By Jack Holland
In Northern Ireland, the war may be over, but the conflict continues. And, not surprisingly, it’s being fought over some of the same issues.
This became clear recently when Davey Ervine, leader of the Progressive Unionist Party, which is linked to the illegal Ulster Volunteer Force, was in New York speaking at the invitation of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy.
I have heard. Ervine speak on many occasions, including several times here in New York at the same venue. But never have I seen him bristle so noticeably as he did on his last visit. After a rather effusive and depressing address on the current difficulties facing the Good Friday agreement (which he predicted would lead to it being temporarily suspended), someone in the audience asked him a question about the RUC and Sinn Fein. What if, the questioner inquired, the Patten commission on policing (set up under the auspices of the agreement) advocated only moderate reforms of the RUC and Sinn Fein rejected them?
Ervine could hardly contain himself at the thought.
"How dare they?" he scowled, imagining, no doubt a vision of Martin McGuinness binning the Patten report. "If they don’t like it, that’s tough," he said. He added that he was "disgusted" with Rep. Chris Smith for what he called his "attack" on the police. (Smith along with Rep. Ben Gilman was involved last week in holding congressional hearings on the Northern Ireland police.) Ervine told his audience that it was a "worrying" sign for those Irish Americans who have tried to be "evenhanded" about the situation.
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Listening to the PUP leader speak, I felt for the first time that the honeymoon between loyalists and Irish America, which began with the loyalist paramilitary cease-fires in October 1994, might soon be drawing to a close. Especially when Ervine announced after his remarks about the congressional hearing that he felt that it was "time to circle the wagons again" — a familiar Protestant reaction when they feel they are under threat.
It took many years to entice loyalists out from behind those wagons and come to the US to state their case. When they first arrived here in October 1994, Gary McMichael, head of the Ulster Democratic Party, which speaks for the Ulster Defense Association, announced confidently: "Loyalist opinion can now be heard in the U.S." On the same occasion, Ervine had told the hushed audience of Irish Americans: "I am just going to talk from the heart. Nationality is a state of mind. I am British. I will always be British. And I have always been British." The listeners applauded him and the others loudly, I suspect more for their evident sincerity than for what they were actually saying. In the U.S., sincerity tends to be viewed as a sign of goodness, or a proof of honesty. But the content of what Ervine said was more important than the manner in which he said it. And from his latest remarks two weeks ago, it would seem that he believes that the substance of what he said then and since to Irish Americans was for the most part ignored.
Take the Protestant attitude toward the RUC, the Northern Ireland police force, which is at present at the center of a lot of controversy. Before, during, and after the Troubles, the attitude of the overwhelming majority of Northern Ireland Protestants toward the police has remained steadfastly favorable. Not only are Protestants not calling for it to be disbanded, but many see little reason for even modest reforms. Given the RUC’s history as a Protestant-dominated force, this can hardly come as a shock.
In a Moxon-Browne survey held in 1978, 94 percent of Protestants asked said they believed that the RUC were doing a good job. Seventy-three percent of Catholics thought the same. In 1985, a Belfast Telegraph poll found that 96 percent of Protestants said that the RUC was "fair or very fair" in how it performed its job. The support among Catholics, meanwhile, had declined and only 47 percent said they thought the force was fair or very fair. (This, it has to be recalled, was a few years after the shoot-to-kill controversy.) Just last week, The Irish Times published results of a survey which asked, among other things, if the RUC should be replaced. Fifty-one percent responded no and 32 percent yes. When asked if it should be restructured, 55 percent replied yes and 31 percent no. When the breakdown was made along sectarian lines, it followed the expected pattern. Seventy-four percent of those in favor of restructuring were Catholic, and 41 percent Protestant. Forty-four percent of Protestants were opposed to restructuring.
That is, in general the passing decades have not greatly changed the fact that Protestants are in favor of keeping the police the way it is or if it is to be reformed then the reforms should not be drastic. Ervine’s anger was directed at the fact that this has not been taken account of in the U.S. (Indeed, an Irish-American newspaper which reported on his speech ignored his remarks critical of some of those currently attacking the RUC.)
However, Protestant attitudes to the police are not completely uniform. Middle-class Protestants tend to be more supportive than working class, for instance. In the poorest Protestant neighborhoods of Belfast, "SS RUC" signs were fairly common in the early 1990s.
Protestants in general see the Sinn Fein campaign against the police with particular anger. To them, it is simply an extension of the republican campaign of violence which for years was directed at the force taken to a political level. The louder Sinn Fein calls for changes, the more resistant Protestants are to endorsing any. In this it can be compared with the Unionists’ demands for decommissioning from the IRA. The more strident the demand, the stiffer the resistance from the republican movement.
The two issues are examples of how the Northern Ireland conflict can continue without violence. Unfortunately, if not resolved both have the potential to create violence. The longer the demand for IRA disarmament remains an obstacle to progress, the more likely it is that disillusioned republicans will resume their armed campaign. Any move to make drastic reforms of the police would almost certainly spark off widespread riots in loyalist districts, as it did in October 1969, leading to the loss of life. But they are issues that the parties to the conflict cannot avoid confronting and resolving, unless, that is, they want to abandon the current process altogether.