Analysis: Unionist dilemma anything but moral

Date: 1st Aug '02

Name: RM Irish news article

Analysis: Unionist dilemma anything but moral

BY LAURA FRIEL

"Nationalist people are now becoming convinced that their
opposite numbers only want peace on their own terms - that
unionists can't handle equality, and so there's this desperate
need and wish to turn back the clock.

"All this pressure for expelling Sinn Fein from government is
being seen as a determination to get back to the old days of
one-party government, where nationalist people were effectively
disenfranchised.

"But that won't happen. We can't go back to the old days. And
that is what is making people so angry. Change is not so much
slipping away as being thrown away. People are blaming the
politicians."

These are the words of Fr Dan White, a North Belfast priest,
speaking shortly after the loyalist killing of Catholic teenager
Gerard Lawlor. Fr White had administered the Last Rites to Gerard
in the street where he had been brutally gunned down.

After weeks of Orwellian double-speak, or more accurately
Trimblese, for northern nationalists Fr White's words felt like a
breath of fresh air. The British government and the media had
dressed up unionist huffing and puffing as high moral drama, but
northern nationalists can recognise a farce when they see it.

But faced with the real tragedy of ongoing loyalist violence,
which has included over 400 bomb and gun attacks against Catholic
homes, businesses, schools and chapels, and last week, the
killing of Catholic teenager Gerard Lawlor; northern nationalists
have found nothing comic about the unionist inspired pantomime.

Grotesque is the only word to describe the mock outrage paraded
before the media by David Trimble, a man so adept at disregarding
violence when it emanates from his political allies, the British
state, the Orange Order or loyalist paramilitaries. And he is
equally adept at feeding the fantasy of anti-Agreement unionism
with a diet of perceived republican threat.

Meanwhile, several thousand mourners attended the funeral of
Gerard Lawlor, the latest victim of another drive-by shooting by
loyalists intent on killing a Catholic, any Catholic.

Among the cortege was the city's mayor, Alex Maskey and party
colleague, North Belfast Assembly member Gerry Kelly.

Holy Cross primary school governor Fr Aidan Troy also attended,
as did Michael Brett, the father of Gavin Brett. In a similar
sectarian drive-by shooting, his son, 18-year-old Gavin Brett,
was shot dead by loyalists last year in the mistaken belief he
was a Catholic.

At St Gerard's church on the Antrim Road, mourners heard the
Bishop of Down and Connor, Patrick Walsh condemn "the raw
sectarian hatred" of those who carried out the killing of Gerard
Lawlor, a young man targeted simply because of his religion. The
First Minister should have been noticeable by his absence but
after years of rebuffing his nationalist constituents, no one
expected David Trimble to attend.

After all, as the editorial of Belfast Newsletter made clear,
even on the morning of a funeral of another victim of loyalist
violence and bigotry, the "Spotlight must remain fixed on IRA
activity".

"Loyalist violence, however dangerous and distasteful, is
essentially a security issue." In other words, no one need
trouble their political head about loyalist violence. When it
comes to a systematic campaign of loyalist terror against the
Catholic community, there are no answers to be sought and no
sanctions to be taken. David Trimble can predict mayhem and
crisis and loyalism can deliver, but by definition, unionist
hands will always be clean. Republicans can engage in a peace
process and despite deliberate provocation, IRA guns can remain
silent but, as far as unionist mindset is concerned, their hands
will always be dirty.

"David Trimble does not have to convince anyone that he is
opposed to political violence in all its forms. Nor for that
matter does Ian Paisley. But Gerry Adams does and therein lies
the difference," insisted the Newsletter editorial.

"The idea that the IRA might still be practicing forms of terror
while republicanism's more democratically-inclined partners grip
the reins of power is the anomaly that gnaws at the integrity of
the political institutions and contributes to the loss of
confidence in the peace process."

The key words here are 'idea', 'might' and 'forms of'. Even the
Newsletter knows that compared to real, actual, current loyalist
violence, the republican "activity" (the editor is very careful
not to say violence because such an accusation is demonstrably
untrue) is nothing more than a bogeyman to frighten the children
with and acknowledges as much within the text.

But if even the Newsletter, largely regarded as the Orangemen's
tabloid, acknowledges, however obliquely, that the republican
'threat' is largely a myth, then what is the 'crisis' at the
heart of unionism generally and the Ulster Unionist Party in
particular?

What is "the anomaly that gnaws at the integrity of the political
institutions and contributes to the loss of confidence in the
peace process"? Fr White spelt it out:

"All this pressure for expelling Sinn Fein from government is
being seen as a determination to get back to the old days of
one-party government, where nationalist people were effectively
disenfranchised," the priest had said. Unionists can't handle
equality and wish to turn the clock back, he concluded.

It's not 'violence', perceived or otherwise, that unionism fears,
but power sharing. Partition was imposed by violence and the
threat of violence and maintained by the same means for many
years. That's why even today, violence in support of the Union is
seen as non-threatening to everyone other than the unfortunate
'taig' at whom it is generally directed.

Violence against the Catholic/nationalist community is presented
as non-political. It is merely individual tragedy. Catholic
victims are routinely described as 'in the wrong place at the
wrong time' or 'lucky to be alive', as if it is somehow
accidental and incidental.

An ambiguous attitude to loyalist violence has served the
interests of unionism very well and this is reflected in the
reluctance of unionist politicians to seriously challenge
sectarian violence. But if unionists' attitude to loyalist
violence has been largely opportunistic, unionist support for
state violence has been unequivocal.

No amount of state violence has been too much for unionism. You
can forget truth and justice, human rights and equality, even
democracy and citizenship. These concepts have merely provided
the rhetorical landscape within which British and pro-British
forces have ruthlessly repressed the northern nationalist
community.

Republicans remember Ken Maginnis' comment, "two swallows don't
make a summer" and his enthusiastic support for the summary
execution of IRA Volunteers Brian Campbell and Colm McGirr in
1983. More recently, Roy Beggs Jr expressed unionist outrage at
the establishment of a Queens University bursary on behalf of Pat
Finucane, the murdered Belfast defence lawyer. Shoot-to-kill,
collusion - when it comes to state killings, even the covert
assassination of political dissidents or 'uppity' Catholic
lawyers, the Ulster Unionist Party finds no 'moral dilemma'.

But power sharing with nationalists, well that's quite another
matter. The exclusion of Sinn Fein from the executive would
effectively diminish nationalist representation to a point where
unionist domination could be fully realised.

This is the anomaly that gnaws at the 'integrity' of the Ulster
Unionist Party. They yearn for a return of the old Stormont
regime and a fairytale world where compliant Catholics 'enjoy'
triumphalist anti-Catholic Orange Order parades through their
neighbourhoods as mere spectacle.

David Trimble recently confided to the media that he was looking
forward to the day when the Twelfth could be enjoyed by everyone,
like Bastille Day in France or America's 4 July.

Of course, such a vision of unionist hegemony is necessarily
incompatible with power sharing and equality. After engineering a
'crisis', no wonder Trimble and his party colleagues were
outraged when the British government failed to meet their agenda
to expel Sinn Fein.

With a sudden blood rush to their heads, the UUP had somehow
forgotten that unionism was fostered to meet the interests of the
British state and not the other way around. It was left to the
British Guardian newspaper to point this out.

"Mr Trimble cannot dictate British policy," said the Guardian
editorial. The British government had chosen "to call Mr
Trimble's bluff" and had been right to do so, concluded the
paper. "Mr Trimble has shown increasing signs that he despairs of
being able to win an election next year while heading a power
sharing government which includes Sinn Fein.

"If he cannot get Britain to suspend Sinn Fein, he could be
planning to collapse the power sharing institutions to run as the
acceptable face of rejectionism. Mr Blair has decided, rightly,
that he cannot allow him to dictate British policy in this way."

But for UUP Assembly whip Jim Wilson, it was more a matter of
"bottle" and London didn't have it. If the British government was
"serious" it would have "to tackle this issue effectively", said
the reassuring Wilson.

Meanwhile, UUP president Rev Martin Symth threatened unilateral
action by his party to collapse the Executive. Tony Blair had
uttered "hollow words" because he had failed to change the
mechanisms that could be used to expel Sinn Fein.

"It must now fall on others to take decisive and concentrated
action to have the plague of paramilitaries eliminated from our
democracy and all aspects of our society," he said.

Lagan Valley MP Jeffery Donaldson added that unionists should
"take action to remove Sinn Fein from the Executive by whatever
means necessary".

But taking action was far from what the Ulster Unionist Party had
in mind when it came to the call for cross-party action against
sectarian violence. As Nell McCafferty of the Tribune pointed
out, when Belfast mayor Alex Maskey last week called together
community representatives, trade unions and politicians to
discuss the fight against sectarianism, only one unionist
representative turned up, David Ervine of the PUP.

Far from challenging sectarianism, the First Minister and his
party are more concerned with using the smokescreen of loyalist
violence to pursue their own anti-power sharing agenda.

As Susan McKay points out, "after a summer of sustained and
increasingly fierce loyalist violence against Catholics", Trimble
is threatening to collapse the executive citing as the reason
"the British government's alleged failure to deal with what he
has called 'naked sectarian aggression' by republicans against
Protestants".

Hypocrisy knows no shame, it seems. Unionist politicians were
manufacturing crises and manipulating them while young Catholics
were murdered by loyalists, Fr Dan White concluded.

c. RM Distribution and others. Articles may be reprinted with credit.

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