The very normal Major Ken
Fern Lane had no joy when she confronted the UUP's security
spokeman last week
UUP Security Spokesperson Ken Maginnis provided an interesting
insight into current Unionist tactics and philosophy when he
addressed a meeting hosted by the Islington North Constituency
Labour Party at the Red Rose Club in North London on Wednesday 21
October.
In the absence of the Islington North MP, Jeremy Corbyn (who was
in China), Maginnis's beaming host, Constituency Chairman Adrian
Pullen, introduced his guest as having recently ``shaved his
moustache off for charity''. Maginnis tried hard to look modest
during the chorus of indulgent chuckles and other congratulatory
noises which emanated from the Labour members in the audience.
After all, being a member the B-Specials and a Major in the UDR
pales into insignificance next to the towering achievement of
shaving one's moustache off so Maginnis's former roles did not
warrant a mention. Perhaps David Ervine should try shaving his
off for worthy cause.
However, the most interesting aspect of the evening was that
Maginnis had decided to talk, not about the looming crisis on
decommissioning, but rather on the matter of hospitals, roads and
the agricultural industry in his own constituency - although
without, it has to be said, providing even the merest whiff of
any coherent policy to deal with the undoubted problems in all of
these sectors.
During his speech, which pointedly avoided the subject of the
talks process, it became clear what this particular tactic was
designed to do.
This was the psychology of Normalisation in action - or rather
re-Normalisation; of attempting to recreate an impression that
the `National Question' has been finally and definitively
resolved, that the border is cast in stone, that Ulster is just
another region of the UK, soon to be devolved like Scotland and
Wales but, like them, still firmly part of the ``mainland'' and
entitled ``to share in the wealth of the south east of the
kingdom''.
The message was reiterated again and again; Maginnis stressed
that he is a British constituency MP like any other; with the
same aspirations, and facing the same kinds of social problems as
other British MPs representing deprived areas elsehwere in the UK
- hence the concentration on hospitals, roads, etc.
Maginnis claimed that, although there is ``over-representation'' in
the new assembly, he nevertheless has great hopes that it will
resolve the social and economic problems facing `Northern
Ireland'. The last 30 years of direct rule had been, he said, an
aberration, ``very unsatisfactory'', in that it had `made
government too remote from the people'. By that, one must assume
that he was using the word `people' in the Paisleyite sense of
`the Unionist people', since Stormont could hardly be described
as either satisfactory or accessible for nationalists. It would
seem then that for Unionists the entire peace process has been a
means, not of creating something new, but of getting things back
to ``normal'', back to how things were in the good old days of
Stormont and how they should be again. His comment to the Sunday
Times on 25 October that Sinn Fein are now ``part of the British
establishment'' was a further iteration of this policy of the
attempted re-Normalising of the six counties.
Afterwards, however, he was pressed on the matter of
decommissioning. He was asked how decommissioning could actually
be quantified; how many tons of Semtex and how many guns would
constitute, for him, decommissioning.
Maginnis skirted around the question, making his usual bizarre
and scurrilous accusations against the Sinn Fein leadership, and
then responded with a cryptic ``I'll just know when they have
decommissioned''. (This was a similarly strange response to that
he gave some months ago at the University of North London when he
was asked why he did not want a United Ireland. ``Because I just
don't,'' he said.)
It was pointed out to him (by An Phoblacht) that, for all the
fine talk of what he hopes the assembly will achieve in social
and economic terms, he was quite prepared to abandon all of that
because of his party's unwillingness to face up to a tiny
minority of its own right-wingers over decommissioning.
The fact that he could not, by his own admission, actually
quantify what decommissioning meant, demonstrated that Unionists
are in reality seeking to secure a purely symbolic surrender by
the IRA and to avoid genuine powersharing with nationalists. For
the sake of these futile ambitions, he was quite prepared to
forget about his high-minded social ideals, making all the talk
sound rather hollow. Maginnis indignantly denied this and
reverted back to talking about his work as a constituency MP.
![[An Phoblacht]](http://republican-news.org/graphics/title_gifs/aprn.gif)