The arrest of fundamentalist Protestant self-proclaimed `pastor' Clifford Peebles has highlighted the religious ideology which is never far from the surface within the unionist tradition.
Peebles was arrested along with James McGookin-Fisher after the RUC carried out a search of a car on the Moy Road near Dungannon around 5pm on Tuesday, 26 October.
They found a pipe bomb and two grenades during the search. Peebles and McGookin-Fisher appeared at Cookstown magistrates court on Friday, 29 October.
This is not the first time Peebles has come to the public's attention. A former member of the now defunct bogus anti-violence group Families Against Intimidation and Terror, he was released without charge by the RUC in November 1998 after six grenades and six detonators were discovered at the mission hall were he preaches and is a keyholder in the loyalist Woodvale area of North Belfast.
The Russian-made grenades which were found in his the hall were the same type which were used by the Orange Volunteers when they staged a show of strength in December 1997. These weapons were also part of the arms cache brought into the Six Counties for use by loyalists by British military intelligence agent Brian Nelson in the 1980s.
Again, Peebles was arrested and later released without charge in April of this year when he was questioned about loyalist attacks throughout the Six Counties.
He was also highly active in the Justice for Protestants group, which has been behind a number of rallies and protests in support of the Orange Order's stance at Drumcree.
McGookin-Fisher is from the Deerpark Road in Graymount, an area which has seen a number of Catholic homes and a Catholic man murdered by dissident loyalists in recent years.
The media and unionist sources are quick to point at Peebles and his associates and label them as ``crackpots'' or ``dissidents''. It appears easy to justify these comments when we hear members of the Orange Volunteers tell how they and their explosives are blessed by a pastor before they try to kill Catholics.
The reality, however, is quite different. People like Peebles are readily afforded places within the unionist family - unionism was founded by people with his views and beliefs. One of the fundamental tenets of unionism and loyalism is the ``For God and Ulster'' mentality.
Not far below the surface of unionism is this fundamentalist mentality. Of the mainstream unionist parties, this fundamentalist stream arises most frequently in the DUP. For evidence of this we need look no further than the Reverend William McCrea's threats against the nationalist people after Martin McGuinness took his Mid-Ulster seat or the DUP's flirtation with the Ulster Resistance grouping.
David Trimble is himself a former member of the right-wing Ulster Vanguard and, as was witnessed in 1996, had no qualms about speaking to that other infamous former pastor, loyalist killer Billy Wright, in order to further the Orange Order's attempts to march down the Garvaghy Road.
Political unionism has as its bedrock the Orange Order, a group steeped in fundamentalist religious doctrine. At times when unionism feels it is in difficulty or the Orange Order is having problems, loyalist attacks begin to increase. People like Peebles are not dissidents. The reality is that unionism and so-called ``dissidents'' feed off of each other. They complement each other when the need arises and both are linked through their fundamentalist religious beliefs, which quite often find common ground in organisations such as the Orange Order, which form the backbone of unionism/loyalism in the Six Counties.
![[An Phoblacht]](http://republican-news.org/graphics/title_gifs/aprn.gif)
