developments<\/a> through a social capital frame.<\/p>\nLoyalists, having learnt the lessons of conflict transformation, are beginning to employ the tools, technologies and techniques of peacebuilding to shape a new PUL society at the local level.<\/p>\n
This \u2018grassroots\u2019 transformation now arising, in response to the HET, flags and parades disputes, appears to be bonding \u2018grassroots\u2019 loyalists, bridging their internal identity disputes, and linking them to their politicians, local Orange lodges and civil society groups.<\/p>\n
In so doing \u2018grassroots\u2019 loyalists are slowly beginning to frame a common vision of what a shared cultural future could look like and how they develop a strategic response to the perceived cultural war now being waged by Sinn Fein.<\/p>\n
This vision is not shaped on any notion of a \u2018Third Protestant Ascendency\u2019 but on the dreams of the Protestant working class, striving to realize their prize promised in the Good Friday Agreement: to address the deep-rooted causes of conflict, eradicate victimhood, poverty, unemployment inequality, cultural and social exclusion and the creation of conditions for further sectarian violence never to erupt again.<\/p>\n
However, fifteen years on from the Agreement the promised peace prize has yet to impact in \u2018grassroots\u2019 loyalist areas and communities, particularly in north, south, east and west Belfast. Instead of securing a new era, of social and cultural inclusion, the Loyalist community has witnessed their parades systematically attacked.<\/p>\n
As a consequence, \u2018grassroots\u2019 Loyalists are now slowly reorganizing their social capital to secure their culture.<\/p>\n
It is now becoming clear that through new logics, strategies and tactics, \u2018grassroots\u2019 loyalists are beginning to \u2018return the serve\u2019 in this growing perceived cultural war between the PUL community and \u2018others\u2019, this time using non-violence, legislation, the courts and community action, as their preferred tools for acquiring cultural equality and human security.<\/p>\n
The street disorders arising from the Parades Commission\u2019s determination preventing the Ligoniel Lodges returning home have been a godsend for the reformers of this new Loyalist programme for social transformation.<\/p>\n
The disorder helps progressive loyalists expose the futility of violence in trying to obtain cultural equality. It also helps undermine \u2018super prods\u2019 attempts to lead \u2018grassroots\u2019 loyalism up yet another hill: only to get less at the pearly gates than St. Andrew gave them last time.<\/p>\n
As this non-violent re-construction of social capital slowly re-profiles the PUL community it is inevitable that organised Loyalism will increasingly place constraints and tolerances on their elected politicians, moving them beyond the \u2018moving statues\u2019 theory of cultural conflict towards a more salient critique of how social and cultural inclusion is shaped, secured and agreed in a shared out sectarian state.<\/p>\n
Socially motivated \u2018grassroots\u2019 Loyalism also adds a new inclusive non-violent community action element to forthcoming discussions and negotiations on how a \u2018second-generation\u2019 Agenda for Peace will be shaped through the impending Haas initiative.<\/p>\n
While current political analysis dismisses \u2018grassroots\u2019 loyalists and the Orange Order as only 2% of the population and having little impact on forthcoming negotiations, a more sober realization is that if 1% of the world\u2019s population can own 40% of the world\u2019s wealth what can 2% of socially organised loyalists own?<\/p>\n
As Professor Pete Shirlow notes, with the end of Ulster Loyalism greatly exaggerated, if \u2018grassroots\u2019 loyalists are to emerge from their \u2018sloth-like past\u2019 they will need to \u2018create a new form of un-armed political loyalism upon the foundations of key and social justice driven principles\u2019.<\/p>\n
Through this current crisis we may just be witnessing this emergence of political loyalism through the building of\u00a0 \u2018\u2019grassroots\u2019 loyalists social capital.<\/p>\n
If \u2019grassroots\u2019 loyalists are to succeed in developing social justice in this emerging form of progressive unionism then it needs to formulate a coherent strategy and tactics with the leadership to deliver cultural equality.<\/p>\n
While this emerging \u2018grassroots\u2019 loyalist social transformation movement may ultimately fall foul to the fate of other PUL social equality initiatives, thwarted by Ulster Unionist political elites, its gradual growth offers new insights into how progressive unionism will rise to meet other challenges, of poverty, ill-health and multiple deprivation.<\/p>\n
Therefore, rather than viewing this current crisis as a stereotypical violent loyalist response to social change, a more cool headed and salient critique may detect the chrysalis of a new non-violent era for the Loyalist community emerging from its \u2018sloth-like past\u2019.<\/p>\n
If so, in developing this new era of non-violent loyalist social transformation, \u2018grassroots\u2019 loyalists might yet provide the vision and leadership to show how a local application of social action and social capital can begin to transform \u2018grassroots\u2019 loyalists, from violent defenders to social menders, and in so doing, change utterly, the drive, dynamic and development of our post-conflict peacebuilding society.<\/p>\n
If progressive loyalists can keep their head while others around them are losing theirs, to shape a shared vision and provide the local leadership to achieve the non-violent aims and objectives that secure cultural equality, we might yet see a new dawn emerging from the cocoon of our current crisis.<\/p>\n
This new dawn, of \u2018grassroots\u2019 loyalist social transformation, may then even reform our staid sectarian political economy, to secure the hope of 98 and deliver social and economic well-being for all those most in need, to move us all a little further down this long and winding road towards peace, prosperity and political maturity.<\/p>\n
About Sean Brennan<\/strong><\/h4>\nSe\u00e1n Brennan is a part-time PhD candidate at the Queen\u2019s University Belfast, School of Politics International Studies and Philosophy, researching Ulster Loyalism and the politics of Peacebuilding, Development and Security in Northern Ireland. He is a representative of the community on Belfast City Council\u2019s Good Relations Partnership and has contributed articles for The Other View magazine, Pue\u2019s Occurrences and Conflict Transformation Papers, Volume 9, Ethnicity and Nationalism (2005) and Volume 10, Peace by Piece (2005) and has contributed poems, The Gaza Ghetto (2008) and Belsen by the Sea (2008), for the Palestine Chronicle (16 July 2008). Se\u00e1n also designs and delivers training in Community Relations, Conflict Resolution and Conflict Transformation and his Peace Building in Interface Communities programme was short-listed for the Times Higher Education Awards (2008).<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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