DURING a recent television appearance the Loyalist Communities Council chairman, David Campbell, claimed when discussing the potential for loyalist violence that “the credible threat is if unionism and loyalism is continually undermined".
What constitutes being undermined to many unionists and loyalists is, of course, an issue that has never been easy to define beyond simply the sense of losing control, of both our present and future.
Over the past 30 years, not being able to parade where and when loyalists want provoked much anger and even outrage. Opposition to the erection of flags outside Catholic churches, businesses and homes has caused fury. Complaints about the siting of Eleventh Night bonfires and placing of religious, sporting and political items associated with 'the Other' atop the pyres have been fiercely rejected on the grounds that challenging such practices erodes culture.
Threats to end the gravy train of funding to prominent figures within loyalist paramilitary organisations have been met with suggestions that violence could be turned back on unless the cash continued to flow.
In the current context, unionism’s inability to sufficiently influence the terms of international trade between the UK and European Union triggered the orchestrated spats of bus burning and interface violence that was notable for the underwhelming numbers of people the loyalist gangs could muster for the occasions.
But if a return to loyalist violence is being suggested in the event of unionism merely feeling ‘undermined’, that raises other questions. For instance, does a Catholic or nationalist being democratically elected as First Minister of the north constitute undermining unionism?
Ultimately, if people in the north democratically vote for a united Ireland then unionism logically would be undermined. Is that a legitimate basis for loyalists to start killing Catholics again?
These are all very important questions requiring to be asked and answered. Media engagement and platforming of the representative figures from within anti-Good Friday Agreement loyalism is therefore entirely appropriate to allow for a robust interrogation of implicit threats of a return to violence, spurious narratives and contrived claims of victimhood.
However, what must continue to be challenged is the free platforming opportunities being provided for some to cynically engage in what the SDLP’s Matthew O’Toole and Claire Hanna have recently characterised as a ‘good cop, bad cop’ approach, a means by which to influence the political process by individuals without a mandate and organisations which should long ago have ceased to have a place in our society.
The great difficulty is that, as the Alliance Party’s Stephen Farry hinted during a NI Affairs Select Committee meeting last week, many people – including governments, political parties and elements of the media – treat the front outfit for loyalist gangs as a political actor with opinions as worthy as elected representatives.
How this situation has arisen is instructive in itself and reflective of the unconscious bias that stubbornly persists within our society and political discourse.
The very same media outlets platforming the Loyalist Communities Council and other firebrand figures from within anti-Agreement loyalism would not entertain providing a similar platform for Saoradh or other individuals purporting to represent the viewpoint of anti-Agreement republicans.
Then again, it is these newspapers and broadcasters which annually provide uncritical coverage of the 12th July loyalist parades featuring paramilitary-aligned bands playing a repertoire including songs both inherently sectarian and laudatory of loyalist paramilitary groupings whilst screaming outrage when a republican song is played at a restricted access concert in the Falls Park.
The implicit bias within our political culture is apparent on many levels and is far from new – after all, the Ulster Defence Association was only made illegal in 1992, 20 years after its members had started killing Catholics.
Yet just because something isn’t new does not mean it should be accepted.
The British government, through secretary of state Chris Heaton-Harris, is floating the idea of formal engagement with loyalist paramilitaries – we know they would not consider this for dissident republicans so let’s not even pretend that’s on the agenda.
This should be strongly resisted for a number of reasons. Twenty-five years on from the Good Friday Agreement, it strains credulity to argue that groups continuing to exist and engage in illegal, criminal conduct have any interest in transitioning to something new, not least when most of those involved know nothing of the conflict-era conditions in which they are supposed to be transitioning from.
Furthermore, the process of engagement will inevitably entail enhancing the profile and stature of the unelected figures fronting these illegal groups, invariably resulting in a campaign to secure political concessions for loyalism as a price extracted merely to get loyalists to do what was supposed to be done a quarter of a century ago.
The vast majority of people here are impatient for something better. That means demanding more effective policing, an end to the indulgence of the illegal, armed groups and a collective insistence that the political will is demonstrated to force them from our political realm and off the backs of working class people and vulnerable young males, once and for all.
