February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
“Too often loyalist people feel their voices are not heard, and their concerns are ignored,” Ahern said after the meeting, which lasted over an hour, had concluded.
Violence is frequently a way of trying to draw attention to your community’s problem, one that the UDA is certainly no stranger to, as its history unfortunately shows. But that same history also shows that it is capable of sometime surprising initiatives, even if it chooses what most people would regard as inappropriate names for them. Most recently, it launched the Gregg Initiative, which was discussed at the Ahern meeting. Named after John Gregg it is aimed at finding a way of maintaining a disciplined cease-fire. John Gregg, after whom it was named, was a notorious assassin who was shot dead just over a year ago during a feud. Perhaps the taoiseach might have advised them not to call a peace initiative after an infamous killer.
However, in the meantime, it can only be for the good that the UDA has addressed their problems to the head of the Irish government. It is an enormous advance over loyalists’ previous intransigence in relation to recognizing the role that the Irish state can play in helping all sides in the Northern conflict sort out their difficulties.