Through Irish Eyes - a column from Socialist Democracy, Irish section of the Fourth International
Loyalist backlash no threat to British deal
The British establishment in the Northern Ireland has tried to pass off the current loyalist war as simply a battle by thugs over drugs and turf. Drugs and turf are indeed major inducements for each side, the loyalists are indeed thugs, but it is quite clear that the driving force behind the feud is a deep-seated sectarian resentment amongst the majority of loyalists directed at the Good Friday agreement. We should not draw from this the conclusion that the Good Friday agreement is about to fall. In fact the evidence is that the British have constructed well and the fundamentals of the agreement are secure. The opposition of loyalist reaction is fragmented and diffuse because the agreement itself is so reactionary and contains within itself a restructuring of sectarianism.
The right-wing opposition to the Good Friday agreement was seen at its most threatening in the period immediately before and immediately after the reestablishment of the local Stormont executive. David Trimble narrowly survived a number of cliffhanger votes within the unionist party and then an even more humiliating leadership challenge.
At local selection meetings anti-agreement candidates consistently defeated those supported by Trimble. It seemed evident that support within the unionist party was under the 50% mark.
When Democratic Unionist Party support was included, opponents of the agreement had a substantial majority within the unionist population and a number of capable leaders, all apparently vying to smash the agreement.
This voided the agreement in principle, as it legally depended on majority support of each community, and in any case seemed likely to bring it crashing down in practice.
In the run-up to the annual triumphalist Orange demonstrations the orange order rejected any compromise, and the anti-Trimble unionists united behind former Orange leader Martin Smyth. The DUP vowed to bring down the new Stormont executive and the largest right-wing paramilitary groupings, the UDA, moved towards alliance with the ultra-sectarian LVF. Collapse seemed on the cards.
Drumcree changed all that. The Orangemen snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by rejecting a deal, carefully crafted by the British, that would have allowed a march. A reading of the parades commission's determination on the Drumcree parade makes this crystal clear.
The commission, an unelected quango set up to provide a legal gloss to government strategy while absolving the sectarian RUC of responsibility, is unambiguous in supporting an orange march. The only conditions are that the Orangemen agree to speak to the commission itself and refrain from riot, while in the long run they would have to "engage with" the residents of the Garvahagy Road.
It was a battle on the narrowest of grounds. The only issue was the issue of pure sectarian privilege. Not if the Orangemen would march, but whether they had the sectarian privilege to march when and where they liked without any conditions. Even then there was wide support among unionism for this unconditional privilege.
All the unionist oppositionists had to do was unite in support of the Orange order to mount a very significant challenge to the whole agreement. But when the test came the agreement represented such a massive gain for reaction that no one could bring themselves to break from it.
Policy was to improve the agreement - the official unionist goal being to save the RUC from even the superficial reforms of the Patton report and the DUP to force Sinn Fein out of the executive and replace the Official unionists as the majority party. The right - wing threat to smash the agreement had evaporated into thin air.
Paramilitary rivalry
The Unionist rivalry is replicated in the paramilitary organisations.
The UVF has historically been the more ideological organisation, uniting far-right sectarians and outright fascists with a lore of class envy of their bourgeois and petty-bourgeoisie allies within unionism. They have been able to link this to `community politics' and build a small political front - the Progressive Unionist Party (the name indicates that even the death squads have a sense of humour).
On this slim base and a willingness to accept a new dispensation that would copperfasten their sectarian privilege while allocating limited sectarian crumbs to Catholics, they were able to make electoral gains and tap into the grant culture of community funds available to all those willing to join in the pacification process.
The larger UDA was built from an association of criminal gangs pulled together by the British.
A supine press reported that Secretary of State Mandelson had condemned Johnny Adair and his group. Only one reporter, Ed Moloney, remembered that the Shankill death squad that Adair became leader of had been set up and run directly by the British agent Brian Nelson.
Lacking any real ideology they express the raw sectarian hatred at the base of loyalism and the rejection of even the appearance of concession to Catholics.
Their political base is much weaker and the "Ulster Democratic Party" (yet more humour from the death squads) were unable to obtain seats in the Assembly. They began to consolidate drugs and prostitution rackets and to link up with the LVF and other dissidents to squeeze the UVF share of the markets.
Drumcree was followed by the "war of the flags" where each group marked out its own territory, then a series of sectarian attacks on Catholics began, justified by attacks on Protestant homes that were almost certainly staged by the UDA themselves. Finally there was Adair's festival of Protestant "culture" where a frenzy of sectarian hatred ended with open war.
"Brains not brawn"
A sign of the demobilisation and depoliticisation of the struggle is given by a number of republican commentators offering sympathy to the UVF (the socialist supporters are more circumspect). David Irvine, PUP spokesperson, spelt out the political difference when he said "Brains not brawn" - that is that sectarian privilege can be defended more easily by political means. To rub the point home the UVF staged their own Shankill demonstration in commemoration of one of their own sectarian killers.
If the real nature of the UVF and PUP remains invisible to some then so too does the enormous power the British have.
The British set up the terror groups and directly controlled "C" company for much of its history.
The British release Adair … and lock him up again.
They provide money for " community environmental cleanup" which involves the sectarians painting everything that moves with sectarian daubs of Red, White and Blue. The paint is also used to draw a mural commemorating the worst sectarian massacres.
Finally, following nationalist outrage, it is removed, but no one notices that the British provided the paint and no one thinks to remind them that there is weak anti-sectarian legislation that is never employed.
Mandelson returns Adair to prison and warns all the released prisoners, republican and loyalist to be on their best behaviour.
While no one will weep over Adair, it turns out that the main republican "victory" of prisoner release is rather like a reverse form of internment - the powers of the British secretary are more or less absolute and are given a quasi-judicial gloss by a commission appointed by him.
Claims by the republican leadership of demilitarization by the British evaporate as the troops flood on to the streets.
The war is likely to drag on and its outcome is uncertain. The UDA have numbers on their side and the UVF are effectively being defended by the British with their use of troops, control of prisoners under licence, disbursement of money and political favours.
Even if the opponents of the Good Friday Agreement are victorious they show no signs of bringing it down.
More significantly the paramilitary battles are reflected in the political arena. Trimble returns from holiday to publicly embrace David Burnside, an anti-agreement parliamentary candidate, in a show of fake unity. Again his enemies are able to tap a popular swell of sectarian resentment while Trimble depends on British patronage.
Again there is no broad coalition willing to commit suicide by abolishing the plethora of perks and sectarian privilege that come with the new Stormont.
What is certain is that the new society will continue to unveil itself. Not a sectarian bear-pit that brings down the Good Friday agreement, but a sectarian bear-pit that is the Good Friday agreement. Sinn Fein, unable now to walk away, face an unsavoury future as a Catholic party.
The collapse of the British pacification project will have to come not from the right but from the left.