The Principles of Loyalism: An Introduction

This is an introduction to ‘The Principles of Loyalism’, which I wrote sometime in the summer of 2006 and that was originally published on the PUP’s old website. It built on my friendship and close working relationship with the late Billy Mitchell, a former UVF commander and senior PUP strategist, who died in July 2006. Shortly after his death the PUP wanted to commemorate his influence and achievements in the contribution to the peacebuilding/conflict transformation process in Northern Ireland by publishing the Principles online (they had always been pioneers of a web-based presence) and so asked me (as someone who knew Billy personally and who had seen and discussed with Billy the original drafts of the document) to write a short introduction drawing attention to his fertile mind and political imagination. In many ways the Principles are only one aspect of Billy’s legacy. However, they are perhaps most intimately associated with his political philosophy and outlook. Billy was one of a kind and I was privileged to have called him a friend and mentor. He will be sadly missed by all who knew him.

The Principles of Loyalism: Introduction

By Aaron Edwards

The document entitled The Principles of Loyalism internal discussion paper was drafted by the late Billy Mitchell in the immediate aftermath of the 1998 Belfast Agreement, though its key ideas have a much longer genesis dating from Billy’s early involvement as a leading member of the Ulster Volunteer Force in the 1970s. When The Principles of Loyalism was eventually published in November 2002 it generated interest beyond the PUP-UVF-RHC constituency. Not only was it written first-hand by a senior political strategist, but it encapsulated in a single document the strong social conscience and moral fibre underpinning the social and political philosophy of progressive loyalism. Without question the document can be ranked among the most learned and far-sighted works ever produced by a unionist and it ought to serve as an essential guide to anyone genuinely interested in discovering the vibrant and creative political culture celebrated by the most progressive sections of the Ulster Protestant community.

As a work of political writing the Principles reflect Billy’s authentic working class voice and broad intellectual reach. They deal primarily with the progressive loyalist project, a political tradition that can trace its roots back to the original Progressive Unionist Party, a liberal-based party which contested the Northern Ireland parliamentary election of 1938. In an interview a few months before his death, Billy Mitchell explained that his rationale for writing the Principles was “about getting the whole constituency back to the Covenant and its relevance now, in the context of the modern era, for example, equal citizenship”. For Billy, it was not about aping provisional republican ‘revisionism’, rather it was an exercise of catharsis that loyalists from his constituency had to undergo before reflecting on their current position within the new dispensation of post-Belfast Agreement Northern Ireland.

The Principles is the first document to seriously reflect upon progressive loyalism as a political creed. It is a work grounded in the principles of the Solemn League and Covenant (1912), considered by many historians to be the birth certificate of modern Ulster. In Billy’s eyes the Principles ‘attempt to put forward the key elements of the loyalist cause that were established by the founding fathers of unionism at the time of the Home Rule crisis’. Although the Principles focus on internal political dialogue, they do make a connection with community-level practitioners and they provide the cornerstone of loyalist conflict transformation initiatives Billy threw his energy behind in the years leading up to his death in July 2006.

Therefore, rather than being a monochrome work of historical curiosity, the Principles seek to marry theory and practice, and to imbibe a genuine sense of historical and cultural legitimacy into Protestant working class identity.

Billy Mitchell once wrote that he couldn’t imagine a better way to describe what progressive loyalism was all about than “a group of people coming together in a community compromised of responsible men and women who are: (a) working without fear; (b) who are working in comradeship; (c) who are working for common ends; (d) who are working to develop their full stature and realise their full potential; (e) who are working to ensure that every citizen has adequate time, scope and opportunity for pleasure and social enjoyment”. His was the ethical framework underpinning Billy’s idea of a truly democratic socialist society and it is a perhaps an ideal that genuine democrats can find some empathy with.

A copy of The Principles of Loyalism: An Internal Discussion Paper (November 2002) can be found here: http://www.scribd.com/mobile/doc/27603

Recasting history

By Aaron Edwards

Academic historians have been conspicuous by their absence in the debate over the Boston College case. This is extremely disappointing but it is not surprising and seems to reflect a risk adverse culture that has facilitated the public upbraiding of individuals who have taken great personal risks to bring us much-needed alternative perspectives on the past. While I have never had any personal association with the Boston College case, I am not prepared to stand idly by while the debate is poisoned by ill-informed perspectives that reduce discussion of the case to a question of the integrity of the personalities involved and not the merits of the enterprise itself.

There are occasions when those who care about the craft of history have to stand up and be counted. This is clearly one of those occasions.

We live in inauspicious times for the study and practice of history when the people involved in the collection of the traces from the past – from the gifted amateur to the most accomplished professor – are under increasing pressure to justify both their motivations and the research methods employed to yield their research findings. This pressure is particularly acutely felt in those societies deeply divided along ethnic, national and religious lines and which are emerging out of armed conflict.

Of course, there are consummate bureaucrats out there who will point to the existence of ethical guidelines available to anyone involved in research of this nature. However, while this might well be the case, it has been privately acknowledged by many academics that these guidelines (produced by universities and learned associations) are principally about mitigating the risk of litigation that may be levelled against institutions. One has only to consult the small print of the contracts drawn up between academics and scholarly journals and book publishers – the main vehicles for academics to disseminate their research findings – to know that by signing a copyright form the academic author essentially indemnifies the publisher from any legal action that may arise out of the work in the future. In other words, researchers who generate, collate and disseminate findings from their research are taking a huge gamble with both their reputations and their financial wellbeing when they decide to go rummaging around in a troubled past.

Consequently, there has been a tendency for historians to err on the side of caution and avoid controversial subject areas for fear of risking litigation. Unfortunately, the by-product of avoiding these uncomfortable aspects of the past can have a very real chill factor and lead invariably to the reproduction of a sanitised version of the past. Perhaps even more worrying is that it can lead invariably to a recasting of history as ethnic folk wisdom that bears no resemblance to what actually happened. In his compelling novel The History of the World in 10½ Chapters (1989) Julian Barnes makes the telling observation: ‘We make up a story to cover the facts we don’t know or can’t accept; we keep a few true facts and spin a new story round them. Our panic and our pain are only eased by smoothing fabulation; we call it history’.

In conflicts where ethnic, national or religious identities remain the key fault-lines dividing peoples, the temptation to resort to ‘smoothing fabulation’ is obvious. But it is also incredibly dangerous. We know from experience of other places that by doctoring the historical record in a way that explains away human rights abuses, genocide and ethnic cleansing may trigger a reoccurrence of violence in the future.

We have recently seen the recasting of history in which the ‘alleged’ former Chief of Staff of the Provisional IRA explained away the death of a non-combatant in a proxy bomb attack on a security forces base as being ‘open to interpretation’. At the same time he minimised his own involvement in the operation by claiming that he was elsewhere at the time, ‘allegedly’ (that word again) knee-deep in discussions with Margaret Thatcher’s government in a bid to lay the foundations of the ‘peace process’.

While this interpretation of the past may gain traction within a narrow political constituency, it has been contested by unionists – and it must be said by some republicans too – as being disingenuous or plainly untrue. It is, therefore, the responsibility of historians to subject such claims to the white heat of scrutiny – and in light of the available evidence. In a world where non-state actors (like terrorist groupings) rarely recorded on paper the process by which orders were given and received it is obvious that oral testimonies are of vital importance to understanding what happened, why, and with what consequences. This is why academic initiatives like the Belfast Oral History Project are so invaluable for historians like me who may not have had an opportunity to interview key players – at whatever level – so that we can assemble all of the available evidence and draw accurate conclusions from it.

I should add here that my own research interviews with republicans, loyalists and members of the British state security forces over the past 15 years were based on my belief that you cannot understand the armed conflict in this part of Ireland without factoring in the roles played by all sides.

I would be the first to admit that historians do not come to the past with a clean slate. They bring their own experiences, prejudices (some subconscious, others not) and intuition to bear on the facts. For what it is worth I am from a working class Protestant background and a community in North Belfast that suffered much and, in turn, inflicted terrible hurt on its neighbours, both Protestant or Catholic, during the ‘troubles’. It is for this reason that I am conscious of the importance of recognising and declaring my own biases and not passing these off as ‘objective truth’. In this at least I defer to the words of renowned writer George Orwell, who made the point that, while it may not be possible to ‘get rid of these feelings simply by taking thought’, it was possible to ‘at least recognize that you have them, and prevent them from contaminating your mental thought processes’.

It is for these reasons that I believe that the Boston College case has thrown up profound questions for historians – and for anyone who lived through the ‘troubles’ and wishes to understand what happened – but these questions will go unanswered if we insist on reducing the debate to one that simply calls into question the integrity of the personalities involved. To truly audit the past we must consider the wider processes in play so as to avoid an ill-informed view of history that obscures more than it reveals.

 

This article orginally appeared on the Pensive Quill blog on 17 April 2014.

Right to remember the past as it happened

COMMENT: Right to remember the past as it happened argues AARON EDWARDS

‘Born in this island, maimed by history/and creed-infected, by my father taught/the stubborn habit of unfettered thought’.

So runs John Hewitt’s poem The Dilemma, a bitter indictment of how Irish republicans had requisitioned the past in the service of their narrow political project.

We are left in little doubt at the end of The Dilemma that the celebrated Ulster bard found himself ‘caught in the crossfire of their false campaign’.

The arrest and detention of Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams in the ongoing PSNI investigation into the murder of Jean McConville in 1972 is notable for how it has exposed the republican ability to speak from two sides of their mouth on the past.

By calling for inquiries into the use of lethal force by the state (accounting for 10 per cent of troubles-related deaths – republicans were responsible for 60 per cent and loyalists 30 per cent respectively) they seem prepared to hear everyone else’s ‘truth’ except their own.

As with Hewitt’s poem, we are condemned to bear witness to the growing sanitisation of history and the excusing away of violent nationalism’s worst excesses.

It was that other inconsolable sceptic of nationalism George Orwell who warned us that ‘the nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them’.

It appears that history has become an unwelcome handmaiden to the Northern Ireland peace process because of its ability to throw up uncomfortable questions.

One has only to consult the fêted Haass proposals to see how a universalist position on the illegality of terrorist violence has been buried under a thicket of bureaucratic ‘newspeak’.

So how are we to avoid the mistakes which led to the murders of almost 4,000 people and the maiming of ten times as many more?

Well, for one thing, as citizens of a much-larger liberal democracy, we have the ‘right to remember’ the past as it really happened. In this, historians can play an invaluable role in helping to extinguish the most inflammatory lies about the past.

Although it may seem like inauspicious times for historians to debunk myths about the past – in light of the collapse of Boston College’s ill-fated Belfast Project – it is impossible to side-step uncomfortable truths about the past. Haass’s proposals may be imperfect but they at least hold out the prospect of working through the past in a meaningful way.

One of Haass’s recommendations is for a Historical Timeline Group to determine the raw facts of what happened between 1968 and 1998. If nothing else, historians can provide much-needed contextualisation here so as to ensure the integrity of the past is preserved.

Moreover, this might also facilitate the necessary political shift towards a shared understanding of the past as a warning about the dangers of violence and to reinforce the morally-acceptable position that it must never be permitted to happen again.

 

This article originally appeared in the Belfast Newsletter on 15 May 2014.

In Memory of Gusty Spence (1933-2011)

COMMENT: The passing of former UVF leader Gusty Spence may give loyalists time to think about their efforts in making peace with the past, writes AARON EDWARDS

Rarely are students of Irish history afforded the opportunity to meet those individuals who have become so deeply engrained in the folk memory of the ‘troubles’.

I was one of the lucky few to have struck up a friendship with Gusty Spence, the founding father of the modern UVF and its most visible figurehead.

I had studied the UVF at close quarters since I was an undergraduate student and had the added insight of having grown up in the traditional hunting grounds for loyalist paramilitary organisations. Gusty had an aura about him, a mystique that perforated Protestant working class areas.

My first encounter with the veteran loyalist was in the coastal town of Donaghadee in 2004, almost a decade on from the loyalist paramilitary ceasefires. Gusty had retired to the neighbouring town of Groomsport and would call in to one of the social clubs on a Saturday afternoon.

At the time, I had just been commissioned to research the state of progressive loyalism, working closely with Billy Mitchell, a former UVF commander turned PUP strategist. Billy spoke reverently about how Gusty’s Damascene conversion from sectarian violence served to nurture his own political consciousness in Long Kesh in the 1970s. Others, such as Billy McCaughey, David Ervine, Billy Hutchinson, Dawn Purvis and Jim McDonald, had also been inspired by Gusty to throw their energies into helping to forge what later became the ‘peace process’. As Ervine once said of him, Gusty was the ‘alpha and omega’ of militant loyalism.

The report I subsequently co-authored with Stephen Bloomer was launched at the PUP’s annual conference in 2004. Though he did not make an appearance on this occasion, Gusty was on hand behind-the-scenes to guide our work. He recommended that we talk further with the UVF leadership, which we soon did in our follow-up pamphlet in 2005, and to challenge them to leave the stage by ‘asking hard questions’. It was tiring and unrewarding work, though it did ultimately feed into the UVF’s internal consultation process. That Gusty was approving of our efforts nonetheless spurred us on.

There was nothing new in his attitude.

For over 30 years, Gusty articulated a vision for the future that encouraged loyalists to exchange brute force for dialogue with their republican enemies.

Eventually, it paid off.

In May 2007, Gusty was asked to read out the statement heralding an end to UVF violence. That his hopes were soon dashed by the failure of the organisation to fully ‘civilianise’ hurt him deeply. While Gusty demonstrated that it was possible to lead by example and to make peace with the past, his only regret in his twilight years was that he could not persuade the UVF to do likewise.

Perhaps his passing will give loyalists time to redouble their efforts. Only time will tell.

 

This article originally appeared in the Belfast Newsletter on 30 September 2011.

The Positive Force of Civic Unionism

COMMENT: Union 2021 – Civic unionism has secured union argues AARON EDWARDS

Predictions are inherently unreliable. Few people thought the Cold War would end as quickly as it did, or that the ‘troubles’ would finally witness a transformation from long war to long peace.

However, it is probably safe to assume that the union will still hold the same importance in the hearts and minds of Ulster Protestants in 2021 that it did when the Northern Ireland state was formed a century earlier.

Then the union was on reasonably firm foundations. Senior members of the British establishment warmed to the idea of a United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

As Alex Kane suggested in his essay, unionist resilience has always been the glue binding the union together. It is unlikely its adhesiveness will wither, having survived the onslaught of the Provisional IRA’s terrorist campaign and continuing dissident republican violence.

The prospect of a future Sinn Fein First Minister is, of course, another test for unionist resilience. Yet unionists must ask themselves what kind of democracy they want to see take root in Northern Ireland. Do they want a pluralist, secular and civic one, or a narrow-minded, ethnic-based vision for the future?

The choice is indeed a stark one.

As an Ulsterman who now lives and works in England, I am constantly reminded of the positive force of civic unionism. And how it has helped build, shape and safeguard this great nation of ours.

It never ceases to amaze me just how many other Ulster men and women have become an integral part of the fabric of British society, especially when they have crossed the Irish Sea.

And although the ‘brain drain’ is looked upon as something negative in Northern Ireland, it nonetheless gives unionism a steadfast anchor to the mainland.

As George Orwell once wrote ‘Christianity and international socialism are as weak as straw’ in comparison with ‘patriotism, national loyalty’. It could be argued that civic unionism has been instrumental in helping to shape a pluralist form of British identity for generations.

In this respect it ought to be possible nowadays to value the union in a manner that is both positive and outward-looking. A good friend of mine once wrote that his idea of a civic form of unionism was of “a group of people coming together in a community compromised of responsible men and women,” who are “working without fear; who are working in comradeship; who are working for common ends; who are working to develop their full stature and realise their full potential; who are working to ensure that every citizen has adequate time, scope and opportunity for pleasure and social enjoyment”.

There is much to cherish in this egalitarian vision for the union.

And even though the leftist trappings of this brand of progressive unionism are apparent – and may prove somewhat inimical towards unionist unity – they do leave the door open for greater co-operation across the communal divide.

While the prospects for such left-of-centre co-operation would certainly be welcome respite from the narrow sectarianism underpinning Northern Irish political culture, it can only be realised with hard work and determination.

History is instructive here.

It reveals how previous noble attempts to organise politically across sectarian lines tragically floundered on the rocks of narrow-minded ‘little Ulsterism’. The Progressive Unionists in the 1930s and the Northern Ireland Labour Party in the 1950s and 1960s were destroyed by beleaguered and self-interested politicians who did not have a civic unionist bone in their bodies.

With this in mind a genuinely pluralist vision for the union would enable those from across unionism’s left-right spectrum to work in comradeship to preserve their British identity.

For now the union is safe.

Over the next decade one can expect both peaceful and violent challenges to this position.

Republicans will undoubtedly increase the political and military pressure on unionists in time for their own centenary commemorations in 2016.

Nevertheless, they will again be strategically defeated if the positive force of civic unionism can marshal greater intellectual and practical support for the union.

 

This article originally appeared in the Belfast Newsletter as part of their Union 2021 series on 17 September 2010.

The Resignation of Dawn Purvis MLA

COMMENT: After the resignation of Dawn Purvis, is there any future for the Progressive Unionist Party? asks AARON EDWARDS

The murder of Bobby Moffett in the Shankill and Dawn Purvis’s subsequent resignation has dealt a body blow to the PUP.

With a ‘heavy heart’ the PUP’s only MLA stated that she could ‘no longer offer leadership to a political party which is expected to answer for the indefensible actions of others’. Three and half years after David Ervine’s death, the PUP is once again rudderless.

Dr John Kyle, who replaced Ervine on Belfast City Council, has stepped forward as the party’s interim leader. Yet Purvis’s departure has led many commentators to sound the death knell for the PUP.

As the party’s membership takes stock of these recent developments it is worth pondering what the future holds for Progressive Loyalism.

Formed in 1979, the PUP portrays itself as ‘a Political Labour and Unionist Party’ committed to ‘watch over, promote and protect the constitutional position of Northern Ireland as an integral part of the United Kingdom’. That it is a labour-orientated party rooted in the Protestant working class community is no accident. Founding members Jim McDonald and David Overend were previously office bearers in the Shankill branch of the Northern Ireland Labour Party.

However, it is the party’s close association with the UVF-RHC that distinguishes it from other unionist parties.

As the late Billy Mitchell – a former party strategist – once remarked, ‘the PUP provides political analysis for the UVF-RHC’; ‘sometimes that analysis is accepted, at other times rejected’. Thus, the connection between ‘party’ and ‘army’ is less formalised than that enjoyed between Sinn Fein and the Provisional IRA. Consequently the PUP’s standing amongst rank-and-file UVF members is poor.

Nonetheless, the PUP remains committed to transforming the UVF-RHC beyond violence.

A degeneration of internal discipline and the continued balkanisation of the UVF means that several of its units have retained weapons. This is unsurprising. PUP attempts to ‘civilianise’ the UVF-RHC were initially hampered by the deaths of Billy McCaughey, Billy Mitchell, David Ervine and Jim McDonald, which came at crucial moments in the internal conflict transformation process. Indeed, the incomplete nature of the process made UVF claims to have ended its terrorist campaign in May 2007 and decommissioned its weapons in June 2009 disingenuous.

Under Purvis the PUP failed to capitalise on the ‘heavy lifting’ of conflict transformation. Furthermore, the party has been reluctant to turn its pivotal role in UVF decommissioning into tangible political rewards, instead its association with the UVF-RHC has meant what Billy Hutchinson described as ‘the kiss of death for the PUP’.

Speculation that Purvis may move either into mainstream unionist politics or further into the margins of the local Labour Party branch is debatable. Examining how Purvis retained Ervine’s seat in 2007 is instructive here, especially since she played down the PUP’s brand of democratic socialism in the Assembly election and moved towards a more liberal unionist position.

Whoever becomes the next PUP leader faces a familiar decision: either return to the party’s roots as a ‘think-tank’ for the UVF, or carve out a greater niche as a progressive, socialist-based choice for the working class. The second choice will mean a radical decoupling from the UVF-RHC but may ensure the PUP’s long-term survival.

 

This article originally appeared in the Belfast Newsletter on 8 June 2010.