The State of Loyalism

Goretti Horgan

Anyone visiting the North of Ireland few days’. It urged people to tell Alliance: these days cannot drive through any city, ‘We don’t want our national flag torn down town or hamlet there without finding part from City Hall. We can’t let them make or all of it bedecked with massive union a cold house for Unionists.’ flags. From December 2012 into the early months of 2013, to the time of writing, Belfast and all of the North has seen al- Background most daily protests about the union flag, some ending in riots; all featuring vicious The focus on the Alliance Party arose not sectarianism on the streets. just from the City Hall vote but because Alliance’s Naomi Long had defeated DUP leader and First Minister Peter Robinson in the 2010 election. The shock result had little to do with flags but reflected dis- gust at newspaper revelations about the ‘Swish Family Robinson’s’ luxury lifestyle at the taxpayers’ expense. Peter Robinson and his now-disgraced wife, Iris, who was also an MP, had claimed over half-a-million pounds a year in salaries and expenses Loyalist flag protest from Westminster, and had tried to claim twice for the same expenses on a regular basis. Peter Robinson had claimed £755 The protests started on December 3rd for a briefcase and Iris Robinson had tried after a vote in Belfast City Council to to claim for a £300 fountain pen. Working- fly the union flag over City Hall only on class DUP voters suffering the brunt of 18 designated days a year; the Queen’s austerity measures were fuming. birthday etc. Sinn F´einhad wanted the There had also been a raft of rev- flag taken down altogether, but in the end elations about broader corruption in supported the ‘designated days’ compro- DUP-controlled councils, particularly mise put forward by the ‘moderate’ Al- Castlereagh in east Belfast where the liance Party. A loyalist protest outside Robinson family had close, lucrative ties City Hall erupted into violence minutes af- to property developers. These revelations ter the motion was passed. Rioting also came after Ian Paisley, senior and junior, broke out in east Belfast. The protesters had been shown to have profited from links had come onto the streets in response with property developers. to 40,000 leaflets slamming Alliance, dis- The loss of east Belfast was traumatic tributed across Belfast in a joint operation for the DUP. They set out to use the by Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and flags issue to stir up Protestant hostil- (UUP) activists. ity to Alliance. While Alliance Party of- The leaflets accused Alliance of: ‘back- fices and even councillors’ homes - were at- ing the Sinn F´ein/SDLPposition that the tacked by mobs at the start of the protests, flag should be ripped down on all but a loyalist paramilitaries weighed in behind

46 the DUP/UUP - inspired protests and are pro-imperialist and pro-state; gung- changed tack towards more generally dis- ho supporters of the wars in Afghanistan ruptive tactics, like the rash of road-blocks. and Iraq, for example. From their incep- . tion, there have been allegations of collu- sion with the forces of the state. Since the peace process, clear evidence has emerged Loyalist Paramilitaries Death that the relationship went further than col- Squads of the British State lusion: loyalist paramilitaries were actively While today’s loyalist paramilitary gangs promoted by the State as they went about emerged in the mid-1960s as a reactionary their grisly sectarian business. response to the civil rights movement, In July 1972, the British Army’s GOC the roots of sectarianism go right back (General Officer Commanding), General to the plantations of the 17th century, Harry Tuzo, dispatched a paper to Home when racist depictions of the native Irish Secretary, William Whitelaw, suggesting as ‘savages’ were employed to justify seiz- that the growth of loyalist paramilitaries ing their land. At the end of the 18th should be quietly promoted. The word- century, there were frequent clashes be- ing of the paper implied the creation of a tween Irish (Catholic) peasants and the ‘second front’ against the Provisional IRA. English (Protestant) landlords. The land- ‘Vigilantes, whether UDA or not,’ Tuzo lords then promoted an alliance between wrote, ‘should be discreetly encouraged in themselves and Protestant yeomen (inde- Protestant areas to reduce the load on the pendent farmers) against the Catholics - Security Forces.’ with the Orange Order as the main mech- This suggestion wasn’t entirely new. A anism for cross-class integration. As in- month earlier, up to 8,000 masked UDA dustry developed, the Orange Order (or men armed with iron bars and cudgels ‘Orange Lodge’) moved into the towns confronted British troops in the Shankill and into Belfast where it operated to tie Road area. The British commander of Protestant workers to Protestant bosses land forces, Major-General Robert Ford, and encourage them to look down on arrived to negotiate with the UDA in the their Catholic fellow workers. The Or- back of a Saracen armoured car; they ange Lodge became the place to secure a struck a deal whereby the UDA and the skilled job - so such jobs were only open British soldiers conducted joint patrols of to Protestants. From time to time, the the area. British government armed the Orangemen The same paramilitaries, with the help to put down rebellions. of British army intelligence and the arms The (UVF) was and expertise of the part-time Ulster De- (re)formed in 1966, in response to com- fence Regiment (UDR), carried out a proxy memorations of the 1916 Rising; before the war, assassinating targets like solicitors year was out, it had killed two civilians - a Pat Finucane and Rosemary Nelson and Protestant and a Catholic. The other large over 1,000 other innocent civilians. Unsur- loyalist paramilitary group, the Ulster De- prisingly, they have always had links with fence Association (UDA), was formed in fascists; first with the National Front and Sept 1971. In its first year, it killed Combat 18, then with the BNP and lately more than 30 Catholic civilians. Loyal- the English Democrats. One link between ist paramilitaries are not, as they claim, the BNP and the English Democrats is Jim a Protestant equivalent of the IRA. They Dowson, who fell out with the BNP over

47 money, became a leader of the ED, and or court, despite being involved in the has addressed a number of the flag rallies. North in a highly important area of main- Dowson moves between Scotland, North- stream policing. ern Ireland and England setting up anti- The report reminds us of the over- abortion and fascist groups. whelming evidence from official inquiries of Despite the peace process and the ‘Pat- many abuses in covert policing in the past. ten reforms’ - which saw the effectively As a result, the Patten report on polic- all-Protestant Royal Ulster Constabulary ing reform recommended that the Special (RUC) change name and badges to the Po- Branch be downsized and integrated into lice Service of (PSNI) for the PSNI, where it would be overseen by weeks the loyalist protesters were given an an independent board rather than a gov- easy ride by police. This showed the extent ernment minister. However, the St An- to which Northern Ireland remains a sec- drews Agreement included a ‘Memoran- tarian state. In contrast to protests by stu- dum of Understanding’ whereby Special dents or anti-war protesters, police stood Branch was to be run by a parallel police by and allowed main roads to be blocked force - ‘a force outside a force’ - answer- by small groups of teenagers. able only to ‘direct rule’ Ministers. Since the Chief Constable has said that MI5 Secret and Political Policing: would focus only on dissident republicans, this means that two different covert polic- ‘The Policing You Dont See’ ing regimes, in terms of operational tech- The devolution of policing and justice pow- niques, standards and oversight, are now ers was to be the end of the argument in place for republicans and loyalists. about the need to end the Northern state The CAJ research shows that in the - when the essential power of the state, UK oversight of MI5 is ineffective. Pol- its ‘bodies of armed men’, came under the icy documents, which have been released to control of the people of Northern Ireland. CAJ under Freedom of Information, rather But, a state built on sectarianism cannot than encouraging safeguards actually ap- just leave it behind. Apart from the fact pear designed to limit accountability. The that the devolution of policing and justice documents discovered for the report show is merely a return to the status quo ante of an obsession with keeping anything with the years when Stormont ruled ‘a Protes- the label ‘national security’ secret from tant state for a Protestant people’, the de- politicians, lawyers, media and the public. volution of policing and justice leaves the After St Andrews, Tony Blair gave as- political aspects of policing in the hands surances that PSNI officers working with of British intelligence agency (or ‘Security MI5 would be ‘solely accountable’ to the Service’) MI5. Chief Constable and the Policing Board; in The ‘Committee on the Administration contrast, the CAJ report shows that PSNI of Justice’ (CAJ) recently published: The officers, up to and including the Chief Con- Policing You Dont See: Covert Policing stable, working on national security mat- And The Accountability Gap. Researched ters are not accountable to anyone but and written by CAJ’s deputy director, Westminster. Political policing remains. Daniel Holder, it contains a shocking in- The director of CAJ said: ‘MI5 - se- dictment of the extent to which the secret cret, unreformed and unaccountable - is Security Service - implicated in past abuses now running one of the most sensitive ar- - remains unaccountable to any politician eas of policing. This is a disaster waiting

48 to happen to confidence in the rule of law none likely to be helped by the flag and our peace settlement. CAJ wants a protests. One of the most striking fea- full, independent review with the aim of tures of poverty in Northern Ireland over bringing covert policing here in line with the last 20 years has been the way Protes- human rights standards.’ tant working-class areas have steadily In any case, the PSNI are doing climbed up the deprivation figures. So, their best to ensure that they continue while Catholic areas were highly over- to be seen as a sectarian force. Their represented in the 10 percent most de- use of Section 44 stop-and-search powers prived areas 20 years ago, today about has been entirely in working-class areas 40 percent of the most deprived areas are but mainly Catholic working-class areas. Protestant. There are many reasons for These searches have risen year on year this: the engineering and other manufac- from over 2,000 in 2006 to over 22,000 in turing jobs that used to provide relatively 2010/11. well-paid, secure employment in Protes- tant areas have gone. Re-invigorated Loyalism The Ugly Face of Inequality And educational disadvantage hits the Protestant section of the working class, es- Loyalist paramilitaries have delighted in pecially boys, hard. All children in the telling their Facebook audience that they North are poorly served by a selective edu- ‘havent gone away, you know’ (echoing cation system; but all the nationalist par- ’ 1995 quip about the IRA). ties are against selection. Sinn F´einsEdu- They are using the anger incited by the cation Ministers abolished the Eleven Plus DUP/UUP leaflets for their own purposes. but failed then to get rid of the gram- These include recruiting young people to mar schools or to push through the NI As- paramilitarism and gaining funding for sembly a new non-academic form of trans- their ‘community projects’ - aka jobs for fer from primary to second level, because the boys. both the Unionist Parties support aca- Most community groups in Catholic demic transfer. A taskforce on Protestant working-class areas have for years been educational disadvantage was set up by firmly controlled by Sinn F´ein- in part, Dawn Purvis while she was still an MLA. a pay-back for the Provo ceasefire. Loy- It identified a range of shocking statistics: alist paramilitaries aim at a similar situa- Just 8.5 percent of those on Free School tion in ‘their’ areas. While Sinn F´einhas Meals (FSMs are a proxy for poverty as used manoeuvring and political influence they are only available to the poorest chil- to gain control over community groups, dren) in Protestant non-grammar schools loyalists have tended to use intimidation. achieved two A levels, compared with 21.2 For historical reasons, linked to their loy- percent in Catholic non-grammars. A alty to the state, community organisation catholic pupil from a poor background on in Protestant areas is less developed than FSMs will have a one in five chance of go- in Catholic areas. So, fewer jobs for the ing to university while a similar child in a boys - unless rioting can bring millions into Protestant school has a one in ten chance. the area to ‘restore peace’ and deal with Shirlow points out that there was only ‘Protestant alienation’. one unionist MLA (besides Dawn Purvis) There are good reasons for working- at the launch of this report, while there class Protestants to feel alienated - but were three Sinn F´einMLAs including the

49 Deputy First Minister1. Despite their own privatisation and welfare reform. Histor- working class constituents being so badly ically, there has been much sharper class impacted by selection, the unionist parties stratification on the Protestant side - big continue to defend it. landowners, industrialists, the professional So, Protestant young people are less classes, skilled workers, labourers, the job- likely to get a minimum-wage job in the less - all bound together in their British many call-centres that have come to North- identity, but each knowing well enough his ern Ireland than their better-educated or her own place within it. Now DUP Min- Catholic counterparts. Agency work is of- isters echo the anti-working-class rhetoric ten the only option - jobs that earned £12 of Cameron and Osborne, looking down an hour 10 years ago but now attract only their noses at the ‘strivers’ and ‘shirkers’ the minimum wage and offer no security. on whose votes they depend for power. Even before the recession, median wage In his study of the psychosocial impact levels in the North generally were just 85 of class, The Impact of Inequality, Richard percent of those in Britain - over £15 a Wilkinson points out that, statistically, week less than the next lowest-paid region people who live in highly unequal societies of the UK, the North-east of England. and feel looked down on are much more Thus, Protestant working-class areas likely to be violent and have racist atti- have been moving up the deprivation tudes. The ‘fur-coat brigade’ of the union- ‘league’, but not because Catholic areas ist elite has long looked down on working- have seen poverty levels reduced. The con- class Protestants. Working-class Protes- vergence is the result of the wages for all tants are more likely than Catholics to live workers being pushed down. Northern Ire- in deprived areas that are surrounded by land is marketed across the world by the wealth pockets of poverty among plenty. DUP and Sinn F´einas a low-wage area. While the new Catholic middle classes More than half of Northern households are tend to get out of the working-class areas dependent either on benefits or working as quick as they can, they are less likely to tax credits, while about a quarter are do- be able to openly look down on working- ing very well and can still afford foreign class Catholics. They might live on the holidays and second homes. Malone Road or the Culmore Road, but This lack of concern by unionist they are only one generation away from politicians for working-class Protestants Ballymurphy or the Bogside. stretches back in history. The Ulster This abandonment by the unionist Unionist Party was known as the ‘fur coat parties means that many people looking brigade’ and, despite the Orange Lodge be- in from outside Protestant working-class ing supposed to bring all Protestants to- communities see loyalist paramilitaries as gether, the fur coat brigade looked down ‘community representatives’, as the voice their noses at the working class. The of the Protestant working class. But this DUP was supposed to replace the fur coat has never been the case. In election af- brigade and cater for working class Protes- ter election, political parties associated tants. That fiction did not last very long; with loyalist paramilitaries have failed to as seen in its relationship with property get more than derisory votes. The only developers across the Six Counties and time the UDA’s political wing got elected its determination to cut the living stan- was when there was a list system with a dards of all working-class people through very low threshold for representation. The 1Shirlow, P. (2012), The End of Ulster Loyalism?, Manchester University Press

50 Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) did get ism. The number of ‘Peace Walls’ has more elected for a short while but lost its elec- than doubled since the Agreement. The toral position when it was seen to be re- level of fear, and not just in interface areas, turning to feuding. This is precisely be- has not fallen. In interface areas, it has in- cause loyalist paramilitaries are not the creased. The fear is of physical attack, not voice of the Protestant working class; they just a generalised fear of the ‘other side’. are a parasite on that class and rule their Now, as sectarianism is again ratcheted areas through fear and intimidation, often up, fear grows that we are headed back with the collusion of the police. to ‘the bad old days’. In spite of all the talk of ‘moving forward’, politics is grid- locked, with the DUP effectively in charge. Institutionalised sectarianism The DUP is openly neo-liberal, a party What’s happening on the streets was pre- in which Sarah Palin would feel rightly at dictable. The 1998 Belfast (or Good Fri- home. It opposes gay rights, is virulently day) Agreement was a recipe for institu- anti-abortion and doesn’t think there’s any tionalised sectarianism. This is seen best poverty in Northern Ireland. A good pro- at Stormont, where all Members of the portion of its MLAs and government Min- Legislative Assembly (MLAs) have to de- isters are members of the Caleb Founda- clare themselves ‘Unionist’, ‘Nationalist’ tion - an Evangelical umbrella group that or ‘Other’. The First Minister is always promotes creationist views, urges its politi- from the largest unionist or nationalist cian members to ‘implement god’s law’ and party, the Deputy First Minister from the ‘jokingly’ calls itself ‘the Caleban’ largest party on the ‘other side’. Every In early January, while the flag protests election consists of two parallel contests to raged, the DUP’s Minister for Social elect the party seen as the best champion Development, Nelson McCausland, an- of ‘their own’ community. If you decide nounced the abolition of the Housing Ex- you’re ‘Other’, your role in politics is au- ecutive, one of the Civil Rights Movements tomatically diminished - when it comes to most important legacies and, with it, the voting in the Assembly on issues requiring privatisation of all public housing and the ‘cross-community support’, for example. certain loss of hundreds of public sector Either unionists or nationalists can trigger jobs. McCausland is also pushing the Wel- this mechanism, which means that a mea- fare Reform Bill - already passed at West- sure has to be passed either by weighted minster - through the Assembly, introduc- majority, when at least 60% of all MLAs ing Universal Credit, the Personal Inde- who vote support the motion, including pendence Payment and the ‘bedroom tax’ at least 40% designated unionist and 40% on top of cuts to benefits and tax cred- designated nationalist. Or it may pass in its. This represents a massive assault on accordance with the parallel consent for- working-class living standards. Sinn F´ein mula, when at least 50% of members who is going along with it. Like the Lib Dems, vote support the motion, including at least they ‘oppose’ the cuts but then vote for 50% unionist and 50% nationalist. their implementation. This way of running things has had a The cuts affect Protestant workers as poisonous effect, as sectarianism trickles well as Catholic. These are the issues we down towards the street. need to see people on the streets about. In Belfast you can see in the built en- The presence of a united working-class vironment the visible growth in sectarian- voice has been sadly missed. Two rallies

51 for peace at Belfast City Hall attracted Catholic workers uniting to fight as a class around 2,000 people each. The numbers against the bosses - it can be hard to see could have been much bigger if the political the evidence that it still exists. It is the basis had been different. The trade union task of socialists to defend the principle of movement organises more people - Protes- working-class unity against sectarian big- tant and Catholic - than all the Loyal Or- otry and to seek out ways of making that ders and comparable Catholic groups put unity more visible. The fight to defend jobs together. It has the capacity to organ- and tenants’ rights, by stopping the abo- ise the overwhelming majority in North- lition of the Housing Executive, provides ern Ireland who are in despair over the the sort of issue and opportunity needed latest eruption of sectarianism, but so far to bring workers together, to show that an has failed to do so. So, while there is an alternative does still exist to the growth of alternative to the vicious cycle of sectar- sectarianism. ianism - the tradition of Protestant and

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