After
the recent summer of unrest within a number of the
north of Ireland's loyalist communities, there has
been much analysis of late about the current state
of the Unionist working classes (as if the class
is one large homogeneous block). The academics have
now joined with media pundits in making and acquiescing
to comments like the following, [the loyalist working
classes] "have become dysfunctional, beyond
help". Or even better they are "uneducated,
socially and politically disgruntled, prey to drugs,
their only role models are men like Jim Gray".
Of course when the likes of Misters Paisley and
Empey are asked what the actual grievances were
that lay behind the latest loyalist unrest, they
cannot reply, not in public anyway. For the main
grievance is not about any lack of equality of jobs,
services or State funding between Protestant workers
and their Catholic working class neighbours, for
as far as equality of services is concerned, both
communities are equally deprived. To put it bluntly,
and it gives me no pleasure to say it, a large section
of the unionist working classes' main grievance
is they simply cannot stand seeing 'the taigs about
the place'.
Who
put that idea into their heads one might ask, if
not the leaders of political Unionism and their
forebears down the years within the Unionist Political
Establishment? Nowhere was this attitude for me
better illustrated than when I recently overheard
a conversation between a loyalist worker who had
spent the last 30 years living and working in England
and his sister who had remained on the Shankill.
The
brother said, "There has been some changes
here since I went away."
The
sister replied, "You don't know the half of
it, they are all over the City Hall, something which
was unthinkable when you were last home. They act
as if they own the bloody place these days."
Sadly this attitude epitomizes the sad fact working
class loyalists have failed to come to terms with
the self confidence the Republican Movement under
Gerry Adams' leadership has been able to instill
within the nationalist working classes, which has
made them demand equality as a right and accept
nothing less.
Instead of challenging the bigoted and unacceptable
viewpoint held by that section of the loyalist working
class which rioted over the summer, the Unionist
politicians and their academic go-for's either remain
silent or they are searching for ways of legitimizing
such prejudice. Hence the Professor of Politics
at Queen's University, Belfast, Graham Walker, wrote
the following little gem, "The Protestant working
class remains the cutting edge of an identity and
an outlook which has to be accommodated on its own
terms to a far greater extent than even the new
nationalism or new Republicanism seems prepared
to accept."
Of
course it is perfectly understandable the Unionist
establishment should come out with such rubbish,
as the same prejudices the good professor is attempting
to set in stone, are prevalent not only amongst
working class loyalists, but throughout sections
of the Unionist community. Although the middle classes,
unlike their working class brethren, are far too
politically astute to express such politically incorrect
prejudice on a street corner. When this subject
is raised with them, it is hardly surprising one
can hear the sound of silence.
Yet
such reactionary crap did not fall from the sky
into the minds of Protestant workers, but originated
with the Unionist political elite. The purpose of
which was to tie these workers to their apron strings
politically, and create an unbridgeable chasm between
the two sections of workers within the north east
of Ireland, thus making it a near impossibility
for the powers that be to be successfully challenged
from the Left.
Whilst
within the rest of the UK, workers long ago realized
if they were to have any hope of gaining their fair
share of the Nations political and economic cake,
they would have to cease being represented politically
by the Liberal and to a lesser extent the Conservative
Parties, whose leadership were always going to place
their own class interests before those of the working
classes. Hence the British Trade Unions founded
the Labour Party, which by the end of WW2 had gained
the allegiance of the overwhelming majority of working
class people.
In
1945 the party gained office with a large enough
majority to place the welfare and needs of working
people near the top of the national agenda. Bar
that is, in the north of Ireland. For whilst in
England, Scotland and Wales working people liberalized
much of their way of life through a party of their
own creation, in the north politics had stagnated,
as indeed the founders of the northern state-let
intended and the working classes, as if caught in
a time warp, in the main still gave their political
allegiance to a political party whose first interest
was to represent the unionist middle classes and
big bourgeoisie.
Any
liberalizing that was to be done remained in the
hands of the bourgeoisie, who were astute enough
to understand that they could not stand out against
the introduction of the Welfare State by the Attlee
Government, but opportunist enough, despite being
aligned with the then main UK opposition the Conservative
Party, to claim credit for the introduction of it
in the north.
Once the Nationalist sixty-niners, who almost exclusively
came from working class backgrounds, refused to
continue as the loyalist state's whipping boys,
and in the process snail like began to remold a
political party of their own (SF), the situation
was never going to remain static. With the deindustrialization
of the British economy by Margaret Thatcher's government
in the 1980s, the halfpence of economic privileges
the loyalist working class had been accustomed to
since the state-lets formation began to evaporate
with the decline of UK ship building etc. Until
today, as I have already stated above, as far as
equality in jobs, housing and services are concerned,
there is very little difference between that which
the nationalist or loyalist working class receive.
It
is worth looking briefing at the claim made recently
in the media that the loyalist working class are
"uneducated, prey to drugs, its only role models
men like Jim Gray". On the surface there may
seem some truth in this and I myself have written
an article as to how the nationalist working classes
came to regard education more highly than their
Unionist counterparts.* Basically it goes back to
the availability of work, or the lack of it, however
this explains the past, not the present. These days
the Loyalist working classes are poorly educated
because those they trusted to represent them politically
channelled resources into areas from whence they
came, i.e., the lower and middle class Unionist
communities, at the expense of the working classes.
It really is as simple as that; it boils down to
a lack of decent political representation. It is
a sad fact of political life that like their white
South African counterparts under the apartheid state,
the loyalist working classes failed to learn the
maxim: if you want something done well, the only
way to ensure it is to do it yourself.
As to drugs, yes loyalist working class areas are
awash with illegal drugs, but then so are the nationalist
communities, as is the so called Gold Coast and
the more leafier suburbs of Belfast and elsewhere.
Indeed loyalist working class areas are no more
drug infested than many other part of the United
Kingdom or Republic of Ireland. For in reality illegal
drugs are every where, including in all probability
within the northern Assembly when it is sitting,
and the London and Dublin Parliaments. Whether it
be Knightsbridge or Tallaght, the Shankill or the
Falls, illegal drugs are part of daily life these
days and unless we get our heads around this fact,
then society will never get to grips with this phenomenon
and chart a sensible course as to how we deal with
the problems which arise from their sale and distribution.
It
is also outrageous to blame the Unionist working
classes for the likes of Jim Gray or his ilk. Thugs
like Mr Gray were nurtured and shoe-horned into
positions of power by the British State via its
security services, police forces and Army Intel.
To suggest otherwise is like claiming the Kray Twins
epitomized the English working classes, which is
infantile.
The
tragedy was that due to the loyalist working classes
having no political representatives of their own,
a political vacuum had emerged within their communities.
This made it a simple process for the British state
to infiltrate wretches such as Mr Gray into leadership
positions within the loyalist working class communities,
the more so when the political representatives of
the British State and the Ulster Unionist Party
fore-locked tugged to the leaderships of the UDA/UVF
whilst behind the scenes giving the nod for many
of them to gain immunity from prosecution for their
criminal acts.
The
fact is the overwhelming majority of leading loyalist
paramilitaries acted with the full blessing of the
British state, indeed, half of them were directly
on the British security services payroll as touts
and hit-men. When the British State no longer had
need of these people, they almost to a man morphed
into full time gangsters, which demonstrates their
caliber perfectly. The fact that such gangsters
have risen to prominence within loyalist working
class communities in the north is an aberration,
which can only be explained by the aforementioned
British Security Service involvement.
To
conclude, unless the loyalist working classes take
control of their own destiny politically, then it
is difficult to see a bright future for them as
they will increasingly spiral downwards to become
a lumpen underclass. The decision by the PUP not
to break decisively from the UVF means this party
will forever be doomed to act as an apologist for
loyalist paramilitary criminality and act as its
elbows to gain entrance to the master's table. However,
the loyalist working class has a history of attempting
to build a voice of its own with the NILP; it would
do no harm for it to look back at this period and
learn the lessons from it. A class that had the
determination and grim fortitude to endure what
was for them 30 plus years of civil war, surely
have the political ability to found a party of their
own.
*
published on the Blanket website and in the loyalist/republican
ex prisoners magazine, The Other View.
