{"id":1456,"date":"2013-03-12T14:18:17","date_gmt":"2013-03-12T14:18:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.longkeshinsideout.co.uk\/?p=1456"},"modified":"2013-03-12T14:53:27","modified_gmt":"2013-03-12T14:53:27","slug":"getting-beyond-no","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.longkeshinsideout.co.uk\/?p=1456","title":{"rendered":"Getting Beyond No."},"content":{"rendered":"

Below is a review of two recent books on Loyalism.\u00a0 One is the recent Tony Novosel book–Northern Ireland’s Lost Opportunity: The Frustrated Promise of Political Loyalism <\/em>and the other is by Pete Shirlow–The End of Ulster Loyalism?.<\/em> The review, by Connal Parr first appeared in the prestigious Dublin Book Review.\u00a0 Connal is an academic and freelance writer based at Queens University Belfast and is the Grandson of Paddy Devlin.\u00a0 Connal graduated from Oxford University\u00a0, gaining a BA in Modern History and also from Queens\u00a0gaining an MA with distinction.\u00a0 Connal is a welcome new contributor to these pages and I certainly hope he provides us with more<\/strong> articles in future<\/strong>.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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The principal significance of these two works is that both confirm the existence of a progressive political ethos within Northern Ireland\u2019s Protestant working class. The trick of repetition may be one their ideological opponents perfect, but the fact that a Loyalist vision of some originality and discernment did \u2013 and still could \u2013 exist is such an exotic notion in itself that it demands reiteration.<\/p>\n

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It is that spirit located by John Morrow, flowing \u201cdirectly from the dissenting spirit that had sent Godgiven Kings to the block and, in 1798, had caused even Ireland to feel, however briefly, the breath of the Enlightenment\u201d. While not a purely socialist strain of thought, it could be located in those swelling the ranks of the Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP) in the 1950s and early 1960s, when all too briefly things may have been different. Most of all it is to be found in every writer of note to emerge from the community itself, from the historic imprint of Sam Thompson, via Graham Reid\u2019s ground-breaking television plays of the 1980s, to the present day triumphs of Marie Jones and the energy of Gary Mitchell. In 1986 Edna Longley wrote that we needed to look at Ulster Protestant writers because \u201ctheir political consciousness illuminates the darkest area\u201d. This might sound cryptic but remains a statement anyone with knowledge of barren Northern Irish politics and the seemingly endless cycles of Loyalist violence, will appreciate for opening new doors. By failing to address its creative pulse, authors continue to inadvertently maintain the old fallacy that the Protestant working class has no culture but the Orange Order and Rangers FC.<\/p>\n

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With this in mind The End of Ulster Loyalism?<\/em> and Northern Ireland\u2019s Lost Opportunity<\/em> are released at a time of great convulsion for Loyalism as older tics begin to resurface. But the more one views the history of the Protestant working class through the lens of the Loyalist paramilitaries alone the more this is revealed as absurd. Loyalist paramilitaries are not, and have never been, an authentic mouthpiece of the Protestant working class. Aside from a brief breakthrough in 1998 the constituency has repeatedly demonstrated its rejection of the paramilitaries at the ballot box, even when Loyalism produced spokesmen of articulacy. Generally Shirlow\u2019s work lacks historical scope, the early violence of the Troubles \u2013 not to mention that of the 1920s and 30s \u2013 being conspicuously absent (such a spotlight is essential for an understanding of the travails of modern Loyalism). Novosel goes back further to get more of a handle on all of this, and also avoids getting too stuck in the well-established prison narrative. He pinpoints the crucial triumvirate of the Reverend John Stewart, Jim McDonald and David Overend \u2013 all three stalwarts of the NILP who acted as contacts to Loyalist prisoners and also talked with the Provisional IRA in 1974 \u2013 who helped nurture Loyalist acceptance of devolved power sharing at a time of vacuous Unionist integrationism.<\/p>\n

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This development was encapsulated in the Progressive Unionist Party\u2019s \u201cSharing Responsibility\u201d document, which gestated from 1977 onwards and led one of the North\u2019s better secretaries of state, Jim Prior, to describe the evolving group as \u201ctwenty years ahead of their time\u201d. Nevertheless, the \u201cLong Kesh University\u201d \u2013 where UVF (not UDA) members were tutored by Gusty Spence \u2013 is included. We never forget Spence\u2019s journey and can hear his voice echoing through the huts of the Maze, his Socratic gift to every hot-headed young man sent through to the gateway of his supervision:<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhy are you here?\u201d \u201cI was defending my country.\u201d \u201cNo! What circumstances in your life brought you a life sentence?\u201d<\/p>\n

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Spence applied dissent to the root of every Loyalist\u2019s relationship with the British state, simultaneously shattering the popular mythology that while Republicans came out of jail with PhDs the Loyalists came out with tattoos. In actual fact more Loyalist prisoners obtained degrees than their republican counterparts, with their education extending in certain cases to the Irish language. But the training meant nothing if the ex-prisoners failed to prosper on the outside. The fruit of engaged, thoughtful Loyalists \u2013 including David Ervine, Billy Hutchinson and Plum Smith \u2013 played a decisive role in the peace process and delivered the 1994 ceasefire, Spence\u2019s ultimate progeny.<\/p>\n

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Where Novosel is clear in tone Shirlow tends towards jargon, using convoluted language about a subject which needs most of all to be understood. Essentially his thesis is that Loyalism is divided into \u201cprogressive\u201d and \u201cregressive\u201d wings, and the latter \u2013with which we are so visually familiar, of \u201ctattooed and muscular men with a dog in a T-Shirt\u201d, as he paraphrases Hutchinson \u2013 must be abandoned. The thesis is a bit of a mouse; we could all do without Loyalist mayhem and criminality. But is also fails to address deeper complications. Take the recent flag protests: convention has it that they are a Paisleyite throwback, the kind of aggressive \u201cUnion Jackery\u201d which used to define Protestant politics. Yet what can \u201cprogressive\u201d Loyalists do? Do they condemn from the sidelines, potentially ceding what little influence they have over this marginalised and disillusioned section of the population? Or do they involve themselves in such a protest, curbing its destructive edges and simultaneously building a political power base so as to exert a meaningful (and possibly calming) influence once more? The latter course is a gamble but one the Progressive Unionist Party \u2013 now under Hutchinson\u2019s direction \u2013 has taken. Do \u201cprogressive\u201d and \u201cregressive\u201d wings of Loyalism convey such complexities? Absolutely not. All is grey as opposed to black and white, radical can accompany reactionary and vice versa. Loyalists were manipulated into voting against their class interests as long as the Unionist Party \u201cbrought a flute band and waved the Union Jack\u201d, the pre-flag protest Hutchinson says to Novosel at one point.<\/p>\n

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In one of its most interesting and important features Loyalism is extremely diverse, something which differentiates it from mainstream Irish nationalism: there is no \u201cline\u201d. Thus Shirlow\u2019s foremost error, which has unfortunately seeped into the work of some younger academics, concerns not revealing the names of his Loyalist interviewees. The use of \u201cUVF Respondent\u201d and \u201cUDA Respondent\u201d not only separates each individual from his analysis (they are of course only ever male), but also gives the highly misleading impression that members of the UVF and UDA speak with one voice and are broadly similar in mind and thought. The vital point is that these groups are so fissile that they do not speak \u2013 and have never spoken \u2013 with just one voice, and on the contrary are characterised by division and dissent. Novosel wisely avoids this mistake: we know when Hutchinson, Hughie Smyth or Dawn Purvis are speaking \u2013 they are all so very different \u2013 and we find out through the disparity of each person\u2019s insight something about Protestantism itself.<\/p>\n

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At the same time Shirlow\u2019s data yields some fascinating details such as the way \u201csocialist\u201d Republican ex-prisoners now tend to own their own homes while the majority of Loyalists are still renting! He scratches the surface of the problematic relationship with the media but Northern Ireland\u2019s Lost Opportunity<\/em> brings in voices which might escape the normal surveys. Liz Rea, Spence\u2019s daughter, rather perceptively notes: \u201cIt always goes back to who they [the Protestant working class] see as the \u2018big people\u2019 out there. They\u2019re frightened with going with a small Party \u2026 if we do that and don\u2019t vote the DUP in, then Sinn F\u00e9in is going to take over government.\u201d The PUP\u2019s Hughie Smyth, present on Belfast City Council since 1973, confirms that his grouping\u2019s contacts with Official Republicans and the Workers\u2019 Party raised the prospect of a merger to form a united Ulster Workers\u2019 Party. This never materialised and as it is both parties are stumped at two municipal seats each on the whole of the island.<\/p>\n

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Avila Kilmurray of the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland tells Shirlow that Loyalism \u201cis more positive than Unionism to a certain extent in that at least it does focus on identity issues \u2026 Whereas unionism tends always to be this thing of \u2018oh well our economic benefit is in the Union\u2019 and increasingly that\u2019s becoming more questionable\u201d. In 2005, when the interview took place and the South appeared in rude economic health, the superior economic benefits of the union may have seemed<\/em> more questionable \u2013 not that most people in the Republic gave a hoot for unity at the time \u2013 but for Shirlow not to point out how preposterous it is nowadays is remarkable. The oversight ignores the fact that Unionists will cruise to victory in any border poll by focusing specifically on questions of \u201ceconomic benefit\u201d; it is also the kind of issue \u2013 minor things like employment and the health service \u2013 truly progressive Loyalists like talking about. The current flag protesters seem self-destructively hung up on identity issues, and it all contradicts the marvellous quote Shirlow opens with from David Ervine (to whom the book is dedicated), the kind of thing people say down in Dublin too: \u201cI don\u2019t want to wake up every morning and ask myself \u2018Am I British or Irish?\u2019 I want to think \u2018Am I late for work?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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Still, analysis of the monumental UWC Strike of 1974 manages to evade both books, despite changing everything. Yet Harry Donaghy, of the Messines project, tells Novosel that the greatest \u201clost opportunity\u201d of all was \u2018the power-sharing Executive \u2026 it was Sunningdale\u201d. Enlightened Loyalists came round to the concept they opposed, and demolished, in 1974.<\/p>\n

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What both these writers deserve great credit for is their exhibition of that rare academic quality, generosity. Both call for further writing on the Protestant working class to remove it from the doldrums where it has languished for decades; \u201cto expand the discussion of groups such as Loyalists and their journey out of violence\u201d in Shirlow\u2019s phrase. He is aware this must be cultural as well as political, as suggested by one of the nameless in a quote which lends him his title: \u201cThere will be no end to loyalism, just rebirth into something good this time around.\u201d There are already signs that younger authors have taken up the challenge, with renewed focus on the Labour movement, the crisis of education, and above all on the creative lights \u2013 true rebirth \u2013 which represent the surest way the Protestant working class will transcend its old tics.<\/p>\n

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Connal Parr is completing a PhD on Protestant working class politics and culture at Queen\u2019s University Belfast and has published articles in <\/em>Irish Political Studies, <\/em>Fortnight and <\/em>the detail. He is a board member of Etcetera Theatre Company, established in September 2012 to stage plays and generate artistic initiative in working class Protestant areas.<\/em><\/p>\n

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