Banging the loyalist drum
A year of bigotry, attacks, and censorship by omission
BY FERN LANE
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The fact that during 1999 there have been fewer loyalist murders than
in previous years does not diminish the individual trauma suffered by
those families whose loved ones have been killed, nor does it lessen
the misery and fear of those forced to leave their homes by
orchestrated mobs of loyalist youths
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Looking back over the last year, do you remember during those tortuous
months of negotiations up at Stormont when Word of the Week - every
week - amongst many of the politicians and most of the political
commentators was ``choreography'', a word which was used with
embarrassing and tooth-grating regularity? This was closely followed
by the ubiquitous use of ``sequencing'', which in the political context
meant exactly the same thing but which added a little bit of
much-needed variety to the clichés. Well, as the year draws to a
close, the Word of the Week at the moment in these rarified circles
is, it seems, ``whinging''. The great, the good and the incredibly
stupid amongst the right-wing media and those of unionist persuasion
have been nodding sagely at one another and agreeing with themselves
that the problem with those damn Catholics is that they whinge too
much.
For example, a few days ago Bairbre de Brún came in for an unusually
deranged attack, even by his standards, by Kevin Myers. Kevin decided
that Bairbre was guilty of whinging for the simple reason that on a
visit to the Royal Victoria Hospital in her new role as Health
Minister, she (a) pointed out the self-evident fact that plastic baton
rounds kill people and that those people tend, on the whole, to be
Catholic, (b) is angry about this, and, get this, (c) is a woman.
d some weeks back, the allegedly intelligent and allegedly abjectly
remorseful David Ervine also decreed from his own personal moral high
ground that Catholics would have to just get over what he described as
their ``victim mentality''. Despite the much-vaunted brain, he is
obviously incapable of the relatively simple intellectual process
which would conclude in an understanding that perhaps this mentality
is somehow related to the fact that Catholics actually are victims;
years of discrimination, harassment, burning, torture, and murder are
not figments of their imagination, as he would clearly have the world
believe, and he should know this better than most. For a man with his
past to say such a crassly insensitive thing defies comment. Catholics
are victims, David, because people like you made them so in the name
of obscene, racist political objectives. And others continue to this
very day to do just that.
Amazingly, however, Ervine was allowed to get away with this
monumentally imbecilic comment by an admiring media, which is itself
also very good indeed at ignoring the undercurrent of loyalist
violence against the nationalist population, which continues despite
the new political dispensation. Ervine, like others, is also in the
habit of portraying the unionist community as the principal `victims'
of the past 30 years of conflict. This is not only because of the
deaths suffered by that community but also, crucially, because
unionists and loyalists are no longer able to live in a supremacist,
one-party state, predicated on sectarian principles in which all
social, economic and political power is in British hands, and because
their efforts to slow down or even halt the pace of change is being
resisted. Nationalists are constantly fed the line that unionism has
made huge sacrifices and should therefore be indulged in its
tardiness. Unionism, particularly its middle class, hasn't made any
genuine sacrifices at all. It has been made to give up what didn't
belong to it and has fought it all the way. For that, it doesn't
deserve anybody's sympathy. Making this point, however, is decried as
`whinging'.
But then, Ervine, Myers and their unionist friends in the media are
all in good company. Just as the resident psychotics of the Red Hand
Defenders were putting 400 masonry nails end-up in a football pitch to
be used by two Catholic under-11 teams (an event which went totally
unreported in the British media), they were also warning Catholics of
their intention to exclude them from educational institutions, most
specifically East Antrim College of Further and Higher Education,
saying: ``If they keep this whingeing [sic] up, we will make sure that
no Catholic sets foot in the place. This applies to any other
establishment as well!''
Very well then. If being voluble in opposition to such racism is
whinging, so be it. If campaigning to have a discredited police force
disbanded is whinging, fine. If highlighting the daily harassment and
burning out of Catholic residents is whinging, that's OK too. If
fighting tooth and nail to bring to justice those who committed and
colluded in the murder of Rosemary Nelson and others is whinging, then
we should all be world-class whingers. And now I'm going to whinge
some more.
In a year of previously unimagined change, continuing loyalist
violence and bigotry has been the one constant which the UUP in
general and David Trimble in particular have refused to properly
condemn. The daily rhythm of attack with petrol and pipe bomb, as well
as the murders of Rosemary Nelson and Elizabeth O'Neill, serve to
remind nationalists of the huge difficulties they are up against in
trying to achieve some kind of reconciliation, both in the sense of
being able to forgive their tormentors and to function with them in a
supposedly normalised society.
The faces of hatred which I witnessed in Portadown were truly
shocking, partly because being on the receiving end of such abnormal
behaviour has itself become normal for the residents of the Garvaghy
Road and partly because it forced me to ask myself: how does one reach
out to people like those Orangemen and their supporters? How can one
even begin to overcome the murderous loathing and contempt in which
they hold anyone outside their tribe? How can one respond adequately
to men who wave broken Barbie dolls as they march to church and who
glory in the death of another human being? And yet, in the face of
this, the British government throughout the year has still urged the
residents of Garvaghy Road to find some way of accepting an Orange
march through the area to which Catholics have been confined by the
racism of the same people who also gloated over the death of Rosemary,
friend and champion of the besieged residents. Her loss was
incalculable.
But then, these people who call themselves Christians are akin to
those who in recent days have encouraged schoolchildren to engage in
protest against Martin McGuinness, democratically elected Minister of
Education, and who have helped turn such demonstrations into no more
than ugly displays of sectarian ranting. The television footage last
week of a small boy, immaculate in his uniform, obviously quoting
well-worn nonsense from either his parents or their political
representatives, would have been funny had it not been so sad. ``He'll
take the Queen's shilling'' he trilled, ``but he won't worship.. er..
respect the Queen''. D minus for you, young man, for mucking up your
lines when they were so carefully rehearsed only moments before the
camera crew turned up. I wonder what it's like being a Catholic in
this little darling's school.
Occasionally however, and to be fair, there have been times throughout
the year when paramilitary violence has made all the major British
news bulletins and the front pages of all the newspapers. This, of
course, has been restricted to when blame can be attrtibuted to the
IRA. In such circumstances, violence has been of immense interest and
consequence to Conservative politicians and the British media. In the
same vein, this year saw the emergence of John Taylor's previously
well-hidden social conscience, which expressed itself in his sudden
and uncharacteristic concern for such victims of punishment beatings;
this was very touching but would have been more convincing had it
extended to those receiving punishment beating from the UDA. But then
there was no political capital to be gained from it; indeed for Taylor
it could have been politically detrimental. Throughout this year, as
every other year in living memory, questions about loyalist
paramilitary activity have been routinely dismissed by unionist
politicians.
Perhaps the subliminal message being sent out in respect of the
hundreds of unreported and uninvestigated sectarian attacks this year
is that the Catholic population of the Six Counties has implicitly
been asked to accept a certain level of violence as the price for
political power, a level of violence which would be considered
outrageous and unacceptable in any other democracy. Whilst the UVF and
UDA have managed to resist the urge to go on the customary Taig-hunt
whenever things weren't going their way, loyalist elements have found
old habits hard to break. Catholics who are living in the shadow of
real and threatened violence are being ignored and silenced by the
shiny, happy people of the SLDP, UUP and British Government holding
hands up at the big house. There appears to be an unspoken assumption
that loyalism has to work out its frustration at the loss of absolute
dominance and can only do so by venting its anger on helpless
residents. A sinister version of the old boys-will-be-boys indulgence
of appalling behaviour.
The fact that during 1999 there have been fewer loyalist murders than
in previous years does not diminish the individual trauma suffered by
those families whose loved ones have been killed, nor does it lessen
the misery and fear of those forced to leave their homes by
orchestrated mobs of loyalist youths.
In the wake of the murder of Stephen Lawrence, the British Government
promised a policy of ``zero tolerance'' of racism in its institutions,
most particularly the police, and of racist attacks on its citizens; a
similar policy of zero tolerance has been desperately required in the
Six Counties over which the British government still has jurisdiction.
Only now is it starting to make promises to try to eradicate sectarian
hatred. Perhaps, and we can but hope, the new millennium will finally
see such promises upheld.
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