Republican News · Thursday 23 January 2003

Are unionists 'victims' of their own myth making?

BY LAURA FRIEL

There's a pivotal scene in Thomas Hardy's novel, The Mayor of Casterbridgeí in which the distraught Mayor is confronted by a scaffold, which Hardy describes as "incomplete without a victim".

The tragedy at the heart of this tale lies in the main character's inability to think outside the box of his own ideology (an ideology which incidentally initially made him both powerful and wealthy).

The scaffold he has crafted for himself is not real but the Mayor repeatedly chooses conflict and loss because he lacks the courage and imagination to develop alternative strategies.

In a week that has witnessed both the Ulster Unionist Party and the Democratic Unionist Party snub the opportunity for inclusive dialogue in Belfast and boycott the furtherance of peace and reconciliation in Dublin;

In a week when unionist paramilitaries threatened to officially abandon even the pretence of ceasefire and their political representative ended all contact with Sinn Féin;

d at a time when the allegedly reformed PSNI continued to feed the agenda of Anti-Agreement unionism, it is perhaps not surprising that Hardy's mulish and myopic Mayor came to mind.

In a statement issued on Thursday night, the UVF and Red Hand Commandos claimed that their commitment to the peace process was 'faltering'.

The UVF said that until now it had shown a "genuine and meaningful commitment" to the search for "an honourable settlement" in the north but that commitment was now under serious pressure.

The unionist paramilitaries blamed the British government and the IRA. The UVF warned the British government against concessions to republicans while complaining that unionist paramilitaries' 'support' for the peace process "was being taken for granted".

If the British government did not "pay heed" to these concerns, the UVF threatened to withdraw its 'support' for the process. "Confidence" in the process had been shattered and fault lay with the IRA.

The UVF accused the IRA of wholesale sectarian targeting of unionist people. 48 hours later, the same allegation would emanate from the PSNI.

The UVF ordered its representative Billy Hutchinson of the Progressive Unionist Party to cease further contact with John de Chastelain, the commissioner tasked with overseeing decommissioning. The PUP complied and furthered the UVF agenda by ending all contacts with Sinn Féin.

"The blame for this lies fairly and squarely with Sinn Féin and the [British] Prime Minister," said Hutchinson. PUP leader David Ervine reiterated the claim. "Gerry Adams and Tony Blair have eyes only for each other," said Ervine.

Unionism was saying "enough is enough", said Ervine, a closed process dealing only with the wants of Sinn Féin "is not good enough".

The peace process was "one-sided", and while republicans were being politicised, unionist paramilitaries were being criminalised. Hutchinson accused the British government of "trying to decommission loyalism rather than decommission weapons".

Meanwhile, the Ulster Unionist Party and the Democratic Ulster Party were boycotting the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation in Dublin. It was left to unionist clergy to reiterate the anti-Agreement ideology of betrayed and martyred unionism.

"The unionist community at present is essentially pessimistic," said Church of Ireland Reverend Earl Storey. Unionists believed the political process had been "corrupted" and despite "all the cleverness of spin and political presentation" it was simply "unreasonable" to expect unionists to share power with republicans.

George McCullagh of the Presbyterian Church of Ireland said that unionists felt "betrayed" and "the IRA and its control of Sinn Féin is the immediate cause of that betrayal". Dr David Porter of the Evangelical Contribution said unionists had been "left disappointed, betrayed, angry and confused".

Former Irish rugby international Trevor Ringland of the Ulster Unionist Council accused nationalists of discrimination. He "respected" the mandate given to nationalists but when they were on the pitch they had to play by the same rules as everyone else.

Rather than participating in a real exercise of conflict resolution at all-party talks at Stormont, former First Minister and leader of the UUP David Trimble flew to Spain to theorise it. In Barcelona, the Nobel peace prize winner lectured European politicians, academics and journalists about his role in the peace process.

The UUP Assembly group decided nothing "meaningful" could be gained by participating in the current dialogue. A leading UUP member dismissed the talks as "peripheral to the main problems faced in the political process" and demanded total decommissioning and disbandment of the IRA.

UUP MP Jeffery Donaldson warned unionists against participating in dialogue and becoming "embroiled in back door bartering", while the British government further appeased Sinn Féin.

Donaldson ruled out power sharing, demanded the exclusion of Sinn Féin and called for the reinstatement of a new unionist 'majority'.

"The way forward lies in a revised system of administration at Stormont where unionists and nationalists work together for the betterment of Northern Ireland but where representatives of armed terrorists are excluded from government," said Donaldson.

"All-inclusive" government at Stormont would be "inherently unstable" warned UUP MP David Burnside. "The only alterative would be to replace the d'Hondt all-inclusive Executive with a voluntarily agreed coalition of parties representing a substantial part of the unionist and nationalist electorate." In other words, an administration in which more than half of the nationalist electorate is disenfranchised and the rest of the nationalist electorate is subject to the unionist veto.

DUP chairperson Maurice Morrow offered another version of a return to unionist domination. The DUP wanted to see a new "democratic" deal in place that the entire unionist community could support.

"This is not an unreasonable demand, it is not a unionist demand, it is simply a democratic demand," Morrow told a conference of DUP constituency representatives.

"Sinn Féin-IRA cannot be allowed to undermine any deal by continuing to press the [British] government for more and more concessions," said Morrow. "We are not in the business of putting the IRA back into government."

Meanwhile, the PSNI were doing their best to assist unionist rejectionism by further stoking unionist delusions of victimisation. In a deliberate distortion, the PSNI informed dozens of Protestant community workers involved in interface cross community work, that their 'details' were in the hands of the IRA. The implication of an imminent threat was clear, if never stated.

The Protestant Community Workers Association said that the trust of many of those involved in delicate peace work such as interface contacts had been "betrayed". But the group acknowledged that the information discovered did not suggest targeting. It was an exercise in "thought policing" said the group.

The status of the PSNI's 'discovery' can be best understood in light of the fact that amongst those 'warned' that their details were in the hands of republicans was Sinn Féin Assembly member Dara O'Hagan. The credibility of any real 'threat' is completely undermined.

In a statement to An Phoblacht on Monday, the IRA described allegations about IRA threats as "bogus and mischievous", which were being "exploited in an effort to undermine public confidence.

"Our cessation remains intact," said the IRA statement.

But while unionist politicians, clergy and the PSNI are directing public attention to the fiction of a republican threat to the peace process, the real ongoing tragedy within the unionist community remains largely unacknowledged and unresolved.

Like Hardy's ideological scaffold, unionist myth making is "incomplete without a victim". While unionists wrap their rejection of the Good Friday Agreement and its vision of equality and power sharing democracy in the fantasist's cloak of the republican bogeyman, the real scourge of unionist paramilitary violence continues to wreck havoc within unionist as well as on nationalist communities.

For the last three years, feuding unionist paramilitaries have left a trail of death and destruction in the heart of unionist communities in the north. Communities like the Shankill have been torn apart by internecine rivalry between competing factions within the UDA.

Feuding has cost the lives of Stephen Warnock, Thomas Gray, Alex McKinley, Mark Apsley, Jonathan Stewart, Roy Green and critically injured Robert Ewart.

Unionist paramilitaries' continuing campaign of violence against Catholic communities not only pollutes unionist communities with the poison of sectarianism, it sometimes also results in fatalities. Last Christmas David Cupples, a 25-year-old kitchen porter was killed in the mistaken belief he was a Catholic.

The UVF statement accused the IRA of "wholesale targeting of the unionist community" but itís a poor lie compared to the pain and suffering the UVF has inflicted upon its own community.

Recent killings of members of the unionist community by the UVF include 18-year-old David McIlwaine and 19-year-old Andrew Robb, stabbed to death at the side of Tandragee Road, Jackie Coulter, Bobby Mahood, David Greer and Tommy English, shot dead in Belfast and Adrian Porter, shot dead in Bangor.

d when unionist paramilitaries are not busy fighting amongst themselves, terrorising each other's families and forcing people to flee from their homes, they're making money through protectionism and drug dealing.

Sucking the lifeblood out of their own neighbourhoods, unionist paramilitaries continue to intimidate local businesses and destroy the lives of young people and decimate communities with drug addiction. In the interests of unionist paramilitaries, Ballymena has become the heroin capital of the north.

Meanwhile, unionist politicians ignore the violence and deprivation on their own doorstep while concentrating their efforts on 'exposing' mythical republican plots to justify their own rejection of change and progress.

Are unionists 'victims' of their own mythmaking? Yes they are, but they don't have to be. With leadership and vision, unionism could think itself out of the box of unionist rejectionism and join everyone else in the Good Friday Agreement project of shaping a better future.

Republicans have no desire to subject unionists to any injustice, Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams told the Dublin Forum last week. Republicans were committed to a future based on democratic principles and to creating a pluralist Ireland, he said.

"Let me make it quite clear, it is not our intention to put unionists into the political space that nationalists and republicans have long sought to escape," said Adams. If unionist, nationalist and republican leaders work together they could resolve the causes of conflict, he said.