Dr John Kyle nodded and smiled as he slalomed around the scores of babbling cruise ship tourists milling in the foyer of Belfast City Hall, waiting for their organised tours of the city’s most iconic building to begin.
This was our first face-to-face meeting and Dr Kyle, who has been Belfast’s High Sheriff throughout 2023, greeted me warmly. He led me away from the bustle, along a series of corridors, to a cramped, crowded, noisy café where he bought me a coffee before leading me up to the tranquillity of the rather grand office which goes with being the city’s High Sheriff.
I wasn’t quite sure what to expect: a bit, I imagine, like members of the Progressive Unionist Party must have felt the first time the local GP fetched up at a branch meeting in its Newtownards Road office, 23 years ago, looking to join a party which was – and still is – closely linked with the loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force.
“I think they didn’t quite know what to make of me,” he recalls. “It took them a few months to work out whether I was the genuine article or a plant from MI5.”
No wonder they were suspicious. His profile was hardly typical of a PUP member. Born and reared in Gilnahirk in east Belfast, he went to Grosvenor High School and then to Queen’s University, where he studied medicine during the worst years of the Troubles.
Afterwards, he spent years working in general practice in east Belfast and in local hospitals, with seven years in between, from 1986-93, in “part-time general practice and part-time pastoral work” in an ecumenical community in London.
“If they didn’t know me, they knew of me,” Dr Kyle says. He loved working in east Belfast, where he had lots of patients. “I admired their resilience and their fortitude and their generosity.”
His Belfast roots are important to him, as is his Christianity. “My mother was a church organist. My father was a member of Gilnahirk Presbyterian Church. He was a very egalitarian man, comfortable relating to anybody of any station. And that was the environment that we grew up in.”
It took them a few months to work out whether I was the genuine article or a plant from MI5
In his late teens, Dr Kyle had “a religious experience – a Christian experience” that led him first into a Christian youth organisation, then into the New Church movement, and then on to the ecumenical movement.
The latter was “at its very essence” cross-community, with Catholics and Protestants encountering each other, worshipping together and beginning to learn about each other.
“Inevitably, as young people, we were radical, impatient, enthusiastic, and there were tensions with the Presbyterian Church and with other Churches, but that was my spiritual background,” he recalls.
I would like Belfast’s Jewish community to know that they are a welcome and valued part of this city and I for one am extremely grateful for the contribution they and their faith have made to Belfast. pic.twitter.com/Z4KOj70CCe
— john kyle (@cllrjohnkyle) November 30, 2023
Dr Kyle became a member of east Belfast’s Christian Fellowship Church (CFC) which, in the late 1990s, began inviting people “from very different backgrounds” to come and speak to its members.
“We had politicians from all the main parties coming to speak. A number of them impressed me but the one who impressed me most was David Ervine. (The former UVF prisoner and PUP leader was a key figure in brokering the October 1994 loyalist ceasefire. Ervine died in January 2007.)
“From that, I listened to what David was saying on the radio and thought, ‘There’s a breath of fresh air. There’s a unionist who’s prepared to think outside the box, not just say, “No, no, no.”’”
Dr Kyle, who had already begun to get involved in community health initiatives, says his political participation flowed very naturally from his involvement with the renewal movement, and he joined the PUP, “which was a real learning experience for me”.
Had the PUP’s strong ties with the UVF caused him any difficulty? “It caused my family a bit more difficulty than it caused me. Some of my friends thought I’d lost my marbles,” he says.
“But actually, it didn’t cause me much of a problem because when I sat down and talked to the PUP, I discovered that first of all those with a paramilitary background had very clearly chosen the path of political engagement as opposed to paramilitary violence. David [Ervine], himself, epitomised that.”
There were many people in the party who had no involvement with paramilitaries and came from a trade union or left-wing background: “The people that I encountered were the ones who were most strongly advocating for some sort of conflict transformation, advocating for peaceful, political progress, but more than that advocating for some sort of reconciliation process between the republican communities and the loyalist communities.
When I sat down and talked to the PUP, I discovered that first of all those with a paramilitary background had very clearly chosen the path of political engagement as opposed to paramilitary violence. David Ervine himself epitomised that
“Obviously, there still was – one could argue there still is – the link with the paramilitary organisations, but again I took the view [that] if you want to bring about change, there’s no point sitting outside the room shouting at people inside the room; if you want to bring about change you need to come into the room, begin to engage, listen, learn the reasons for things, and then begin to advocate, persuade, cajole, convince people of a better way, of an alternative approach to things. So, in that sense, it didn’t cause me any problem.
“I suppose, if I want to look at it from a Christian perspective, Jesus rubbed shoulders with all sorts of people. The people he was hardest on were the people that we would call the religious hypocrites. But he was prepared to work with anybody and I thought, ‘That’s the model’. Why should I refuse to talk to people or be associated with people just because of their past?”
Dr Kyle rose to become deputy leader of the PUP, but parted ways with the party in December 2021 over their different responses to the Northern Ireland Protocol.
Northern Ireland has been without a devolved government since February 2022 when the DUP withdrew from the Executive in protest at the Protocol’s requirement for checks on goods crossing the Irish Sea.
The Windsor Framework, which was agreed by the UK government and the European Union in February this year to try and address DUP concerns, fell far short of what the party wanted.
If I look at it from a Christian perspective, Jesus rubbed shoulders with all sorts of people. The people he was hardest on were the people that we would call the religious hypocrites. But he was prepared to work with anybody and I thought, ‘That’s the model’. Why should I refuse to talk to people or be associated with people just because of their past?
Dr Kyle says the Protocol has left unionists feeling “a bit abandoned”, “vulnerable and unsupported” but to demand that it is scrapped – like the DUP and PUP are doing – is to ask for the impossible.
“It means inevitably you will be defeated,” he says.
“We need to take a more pragmatic and more constructive approach to this, and need to highlight the things that we think are damaging, or unjustifiable or ‘unsustainable’ to quote Lord Frost, and we need to then put forward what we think would be a better alternative that could lead to a more stable and successful future.”
Brexit was a terrible idea, Dr Kyle says, but the political reality is that we need to make it work in the best way possible for the people of these islands. The current Stormont impasse showed the difficulty, he says, of overcoming 30 years of conflict and 100 years of political turmoil.
“We haven’t done a very good job of building on the achievements of the Good Friday Agreement. I think that we need a functioning Executive, we need to take responsibility for governing Northern Ireland, for governing it well and justly and fairly.”
The interests of this island are served best if we’ve got an effective government in the south and an effective government in the north working together respectfully and collaboratively. That seems to me a ‘no-brainer’ but in our politics we tend to revert to a zero-sum game: if that’s good for you then it must be bad for me
Dr Kyle joined the Ulster Unionist Party in February 2022 before announcing 12 months ago that he’d be leaving electoral politics. He stood down last May, but remains a UUP member, insisting that the politics espoused by its leader Doug Beattie make “the most sense” for this era.
“The interests of this island are served best if we’ve got an effective government in the south and an effective government in the north working together respectfully and collaboratively,” he argues.
“That seems to me a ‘no-brainer’ but in our politics we tend to revert to a zero-sum game: if that’s good for you then it must be bad for me. That, I think, is misguided, it’s narrow-minded, it’s a meanness of spirit that damages everyone in Northern Ireland.
“People suffered a lot during the conflict. There’s been a lot of animosity and hatred, of anger and hurt, so it takes time to build trust, win respect, learn a different way to do politics.
“Argument rarely if ever changes people. If two parties are just set to argue against each other then they just reinforce their starting positions, whereas if we can begin to discuss, listen, negotiate, understand, try and find some sort of constructive compromise, then I think that opens up the circumstances in which progress can be made and can be achieved.”
- This interview was conducted as part of the Journey in Self Belief project, ‘A space for the Protestant community to embrace and create the future’. journeyinselfbelief.org
