{"id":2616,"date":"2013-12-31T18:54:30","date_gmt":"2013-12-31T18:54:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.longkeshinsideout.co.uk\/?p=2616"},"modified":"2013-12-31T18:54:30","modified_gmt":"2013-12-31T18:54:30","slug":"novosel-my-thoughts-by-william-ennis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.longkeshinsideout.co.uk\/?p=2616","title":{"rendered":"Novosel: My Thoughts by William Ennis."},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"\"<\/a>William Ennis–who is becoming a frequent–and welcome contributor to these pages, is a mature student and a Progressive Unionist Party activist.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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Novosel: My Thoughts<\/strong><\/p>\n

I<\/strong> first heard of Professor Tony Novosel in 2011 when he was invited to grace the lectern at the PUP\u2019s annual conference.\u00a0 He cut an intriguing figure.\u00a0 A thoroughly polite gentleman with a softly spoken American accent, the speech he delivered that Saturday afternoon grabbed me.\u00a0 It\u2019s always pleasant to hear a Loyalist voice in an alternative accent to the Ulster twang, his enthusiasm for deep-rooted and genuine Loyalism was as heart felt as any other in the room.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

This was my first party conference and not having been able to trade shifts with any of my work colleagues I had arrived mid proceedings<\/em> and in the distinctly un-classy\u00a0 garb of my warehouse work clobber (\u2018well we are a working class party after all\u2019, was my excuse, and I was sticking to it!).\u00a0 After what had been a bruising year for the party with a disappointing election campaign Professor Novosel\u2019s address proved to be quite the tonic.\u00a0 What unfolded into a superb conference, complete with the unveiling of a new party leader, became a refreshing turning of the page<\/em>.\u00a0 Our new chapter had begun and the feeling from that afternoon was so positive I can still summon it.\u00a0 We had embarked upon a new chapter, and it was time to get scribbling.<\/p>\n

When a year or so later I heard that Professor Novosel had published a book on the history of the conflict through the perspective of Loyalist\u2019s the anticipation was gripping. I then heard its title, Northern Irelands lost opportunity<\/em>, the frustrated promise of political Loyalism <\/em>and realised that reading this book was barely optional.<\/p>\n

I am, of course, a civilian Loyalist.\u00a0 I was not in the trenches<\/em>, as it were, with men such as Ervine and Hutchinson, and so the desire to build an understanding of what these men went through was, and remains, a fundamental one.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I read Professor Novosel\u2019s book, and here are my thoughts…<\/p>\n

Have you ever been in a room during a fierce argument between two or more people?\u00a0 Fingers pointing, blood pressures sky high, voices screaming at a level hazardous to the eardrums?\u00a0 Does conflict not often resemble this?\u00a0 The reason such arguments seldom get resolved is because neither, much less both sides of the argument get heard.\u00a0 I understood this book from the very first paragraph as the author deploying a megaphone and exclaiming… \u201cEveryone else, shut up!\u00a0 Let\u2019s hear what Loyalism has to say!\u201d\u00a0 The value of this alone is immeasurable.\u00a0 To understand this merely walk into your local Waterstones or WH Smith and observe wall after wall devoted to the Easter rising, Dan Breen, Mick Collins, De Valera, Wolf Tone, Napper-Tandy, Joy-McCracken, Drennan, Gerry Adams, and that unspeakable work of Satan that is virtually anything<\/em> British.\u00a0 Those who are Pro-Union British barely exist, and those of us who are working-class<\/em> and Pro-Union British simply do not.\u00a0 We are a fly never to be allowed into the ointment that is the romantic Republican narrative.\u00a0 With this in mind, the very undertaking of this project by Prof\u2019 Novosel is significant and I don\u2019t consider this to simplistic a point to make.\u00a0 Much like the working-class Loyalist Hugh Smyth becoming Lord Mayor of Belfast the significance doesn\u2019t lie in his excellent execution of the office, but in the fact that the appointment happened at all.<\/p>\n

The book exposed me to viewpoints I had not been aware of.\u00a0 Gusty Spence\u2019s piercing 1977 Remembrance Day speech to his incarcerated troops in which Spence compared the abuse of the Loyalist working classes of that era with the abuse of the working classes by the upper classes at the Somme.\u00a0 This was, for me, breathtaking insight given the impenetrably sacred British narrative of the Great War.\u00a0 Such objectivity and leadership would certainly have been lost to history but for Novosel\u2019s determination to scratch beneath the surface.\u00a0 David Ervine\u2019s scathing criticism of main-stream Unionism\u2019s refusal to engage with what he saw as a perfectly reasonable civil rights agenda is another such insight that both main-stream Unionists and Republicans would no doubt like to bury.<\/p>\n

Novosel interviews many ex-prisoners at great length and invites them to lay out exactly who they were (and are) as people.\u00a0 Their loves, their lives, why they believed that had fallen into such a conflict, and exposes these men for the first time as, heaven forbid, human beings, human beings who didn\u2019t wake up killers, but were products of their country\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

One of the greatest revelations for me is actually quite embarrassing.\u00a0 It was one of those moments when upon having something explained to you the answer was so obvious all along you slap yourself squarely across the forehead with teeth gritted in shame.\u00a0 It\u2019s only fair I divulge so here goes.\u00a0 For many years I had heard of the legends of Spence University<\/em>, of how men would become exposed to political ideas and look inward for answers.\u00a0 These men in Spence University would come to reject sectarianism and begin plotting for peace and so on and so forth.\u00a0 For the longest time I would ponder, \u201cWhat was wrong with the rest of them?\u00a0 How come the rest didn\u2019t have these revelations sooner?\u201d\u00a0 Of course the book deals at length with the reality that those incarcerated men had the facility to question, debate, read, learn, strategise, where as the poor sods on the outside were trapped in a vicious conflict with no such opportunity!\u00a0 My goodness, how silly was I not to have realised that?! But that is what this book became as I read- a reality check.<\/p>\n

The book is not without flaw, and it is noteworthy that I retain only one complaint.\u00a0 The damaging notion that one is a Loyalist or <\/em>a Unionist is one I simply can\u2019t abide.\u00a0 I find it positively insulting for anyone to deny me my Unionism on the grounds that I am a Loyalist.\u00a0 Loyalism is a cultural concept.\u00a0 It means my parents afforded me the opportunity to win a goldfish on the 12th<\/sup> of July field.\u00a0 It means I enjoy the marching bands and meeting friends and family on the kerb as the procession passes.\u00a0 It means I have immense respect for the service men and women in her Majesties Armed Services.\u00a0 It means Christmas dinner gets interrupted to watch the Queen.\u00a0 I enjoy and take comfort in my community\u2019s traditions.\u00a0 However, I believe in the political maintenance of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, so I am a Unionist too. The idea that one must choose between one and the other is a ploy by middle-class unionists to distance themselves from the working-classes and is often used tactically.\u00a0 It is patronising drivel.\u00a0 This Loyalism Vs Unionism trend is one I detest, and is one which I believe, sadly, Professor Novosel has fed with the narrative of his book as it is a distinction he seems to use frequently, an unfortunate laziness in his writing style perhaps.<\/p>\n

This book is by no means a loyalist propaganda piece.\u00a0 Novosel makes no bones about venturing into the darker side of Loyalist history.\u00a0 Through interviews with ex-combatants he explores the coup which occurred in 1974\/75 within the UVF following the electoral failure of the Volunteer Political Party (VPP) which led to the organisation taking a frightening lunge to the far right of the political spectrum.\u00a0 Novosel turns over many uncomfortable stones and writes frankly about the savagery often committed in Loyalism\u2019s name.\u00a0 Subject matter such as the Shankill Butchers and Loyalist flirtations with overtly racist groups such as the National Front (NF) is in no way airbrushed.<\/p>\n

But the highlight of the entire book for me lay in the exposure of some of the most revolutionary and progressive thinking to have been committed to paper.\u00a0 This thinking culminated in the Shared Responsibility<\/em> document which was published and polished in many redrafts throughout the 1970\u2019s with the final draft presented in 1985. The Shared Responsibility<\/em> Document proposed shared government, an empowered assembly and essentially everything which would eventually come to pass, everything which over twenty years later Big-House Unionism, Republicans and no fewer that three Governments would claim credit for (whilst side-lining Loyalism).\u00a0 The exploration into the fields of education and employment, the mechanisms of government show the most remarkable foresight and lays waste to the lazy Republican narrative of the knuckle dragging prod<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In conclusion this book is of massive significance not only to those of us who are of the Loyalist culture, but to anyone who genuinely wants to understand Northern Irelands past.\u00a0 One thought which has not left my head since reading the book is this…\u00a0 With propaganda having played such a supporting role in the Irish Republican movement, do they have the benefit of such frank analysis? \u00a0The Irish Republican narrative places such emphasis in the romantic story that it has evolved through propaganda coated richly with further propaganda, with a side order of propaganda with some additional propaganda thrown on for good measure.\u00a0 We Loyalists look at our flaws, we have no choice! Every one else looks at them for us!\u00a0 Somewhere along the way I believe we lost sight of how truly noble we are as a people.\u00a0 Novosel remedies this.\u00a0 Somewhere along the way we may have even started to believe what others have said of us.\u00a0 Novosel counters this.\u00a0 Unlike the Official IRA, the PIRA flatly refused to consider a compromise peace with the authors of Shared Responsibility. <\/em>\u00a0Novosel writes frankly of a window in our history when things were at their most bleak, and when Loyalism made a courageous attempt to draw up potential answers, but failed due to want of a peace-partner.<\/p>\n

Northern Irelands Lost Opportunity<\/em> induced in me all the same spine-tingles the Principles of Loyalism<\/em> did.\u00a0 When a person is used to an environment in which his\/her community is habitually blamed for every ill a clear and frank glance into the (very different) reality is a remarkable experience.\u00a0 Made all the more important when one considers we are once again at a juncture where those in Government find it much easier to blame Loyalism than to Govern.<\/p>\n

Before my final read-through and submission of this essay I visited one of the said book shops in Belfast.\u00a0 Professor Novosel\u2019s book was not on any of its shelves.<\/p>\n

William Ennis<\/strong><\/p>\n

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