Wednesday, May 31, 2006
UUP’s cause for concern…
Although it was written for last Saturday, Alex Kane’s Newsletter column is probably even less welcome today in Cunningham House that it was back then. It speaks for itself.
By Alex Kane
The decision to bring David Ervine into the Ulster Unionist’s Assembly Group has given me more cause for concern, and more pause for thought, than almost anything that the party has done since 1995. Ervine remains leader of the PUP. The PUP is the political voice of the UVF. The UVF remains armed, active and up to their necks in prostitution, drug pushing, racketeering and intimidation. Ervine is a member of the UUP’s Assembly team. In other words, there now exists a clear, direct and formal link between the Ulster Unionist Party and a loyalist paramilitary organisation.
This is about more, much more, than a one-off tactical manoeuvre, of concern only to the UUP’s MLAs. It has created confusion and given offence to a very broad swathe of pro-Union opinion. The party has moved from arguing the case for terrorists to be brought into government, and has, instead, given the whip to a UVF mouthpiece. As David Burnside admitted, the whole thing was “badly handled, badly presented and open to misinterpretation.”
And nor should the party try to justify its actions by reference to what the DUP has done in the past. I am not a member of the DUP. I have never voted for the DUP. I am well aware about the allegations of connections with loyalist paramilitaries and of flirtations with Third Force and Ulster Resistance. So what? What has that got to do with a convicted terrorist in the Ulster Unionist Party Assembly Group? Yes, the move may give the Ulster Unionists an extra seat in a hypothetical Executive, but it is a seat which is now dependent upon the nod of Loyalism’s answer to Gerry Adams. It is a politically uncomfortable and morally dubious position for the UUP to find itself in; and, to be honest, it unsettles me.
But whatever my personal feelings may be about the membership and nature of Loyalist paramilitaries, the fact remains that they have a huge and usually negative impact upon working class unionist communities. So it’s not simply about stating what we should do to dismantle their organisations and erase the false glamour that surrounds their key figures, it’s also about actually removing the deadweight of their malign influence on housing estates and working class areas. In whatever form it manifests itself, it remains the case that the mainstream unionist parties have a responsibility to the thousands of ordinary, law-abiding people who do live in fear in those areas.
Political parties have responsibilities above and beyond that of topping the polls. They have moral and societal responsibilities as well. If the risks the UUP took were worth taking with those who were perceived to be their traditional enemies and opponents, are the same risks not worth taking with people who are from a broadly similar cultural and political background? If you believe that the answer to that question is yes, then you will agree with what Sir Reg has done.
But those who do agree must now pray that the UVF keep their cocaine-stained noses clean and that the IMC is soon able to report positive progress in terms of decommissioning and moving away from criminality. Put crudely, this Jekyll and Hyde partnership depends entirely on the decent Jekyll keeping the monstrous Hyde under control. If he doesn’t, then it seems likely that the Ulster Unionists will disappear into an electoral black hole.
The line between inspired leadership and the madness of the bunker is a fine one and only time will tell if Sir Reg will walk that line with most of his party in tow. The fact that he hasn’t been deafened by public support from his colleagues, bowled over by an avalanche of popular approval, or presented with a UVF Statement Of Intent, would suggest that there are difficult days ahead.
The UUP’s electoral fortunes are now in the hands of some very unpleasant and equally brutal terrorists, whose ceasefire isn’t even recognised anymore. David Ervine needs to prove, and prove soon, than his transfer is worth the fallout it has caused. Personally, I still have huge reservations. I hope, though, to be proved wrong.
First published in the Newsletter on Saturday 27th May 2006
Mick Fealty @ 01:07 PM
Am I the only one who finds Rove’s posts extremely entertaining? (I’ll get my coat!)
Posted by on Jun 02, 2006 @ 04:20 PMpakman
I’ve got beyond feeling sorry, and even past amusement. As for schadenfreude, even its charms have begun to pall. I suppose I just want the whole sorry farce to end, the realisation that the UUP is no more to finally filter into the dried peas that are rattling aound in their heads, and the assets to be flogged off ( I quite fancy the oilpainting of Carson from the bored(?)room for my office )
Because if it goes on much longer it will transcend cruelty. I mean, just imagine the UUP 2010 style- Billy Armstrong as leader, and David McClarty as the third chairman in a year, succeeding Basil McCrea and Michael Shilliday. Meanwhile Lord Ervine of Long Kesh is the only representative at Westminster, and Joan Carson is the great white hope for the future, with the party’s priority to get the memebrship back into double figuresPosted by on Jun 02, 2006 @ 04:53 PMdarth
I have to agree, it is somewhat pitiable, but by the same token, like a dreadful car crash, I just can help looking on. I mean Reg has pulled of a feat I thought was impossible - people are actually hankering after the glory days of DT!
The party post 2005 was defeated, but now it just seems utterly hollow, devoid of any yalent whatsoever and truly on its last legs. Roll on the next election to put them all out of their misery. I must say I’ll miss the UUP once its gone: for sheer entertainment value there was nothing like it.
Posted by on Jun 02, 2006 @ 04:58 PMThe (private, personal) tragedy in Reg’s embrace of the UVF is - if it’s legitimised anything, it’s brought people like me to the point where we can, unbelievably, face up to the fact that we’re going to have to vote DUP.
Posted by on Jun 02, 2006 @ 05:15 PMKarl and other disgruntled UUP voters,
I have been watching the reaction to all this with great interest, and have not commented, but at this point, I really would like a number of questions answered.
Why were you so surprised by this deal, giving that a similar one has been operative in Belfast City Council for years?
Why is it morally worse than voting for Hugh Smyth during the Troubles to ensure a unionist mayor?
Why is the DUP any better when it appears that only opportunism stopped them from supporting Tommy Kirkham of the UPRG in Newtownabbey?
I won’t go into the 1970s, which Reg has done, as there’s some argument that they were different times. Nor the Anglo-Irish Agreement period when a certain very prominent unionist politican came very close to blaming RUC men who were getting burnt out of their homes for their own predicament.
You can say that giving them the whip is different, but it seems not to be unique (Belfast City Council), and certainly is far from the first time for cooperation, even in recent years. In fact, what about the riots last September, when both Reg and the DUP seemed to have raised tensions, and then blamed the police for men shooting at them?
I don’t think you realise how all this looks to those outside unionism, who mostly are more accepting of the deal as practical politics than Karl et al. Can you see why all this looks like a storm in a teacup?
Posted by on Jun 02, 2006 @ 05:34 PMThe point is, it’s a storm in our teacup. Never forget that though, for the voters, ‘all politics is local’, for politicos, all politics is personal. It’s a personal affront to me that my party has given the whip to a monster like David Ervine. My approach to politics is that he and Adams are morally indistinguishable. To address your DUP points: I don’t need to address them. I’m not in the DUP, have not voted for them hitherto, and am not about to join them. That said, and for what little it is worth, I do not think that Unionists should have voted for any sort of paramilitary for any sort of position. In relation to the local government posts you specifically mention, I thought that at the time, and I, obviously enough, still think it today. It was morally wrong then, and it’s, as predicted, now proving to have been tactically inept as well.
In the case of the UUP whip on the City council - a dreadful decision about which some of us chuntered on, largely, ineffectually kane-style behind closed doors, but to no avail. There are some very, very questionable people in the UUP (with, on Belfast City Council, the most willing fellow traveller, cf, Whiterock, of ‘loyalists’ being the Gimp). I’ll be the first to admit that. It was very obvious to me that Trimble’s victory margin, whether in the UUC, or individual constituency associations, was, time after time, made up of ‘ex’ UDA men. It disgusted me then that he relied upon such men; just as it it disgusted me that, when Stormont came back the other week, he made a fool of himself by being all over Ervine.
Ultimately, your question actually revolves round a matter of media mechanics: why, in other words, has this issue (the whip being given to Ervine) attracted attention others things certainly should have done earlier? Simply because some issues are ‘wedge’ issues - the press follows some stories, and not others, and with surprisingly little rhyme or reason to it. Their filtering processes, however intentional or unintentional are, self-evidently, crucial to determing what ‘news’ is. And therefore what it is that hapless party leaders find themselves having to react to. People like me have been able to exploit Reg’s insane decision over Empey to put some heat on him, but (and again, this is the high politics of the thing), it’s not going to do us any good. People like me no longer really have a dog in UUP fights (i.e. we don’t have a leadership contender to ally behind). And the true death rattle for the UUP has been the sound of silence from all the MLAs on the Ervine deal. If the UUP was going to be saved from the UVF, someone by now should have stood up and denounced this deal. Say what you like about Donaldson, but he would have at least had the guts to do this.
Posted by on Jun 02, 2006 @ 05:51 PMKarl,
Thanks for that. It seems this is for you personally the straw that broke the camel’s back. The reason I raised the DUP was because you said you were considering voting for them. I was asking what made them morally superior. I see what you’re saying about the media, but again its unionists on here saying they will not vote UUP again that has raised my interest, not the media.
What I’m really asking I suppose to some extent is what is the logic behind abandoning the UUP now. It seems to me that a unionism dominated virtually exclusively by the DUP is less likely to build a stable NI than one with a strong UUP. Wouldn’t the end of the UUP be a bad thing for NI? If so, then surely the thing for unionists to do is not to abandon it.
Posted by on Jun 02, 2006 @ 06:24 PMFrom a small ‘u’ unionist stand-point (and personal experience as a member), the end of the UUP most certainly is a bad thing. Not least because it is obviously that bit more plausible to imagine either, a) Catholic pro-Union votes being harvested by the UUP, as opposed to Paisley’s undoubted sectarianism, or, b) a stable UUP-based hegemony being tolerable to enough Catholics that enough of them won’t bother to come out and vote (nationalist).
The more interesting question is, what can be made of what is currently called the DUP? As people like me find that we just cannot any more continue with the officially-UVF-linekd UUP, we are forced back upon the DUP, much as we have historically disliked it(and pace all the stuff mentioned above, whatever the DUP have done, they havenot extended their party whip to a man who is, unquestionably, a Loyalist terrorist). I was pessimistic about what could be done to make the DUP more agreeable, still more to non-Protestants, let alone anti-Agreement UUP types like me, since I assumed the UUP would linger on for some long time, with people like me sticking with it. I don’t expect that now - and with more people set to make the journey Donaldson already has, why assume that the Robinson led party won’t be different to the Paisley led one?
Posted by on Jun 02, 2006 @ 06:33 PMWe were talking about the leadership of the DUP on another thread. If Matty’s argument is right, then the DUP will remain fundamentalist. I raised the possibility of Donaldson returning to the UUP, and that wouldn’t surprise me totally if it did happen should he be marginalised in the DUP.
As for the DUP and terrorism, again, perceptions outside unionism might well be different. particularly in mid-Ulster.
I’m wondering about Alliance. As I understand your unionist identity is very important to you, so they may not be for you, but do you think some UUP voters will find them preferable to the DUP? Part of the problem here is that the quality of their leadership and spokespeople has declined far below that of the UUP.
Posted by on Jun 02, 2006 @ 06:42 PMKarl---It seems to me that the problem for people like you is that the UUP hasn’t been run or guided in a way of which you approve. This forces you, in post after post, to vent your spleen (and I don’t deny that it is an excellent read; a touch of the barrister perchance)on Trimble, Empey, Kane (for whom I have a lot of time) and Young Unionists (for whom I have no time at all)et al.
Let me ask you a question from the perspective of someone who is not a member of the party: why did the element of the UUP with which you ally yourself fail to keep or retake the upper hand? I have a great deal of sympathy for your position and agree with much you say. But surely you would acknowledge that there are people in your party who have acted perfectly consistently, in terms of what they are trying to achieve. Agreed, you may not like them personally, and you may not like the policies they have pursued, but some of them, at least, have ploughed a steady furrow through all of this.
Finally, are there any conditions under which you would join (as opposed to voting for) the DUP?
BVG
Posted by on Jun 02, 2006 @ 06:42 PMWhile consistency is one of my middle names, even I concede that it can be over-rated. That said, who exactly do you have in mind as being consistent in the UUP in the last decade? Trimble? You should have seen behind closed doors - a flapper of the worst order? Reg? While I priggishly disapproved of Donaldson fessing up to his biographer so many of the details about Reg’s conditions for stabbing Trimble, let’s afce it - the world and his ward chairman knew that Reg would have acted if he had had a thimbleful more courage. And Jeffrey come to that - bunking off to the DUP was hardly a consistent act for a good upstanding Enochite. And me? There are times when the only thing I’ve consistently done is beign disappointed in the numtpies I’ve supported for Leader once they’ce actually got there.
As to the meta-why? - why we, the ‘traditionalist’ faction, lost? - it’s very simple: lack of talent. It’s hardly as if the Trimbleites were brimming over with talent, but they had the resources of the government, government owned broadcast media, and tame print press behind them. Beyond Jeffrey, as the current silence from MLAs shows all too painfully, who exactly is there to be a front man for crypto-Tory integrationist anti-Agreement Ulster Unionism? Posters on blogs do not count: in fact, they are more or less ruled out precisely because. One of the sad things in allt his for me is that, take Darth there for example. He ought, by now, to have been a UUP MP. Indeed, 2005 probably should have been the election when he succeeded the garcefully retiring incumbent. But, things didn’t work out that way, and the DUP won’t be dug out his seat any time soon. So in short - if you have no one to lead you, you won’t go very far.
Would I join the DUP? No. Would I join the post0DUP, if there is one? Who knows? Maybe it will pupate into soemthign beautiful. On the other hand, maybe Paisleyite necromancy will mean that a dead hand of sectariainism will grip that party forver and a day. In which case the snobby middle classes like me will just have to hold our noses and silently, unethusiastically vote for the (now considerably) less stinky of two stinky options: a party founded and led by a sectarian fool (with all that that implies for the calibre of the men who went silently along with him during his worst excesses), or, a party that gives the whip to David Ervine. Very, very sadly, no contest.
Anyway, your Ch$ news is now on, and the VRWC requires that I should invigilate their pinkery. Cheerio and good night, o my UUP of long ago.
Posted by on Jun 02, 2006 @ 07:11 PMPakman
““but I’ve even heard some UUPers say “come back Jeffrey” “
Ah, the love that dare not speak its’ name! “
Is anyone due to be outed?
I wouldn’t approve of that of course. Instead we have to create an environment where these people can come out themselves. It won’t be easy if they’ve felt that they have had to deny their true nature for so long. The first few will need the most courage but the more that come forward an announce to the word that they are Jeffrey supporters and further lore that they feel no shame, then the easier it will be for the rest.
Posted by on Jun 02, 2006 @ 08:20 PMKarl
There was a lot of talk in 1996 about Trimble ushering in “new Unionism” a la Blair’s New labour. And indeed he he did- though not in the UUP. He certainly saw off the crusties at leadership level, but relied on the crusties at local level- let’s not kid ourselves that the UUC supporters he pulled in were committed to the project. And yes, there were some very dodgy types who infiltrated-West Belfast in particular had several grizzly converts to the cause.But Unionism for the forseeable future is the DUP, and that means it must become a broad church. In many ways it has changed remarkably since 1998, and has hoovered up all the talent within Unionism. It has quite some way to go of course, but intelligent people like you will have to climb on board or be lost to active politics. The challenge will be to hold a consensus, which instead of common goals of defeatism and self preservation -let’s call it Empeyism-has a pragmatic and proactive approach- and it don’t bother me if that included a US Christian Right motor.
Posted by on Jun 03, 2006 @ 06:55 PMfor the DUP to become ‘mainstream’ and attract the sort of unionist voters who stay at home it will have to ditch the Free P’s, the extent to which party and church are interwoven was demonstrated in the recent Berry interview when he revealed that despite the accusations his local Free P church stood by him, that was until he took the party to court, then the church dropped him!
Posted by on Jun 03, 2006 @ 07:16 PMAnother thought, with Paisley in unionisms ‘driving seat’ unionism becomes even less attractive to the middle of the road unionist voter resulting in even greater numbers staying at home come election time, it may well be the case that in the not to distant future that while unionists are in a majority in terms of sheer numbers they will be in a minority electoraly!
Posted by on Jun 03, 2006 @ 07:31 PM
