Whither Loyalism!
By Billy Mitchell
“ We are on the threshold of a new and exciting beginning with our battles in the future being political battles, fought on the side of honesty, decency and democracy against the negativity of mistrust, misunderstanding and malevolence, so that, we can bring forth a wholesome society in which our children, will know the meaning of true peace.”
With the above words, Gusty Spence concluded the speech which announced the loyalist cease-fire in October 1994. I know that Gusty was sincere when he uttered those words, and I know that many within the loyalist community were sincere when they said “Spence spoke for me, too”. I cannot help but wonder if, while being driven from his home by ‘loyalists’ last Saturday, the veteran loyalist leader felt that his cease-fire speech had fallen on deaf ears.
Loyalists need to reflect on where they intend to go. Is back to “the negativity of mistrust, misunderstanding and malevolence” or forward to the “new and exciting beginning with our future battles being political battles”?
Commenting on the significance of Spence’s cease-fire speech, David Ervine said, “Here was the alpha and omega, perceived by many to be the first of the violent men of this recent era, reading out a statement that pulled the curtain down, or we hoped would pull the curtain down, on a brutal and awful past”. Gusty Spence’s words were pregnant with hope for the future, pregnant with the hope that the peace process would give birth to a new progressive and democratic loyalism. Sadly, we know from experience that pregnancies can be terminated. We know too that there can be still-births and premature births. Pregnancies, like hope itself, must be nurtured if new life is to be brought forth.
The history of loyalism since the declaration of the cease-fires testifies to the fact that there have been many within loyalism and unionism who have sought to ensure that the new loyalist “peace child” would be either still-born or killed in infancy. The “big guns” of anti-agreement academia and Protestant fundamentalism, supported by the physical guns of those who accept their analysis, have combined to try and frustrate the potential for progress and radicalism that beats within the hearts of those who wholly endorsed the sentiments expressed in Spence’s speech.
Recent months have witnessed an alarming increase in the strength and the influence of reactionary elements within the unionist community. Combined with the growing disillusionment of many sincere pro-agreement unionists at the failure of the Belfast Agreement to deliver on its potential for peace and stability, this is very worrying indeed. It is particularly worrying for those unionists and loyalists who genuinely want to make the potential of Spence’s words a living reality.
It is all too easy for some to say, “But nationalists and republicans aren’t making it easy for us either. Sinn Fein’s ‘in your face politics’ antagonises the best of us and simply plays into the hands of our own reactionaries”. While I sympathise with such sentiments, those who hold them are missing the point. None of us, least of all Gusty Spence, expected nationalists to become the tame political playmates of constitutional unionism; nor did we expect Sinn Fein to joyfully embrace the principle of consent and sing Rule Britannia as they moved into constitutional republicanism.
We expected that Sinn Fein would give us “in your face politics” and that is what we are getting. If I interpreted Alex Maskey correctly at the recent Short Strand Festival discussion, we are going to continue to get “in your face politics” as nationalists and republicans endeavour to use the Belfast Agreement as a strategic weapon against the Union. So what! I still prefer “in your face politics” to “in your street car bombs”.
A careful reading of Gusty Spence’s speech will show that the veteran loyalist still expected that there would be “battles in the future” . He was not so naïve as to expect a tea & buns relationship with our political foes and he fully expected that loyalists would still have to engage republicans and nationalists in political battle. Political battles require political activism, not the flexing of muscles and the marking out of territory. Marking out community space, whether it is within or between communities, inevitably leads to contested space and the conflict and violence that comes with it.
Thirty years of violent conflict has solved nothing. All sides have been forced to admit that they had reached a military stalemate. It had become abundantly clear that were going to be no winners and losers, and even those who believed in the legitimacy of armed conflict were forced to conclude that to prolong the cycle of violence with no achievable outcome in sight was an exercise in immoral futility. Notwithstanding Gregory Campbell’s flawed analysis, violence has been weighed in the balance and has been founding wanting. It exacerbates rather than resolves problems.
The path laid out for loyalists in Gusty’s speech was the path of genuine dialogue and progressive political activism. It was a path that demanded a new set of values – honesty, decency and democracy. For those of us who sincerely believe in the basic thesis of Gusty’s speech there is no alternative to the path that he has marked out for us – the path of democratic political action.
(Published “North Belfast News” 26th August)
Kilde:
