If there was one thing more depressing than the recent loyalist violence, it was the dismal quality of the political reaction.
Leaders in Dublin, London, Washington and Belfast offered a tidal wave of the predictable, the bland and the inane.
The same old clichés we have been hearing for 50 years included appeals for calm (from the UDA, the taoiseach, Joe Biden and SF); condemning violence (Simon Coveney, SF, DUP, SDLP, PSNI); calls for unionist leadership (every nationalist politician in the country); blaming the DUP (SF, SDLP, Alliance) and blaming the PSNI (Arlene Foster). Everything was someone else’s fault.
The comments were then condensed into three main themes: violence does not work, loyalists have been left behind by the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) and the answer to all our problems lies in what we amusingly called “politics”. To varying degrees, all three are seriously flawed.
The claim that violence does not work is wrong. It generally does (in driving the British from the 26 Counties, for example), but not always as intended (instead of destroying the northern state, SF agreed to jointly administer it).
The loyalists’ violence generally worked in that it drew national and international attention to their cause(s) and silenced the conversation about a united Ireland. The violence was morally wrong but it had a political impact. However, progressing from an impact to a successful political achievement is particularly difficult, as loyalism will find out. After all, twice in the past 100 years, for example, the impact of IRA violence was to accept partition.
The theory that loyalists have been left behind by the GFA is equally flawed. They have, but so has everyone else, apart from politicians. There is no evidence that unionists are more disadvantaged than nationalists.
Those who have been left behind, both Protestant and Catholic, are the 300,000 waiting for a first appointment with a consultant (and that was before Covid); the 120,000 children in poverty; the 40,000 people on the waiting list for social housing and every citizen let down by the politicians as they sat at home for three years, accepting pay for doing nothing.
The DUP failed to sell the GFA as securing the union (which it did). Instead, SF cleverly packaged it as a nationalist victory, telling us we could now be Irish. I don’t know about you, but I did not need an agreement with Britain to tell me I was Irish. It also told my Protestant neighbour (since deceased) across the fields that he was British, even though he had never been to Britain in his life.
So under the GFA, the stone ditch where our ground met his ground became another internal partition of Ireland.
The agreement said my neighbour’s interests would be protected by Tony Blair, whom many regard as a war criminal. My interests would be protected by Bertie Ahern, who was found by the Mahon Report to have “failed to truthfully account” for significant sums in his bank account. Neither government offered to oversee our neighbourliness.
The final flaw lies in the claim that politics is the answer. It would be if we had any. But Stormont’s sectarianism is not the solution. It is part of the problem.
We entered the troubles in 1969 in a well funded welfare state, with nationalised industries. We emerged 25 years later into a Thatcherite, post-welfare society, with many public services privatised. Nobody raised the basic political question about which of those two societies we might establish. Instead all our parties slipped quietly into Thatcherism, concealed with sectarianism. If politics is the answer, why can’t we have some?
When Kerry footballers were repeatedly winning all-Irelands in the 1980s, a journalist seeking a quote on a forthcoming all-Ireland final was told by one player, ”Just put me down for whatever I said last year.” If loyalist trouble breaks out again, just put the parties down for whatever they have been saying for the past 50 years - just more empty words.
