 1974. I have branded this \u00a0 cancer \u2018The Three C\u2019s\u2019 \u2013 Complacency, Compromise and Catastrophe.<\/p>\n

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Even the opening paragraph of this article \u00a0 on New Loyalism may be enough to get many heckles raised from the loyalist \u00a0 community. Hopefully, this article will not be dismissed as yet another Bible \u00a0 Thumper trying to preach to the Protestant\/Unionist\/Loyalist (PUL) \u00a0 communities.<\/p>\n

Many in the PUL community will quite \u00a0 understandably take the view that there has been too much religion in Ulster \u00a0 politics and a secular society is the only solution to maintaining a stable \u00a0 peace process in Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n

Loyalists have every justification for \u00a0 expressing the view \u2013 how many from the PUL community have ended up in prison \u00a0 or an early grave because they listened to the religious rantings of \u00a0 Christian Tub Thumpers, warning them about the dangers of so-called Rome \u00a0 Rule?<\/p>\n

How many from the PUL community were \u00a0 fooled into thinking the Official and Provisional IRAs\u2019 and INLA\u2019s campaigns \u00a0 against that community were in the cause of the mythical notion of \u2018Holy \u00a0 Mother Ireland\u2019.<\/p>\n

That notion died with James Connolly when \u00a0 General Maxwell ordered his execution in 1916. Connolly was a devout \u00a0 communist, more influenced by the atheistic rambling of Karl Marx than the \u00a0 sermons of the Irish Catholic Bishops.<\/p>\n

Connolly wanted to take religion out of \u00a0 Irish nationalism. The late 20th<\/sup> century off-shoots of the Irish \u00a0 Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army \u2013 namely, the Stickies, Provies and INLA, \u00a0 and the even more wacky IPLO \u2013 were dominated by Marxist rhetoric, not \u00a0 Catholic nationalism.<\/p>\n

The Bible Thumpers within Protestantism \u00a0 managed to fool many in the PUL community into thinking the war against \u00a0 republicanism was a loyalist jihad against Irish Catholicism. It seemed some \u00a0 of these Bible Thumpers wanted to recreate the ethos of the Middle Age \u00a0 Crusades when thousands of young Christian knights travelled to the Holy Land \u00a0 to literally lock swords with the Middle Ages\u2019 equivalent of the extreme \u00a0 Islamic Taliban.<\/p>\n

In reality, the Provisional and Official \u00a0 republican movements as well as the republican socialist movement of the IRSP \u00a0 and INLA were nothing more than the 1970s Marxist Red Army Faction from West \u00a0 Germany under an Irish banner.<\/p>\n

Such Hell fire preachers conveniently \u00a0 forgot to mention the war against the IRAs and the INLA was a war against \u00a0 communism, not Rome. Instead of joining the security forces to defeat this \u00a0 communist threat, many in the PUL community joined loyalist paramilitary \u00a0 groups as they mistakenly misinterpreted these Hell fire sermons and speeches \u00a0 as the need to confront \u2018Rome Rule\u2019.<\/p>\n

The \u2018leave it to the security forces to \u00a0 defeat the communist IRA\u2019 had been the tactic which the Stormont Government \u00a0 had employed when the IRA embarked on its disastrous Border Campaign of \u00a0 1956-62. The famous RUC B-Specials, or B-Men, played a frontline role in \u00a0 defeating the IRA in that campaign.<\/p>\n

The Nationalist Party at Stormont \u00a0 certainly did not offer the same SDLP or Sinn Fein-style criticism of the RUC \u00a0 during that Border Campaign.<\/p>\n

Loyalism then began to suffer over the \u00a0 years of the conflict since the late 1960s from \u2018Grand Old Duke of York \u00a0 Syndrome.\u2019 This was where those pumping out these Hell fire messages would \u00a0 encourage the PUL community to mobilize and take action, but after they had \u00a0 led the loyalists to the top of the hill, they would either lead them down \u00a0 again, or distance themselves and run away. Is it any wonder bitter \u00a0 experience taught many in the PUL community that Biblical Principles was \u2018a \u00a0 dirty phrase\u2019?<\/p>\n

In the late 1960s, a vigilante movement, \u00a0 the Ulster Protestant Volunteers, was nothing more than a well-conceived \u00a0 publicity stunt to undermine O\u2019Neill\u2019s liberalizing policies. The same \u00a0 criticism could also be pointed at another loyalist vigilante group which \u00a0 emerged in 1981 \u2013 the Ulster Third Force.<\/p>\n

And in 1986 in the wake of the previous \u00a0 year\u2019s Anglo-Irish Agreement, loyalism against mobilized at the whim of Bible \u00a0 Thumpers to unveil the red berets of the Ulster Resistance Movement. Certain \u00a0 political leaders were photographed with their red berets marching side by \u00a0 side with loyalists.<\/p>\n

Yet as soon as the so-called Paris Three \u00a0 scandal broke over alleged weapons sales and a huge shipment of guns was \u00a0 brought into Northern Ireland from apartheid South Africa and masterminded by \u00a0 the now dead double agent Brian Nelson, the Unionist parties dumped their \u00a0 public links with Ulster Resistance quicker than rats leaving a sinking ship.<\/p>\n

As Ulster\u2019s jails began to fill with \u00a0 loyalists who had been influenced by Hell fire rhetoric, many began to \u00a0 question if religion had a place in the loyalist mindset.<\/p>\n

During chats I had with the late Gusty \u00a0 Spence and the late David Ervine, I got the distinct impression their \u00a0 socialism was really aimed at finding a radical alternative politically to \u00a0 the Hell fire preaching which had landed so many loyalists in jail.<\/p>\n

Middle class Unionist fundamentalists were \u00a0 making the enflaming speeches and sermons, but it was the working class \u00a0 loyalists who were serving the jail sentences.<\/p>\n

Some elements within Protestant \u00a0 fundamentalism have tried to brand the Progressive Unionist Party as hardline \u00a0 socialist, even Marxist in orientation. I recall one fundamentalist cleric \u00a0 referring to the PUP leadership on the Shankill Road as \u2018the Shankill \u00a0 Soviet\u2019.<\/p>\n

Left-wing the PUP certainly is, but if \u00a0 Spence and Ervine had wanted to go the whole way about their socialist \u00a0 agenda, they would have called the PUP the Communist Party of Northern \u00a0 Ireland.<\/p>\n

Essentially, I believe the modern-day \u00a0 socialism of the PUP \u2013 even those policies which could be ideologically \u00a0 aligned to atheistic Marxism are more a defence mechanism to prevent \u00a0 firebrand preachers or fundamentalist politicians leading the working class \u00a0 loyalist community up another hill \u2013 and then deserting them there.<\/p>\n

In an earlier article entitled Pastoral \u00a0 Loyalism, I argued the need for the Protestant denominations to re-engage \u00a0 with the loyalist working class who now feels both alienated and deserted by the \u00a0 mainstream middle-class dominated Unionist parties.<\/p>\n

The rapid rise of the directionless Ulster \u00a0 People\u2019s Forum is really many in the PUL community giving a two-fingered \u00a0 salute to the mainstream Unionist leadership. This is how complacency has set \u00a0 into the PUL community. The Unionist leadership had the political \u2018bull by \u00a0 the horns\u2019 in 1974 when it used the working class loyalist community to pull \u00a0 down the power-sharing Sunningdale Executive with the SDLP.<\/p>\n

In 1974, had the Unionist leadership \u00a0 provided the alternative of a voluntary coalition with the UUUC, or Unionist \u00a0 Coalition, and Gerry Fitt\u2019s SDLP, Sinn Fein would never have got off the \u00a0 ground politically.<\/p>\n

To make the new Right-wing UUUC\/SDLP \u00a0 power-sharing Executive work, the British Government would have happily used \u00a0 the SAS at great lengths to permanently eliminate the IRA\u2019s terror campaign.<\/p>\n

By being complacent about a replacement \u00a0 for Sunningdale and arguments as to who would be the then equivalent of the \u00a0 First and deputy First Ministers, the Unionist Coalition effectively laid the \u00a0 foundation for a process which now sees the DUP in a partnership Stormont \u00a0 Executive with Sinn Fein.<\/p>\n

This is where the second cancerous \u2018C\u2019 has \u00a0 crept in \u2013 concessions. The alienation process between the loyalist community \u00a0 and the Unionist leadership did not begin with the Good Friday Agreement, but \u00a0 with the alleged side deals which were agreed between Sinn Fein and the DUP \u00a0 at the St Andrews Agreement in 2006.<\/p>\n

The DUP also swallowed the bait from the \u00a0 Dublin and London governments that a so-called \u2018Plan B\u2019 existed that if \u00a0 Stormont failed, it would not mean a return to Direct Rule from London, but \u00a0 Joint Authority between the Dail and Westminster.<\/p>\n

Combining these scenarios has had the \u00a0 resulting effect of the third \u2018C\u2019 \u2013 Catastrophes. These include Sinn Fein in \u00a0 government, a dissident republican terror campaign, loyalist working class \u00a0 areas seemingly receiving less peace process benefits than their nationalist \u00a0 counterparts, Unionist voter apathy, the erosion of the state grammar sector, \u00a0 and many from the PUL community feeling their Britishness is being eroded and \u00a0 they have no political champions to turn to.<\/p>\n

During the Victorian era when Britain \u00a0 expanded her Empire across the globe, the core element of that greatness was \u00a0 Biblical Christianity. The words of Jesus Christ in the Bible, not the \u00a0 rantings of atheist communists Marx and Lenin, were central to Britain\u2019s \u00a0 colonial agenda.<\/p>\n

Just as the Unionist parties now realize \u00a0 that they can no longer march people up and down the political hill, the \u00a0 loyalist working class must re-embrace Biblical Christianity as its core \u00a0 pillar and realize that atheistic socialism, or Marxism fell years ago with \u00a0 the Berlin Wall in Germany.<\/p>\n

The Churches have a major part to play in \u00a0 this healing process in restoring the true ethos of \u2018For God And Ulster\u2019. \u00a0 They, too, must embrace the agenda of \u2018God For Ulster.\u2019<\/p>\n

The creation of a secular society by \u00a0 politicians or parties weighted to either Liberal Unionist, extreme \u00a0 socialist, or atheistic Marxism will lead to a further dilution of \u00a0 Britishness among the Unionist family.<\/p>\n

New Loyalism is not seeking to unleash a \u00a0 fresh generation of Bible Thumping clerics upon the PUL community. New \u00a0 Loyalism recognizes that just as a rift exists between the PUL community and \u00a0 mainstream Unionist parties, that same rift exists to a large degree between \u00a0 the PUL community and many of the Protestant denominations \u2013 especially those \u00a0 Churches which in the past supplied many of the Hell fire preachers.<\/p>\n

New \u00a0 Loyalism seeks to heal that rift. There must be more dialogue and interaction \u00a0 between the Churches and the PUL communities. Perhaps what is needed as a \u00a0 start is a new uniformed Christian youth movement, or revamping existing ones \u00a0 such as the Boys\u2019 and Girls\u2019 Brigades.<\/p>\n

I know the power and influence of both \u00a0 these Christian movements. I began my journalistic career in the late 1970s \u00a0 as the Boys\u2019 Brigade correspondent for my local newspaper, the Ballymena \u00a0 Guardian in north Antrim.<\/p>\n

New Loyalism seeks, therefore, to put \u00a0 personal pride back into the youth of the PUL community. More importantly, \u00a0 restore proper political and Christian pride back into that famous maxim \u2013 \u00a0 For God and Ulster.<\/p>\n

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