Any takers for the poisoned chalice of leader of conservative Catholic nationalism, or is it a case that the SDLP has finally thrown in the political towel in its battle with Sinn Fein for the heart and soul of ‘republicanism lite’? Religious commentator, Dr John Coulter, is on a mission to save the SDLP from oblivion.
As a no-nonsense religious commentator and openly conservative evangelical Christian, it might seem I’ve succumbed to the sins of the ‘liberal-left’ by suggesting that I want to save the SDLP! And by saved, I don’t mean the theological definition of being ‘born again’.
Like it or not, Unionism needs to recognise that it must save the SDLP from being electorally obliterated by the Shinners. Unionists need to learn the lessons from the 1974 Ulster Workers’ Council strike which crippled the then power-sharing Sunningdale Executive.
That venture was a working power-sharing project involving liberal Unionism under Faulkner and moderate nationalism under Gerry Fitt’s SDLP.
If Right-wing Unionism had allowed Sunningdale to work, would we have witnessed the situation where a generation later, Sinn Fein was in government at Parliament Buildings?
Even when Sunningdale fell, Right-wing Unionism relaxed on its political laurels and did not have a replacement for Direct Rule. It relied on the numbers game.
Unionism can no longer rely on that numbers game as an increasingly number of Protestants are abandoning the ballot box. Northern Protestantism does not automatically translate politically into the phrase ‘Vote Unionist’.
Unionism seems to be on a mission that it must appeal to Catholic Unionists or attract transfer votes from moderate Catholic nationalists.
But the root cause of Unionism’s woes is that as a movement, it has wandered away from its natural voter bases – the Loyal Orders, the marching band scene, and more importantly the Protestant Churches and denominations.
Think how the political map of Northern Ireland would be altered if the Unionist parties could persuade everyone in these three traditional groups not just to register, but to ensure that they came out on polling days?
But let’s have a reality check; what are the chances of Unionism getting its act together and mobilising its traditional bases in time for May’s local government elections?
If Unionism is to stop the Sinn Fein bandwagon dead in its tracks, it has to encourage nationalists to return to a moderate alternative, not simply persuade Protestants to vote again in significant numbers as well as attract important moderate Catholic transfers. But who will lead such a movement within the nationalist community?
In the past, the SDLP has had some hard-working leaders – Margaret Ritchie, Alasdair McDonnell, and Mark Durkan. But still the slide continues for Northern moderate nationalism.
We’re not even well into 2019 and already sources are hinting that tough battle lines have been drawn in a potential leadership coup as to who will guide the mainly Catholic Social Democratic and Labour Party into the next Westminster General Election – whenever that may come!
Current boss and Foyle Assembly member Colum Eastwood may need to step aside if a merger with Fianna Fail (or even Fine Gael if there is a grassroots rebellion against an FF merger!) is on the cards, but where would SDLP delegates find future ‘big hitters’?
In one corner, is the party’s former leader Dr Alasdair McDonnell, who represents old-style, traditional moderate nationalism – the kind which saw joint Nobel Peace Prize winner and former boss John Hume dominate the Irish nationalist agenda for almost a generation. Could the ‘Big Al’ faction and thinking make a comeback in moderate nationalism?
McDonnell’s greatest triumph was to snatch the supposedly ultra-safe Unionist Commons seat of South Belfast in the 2005 Westminster poll. He capitalised on the growing fragmentation within the pro-Union family.
South Belfast was a seat previously held by leading Orange clerics Rev Martin Smyth and Rev Robert Bradford, the latter murdered by the IRA in 1981. But as we all know, South Belfast is now a DUP stronghold.
Then there’s another awesome trend to the SDLP. Ms Margaret Ritchie was a Stormont Executive Minister who demonstrated her leadership qualities by putting the brakes on funding destined for hardline loyalist areas. But her supposedly safe South Down Westminster seat fell to Sinn Fein.
In her time, Ms Ritchie enjoyed the support of the SDLP’s youth wing and had predicted a united Ireland within her lifetime. She was viewed as the standardbearer of middle class Catholic respectable Irish republicanism. Could there be another ‘Wee Maggie’ in the SDLP or moderate nationalist ranks?
Both were dynamic leaders in their time, but the crunch question which will decide who emerges as a future leader in moderate nationalism is – who is best poised to rescue the party from electoral oblivion by Sinn Fein?
The Provisional IRA’s political wing has virtually eclipsed the SDLP by concentrating on the moderate nationalist party’s core vote – middle and upper class, well-educated Catholics.
In Commons polls and Northern Assembly elections, this traditionally core SDLP vote deserted the party in their tens of thousands for the darker green republicanism of Sinn Fein.
Tactically, any new SDLP leader can outgun Sinn Fein by throwing the party wholeheartedly behind a merger with the Republic’s largest nationalist coalition party, Fine Gael, led by Southern Prime Minister Leo Varadkar. The SDLP needs an all-Ireland identity, so don’t dump a merger or coalition with Fine Gael into the dustbin simply because its trendy to talk about a merger with Fianna Fail.
Did I say Fine Gael? Why not Fianna Fail? The FF movement is already organised in Northern Ireland and a merger would set the Southern-based party back in its campaign to overhaul the influence of Fine Gael, especially with Brexit officially looming in March 2019.
A merged SDLP/FG can market itself as an alternative all-island party to Sinn Fein. The new merged organisation could position itself as a Centre Right movement, publicly contrasting with the Hard Left Sinn Fein agenda.
Sinn Fein’s main Northern problem is its lack of progress with its Stormont power-sharing partners, the Democratic Unionists. To halt the slide in any support to the more hardline Traditional Unionist Voice movement or a revitalised Ulster Unionist Party, the DUP has to shift further to the Unionist Right-wing.
This is placing a ‘near breaking point’ strain on hopes to restore the DUP/Sinn Fein Stormont Executive. No one knows when the next Stormont poll will take place, so supporters of any new nationalist movement or a revived SDLP will want their policies for an alternative government in place and before the electorate in time.
However, jungle drums at Stormont are beginning to thump out rumours Sinn Fein is also potentially planning a St Valentine’s Day Massacre on Unionism – politically, of course – by suddenly restoring the Executive and forcing a snap Assembly election in February 2019.
And that’s coming hot on the heels that if May cannot get her Brexit deal through the Commons later this week, then a snap Westminster General Election could be on the cards – even if Mrs May has pledged she will not call one. And if the political brakes are put on the 29 March Brexit, Northern Ireland could be back at the polls electing three MEPs.
Given the severe splits in the pro-Union community, as with the last Commons poll, Sinn Fein looks set to emerge as the largest Assembly party following any future Stormont election– a feat which would guarantee it the coveted First Minister’s post.
Even if Theresa May can hang onto power until April or May 2019 before any future Commons poll in the event of her losing a confidence motion, a snap Assembly election could allow Sinn Fein to enter that Westminster battle as still the lead nationalist party before any new SDLP leader can settle in.
Sinn Fein has seven MPs to the SDLP’s none! But the republican movement still refuses to take its Commons seats, making it a virtually insignificant Westminster force.
But Sinn Fein needs to be aware of the impact of either Fianna Fail or a merged SDLP/FG MPs taking their Commons seats. Such a tight make-up in the Commons could either propel Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn into 10 Downing Street, or even spark a second EU membership referendum.
Under the Theresa May administration, the Tories have all but guaranteed seats in a future national government for Northern Irish MPs or peers.
If a new SDLP/FG leader was to enter an ‘arrangement’ with the Conservatives, there is the strong chance Theresa May, or even Boris Johnston, could also give a junior government post in the Northern Ireland Office to an SDLP/FG MP. Sinn Fein can shout in the corridors of Westminster, but its votes in the Commons chamber which count.
But Sinn Fein has also suffered a couple of political bloody noses in the Republic, especially in a past Southern General Election where it lost a seat, and in a past Lisbon Treaty defeat for the No camp.
Okay, pundits can point to the increase in Sinn Fein TDs under Gerry Adams and the winning of the referenda on same-sex marriage and more liberal abortion laws.
Now that Sinn Fein has supposedly formally ‘dumped’ the Provisional IRA, it is trying to rebrand itself as a new millennium version of the now defunct constitutional republican outfit, the Irish Independence Party. But anyone who believes the IRA Army Council does not have an influence on the republican movement is living in a fantasy world.
Likewise, in the murky world of Irish political mergers and back channels, do not rule out those who want to see an amalgamation of Sinn Fein and the SDLP. This would see a return to the late 1960s scenario when a single party spoke for the vast majority of republicans, the now collapsed Irish Nationalist Party.
And before people collapse themselves in hysterical laughter at such a merger, remember those who laughed in 1981 in the teeth of the republican Hunger Strikes at the prospect of republicans running a partitionist parliament at Stormont; remember those who laughed in 1985 at the prospect of the Rev Ian Paisley in a power-sharing government with Sinn Fein.
In the ever-volatile world of Irish politics, remember the maxim, change is always in the wind. So don’t be surprised if any new Centre Right SDLP/FG leader climbs into bed with a Centre Right British Tory Party.
Follow religious commentator Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter
Find your faith! That’s the contentious advice given to Sinn Fein by controversial Radical Unionist and conservative evangelical commentator, Dr John Coulter, in his latest Ballymena Accent column.
Sinn Fein needs to find its faith in the coming weeks as more Catholics become disillusioned with the Church over the clerical abuse scandals.
There has always been friction between the Catholic Church and the republican movement, especially over thorny issues of IRA emblems on coffins inside chapels and the excommunication of convicted IRA or INLA terrorists.
This runs contrary to tales of hunger striker Bobby Sands dying clutching a crucifix given to him by the Pope, and 1916 icon Padraig Pearse’s prayers before he was executed.
But it never ceases to amaze me the number of modern republicans who openly boast about being Godless atheists. Irish Nationalism without a religious faith is meaningless rhetoric.
One such Godless atheist was Dan Breen, the IRA man blamed with sparking the War of Independence with his murder of two policemen during the Soloheadbeg ambush in January 1919.
Breen came to epitomise the modern Irish terrorist. Gone would be the tactics of 1916 when uniformed members of the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizens Army took on uniformed soldiers of the British Army.
Breen was to introduce the concept of ‘hit and run’ IRA terrorism, a tactic which the British responded by unleashing the notorious Black and Tans on the ordinary Irish population.
The ordinary non-violent nationalists suffered for the terrorist atrocities of the IRA during the so-called Tan War, and so too, began the significant rift between the republican leadership and the Irish Catholic Church.
With support for the Catholic Church on this island at an all-time low, and with more inquiries set to unearth alleged clerical child abusers, the Shinners have a golden opportunity to replace the Church as the true Defenders of Holy Mother Ireland.
Even the visit by Pope Francis to Ireland later this year may not be able to turn the religious tide in favour of the Irish Catholic Church. Parts of the west coast of Ireland may well become the last bastions of loyal Catholicism on the island.
Unionism is also plastered with links to the Christian faith. You need only read the Scriptural texts on Loyal Order banners on 12 July and Black Saturday to see the bond between faith and politics.
That bond was reinforced in 2012 which saw the centenary of the formation of Edward Carson’s original Ulster Volunteers, whose motto was ‘For God and Ulster’.
The Shinners have plenty of slogans and phrases, but no religious mottos.
It has been suggested the late deputy First Minister Marty McGuinness had some deeply religious chats with the late firebrand preacher Paisley senior during the Chuckle Brothers era at Stormont.
The Shinners need to rekindle the kind of religious Irish Nationalism espoused by Protestant patriots, such as Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmet, Charles Parnell and ex-soldier turned founder of the Irish Independence Party, murdered councillor John Turnley.
Parts of the SDLP may also see themselves as defenders of the Christian faith, but with the party about to implode, you might as well back a blind beach donkey to win the Irish Grand National, especially with the party split over same-sex marriage and abortion law.
Under Gerry Adams, the Shinners successfully tapped into anti-Fianna Fail feeling in the South to return 20 plus TDs in the last General Election.
But if the Shinners under Mary Lou McDonald are to stand any chance of becoming coalition partners in a future Dail, they have to attract the Christian vote.
Sinn Fein would point to the fact that the Republic is becoming an increasingly pluralist and secular society, giving the two-fingered salute to the Irish Catholic Bishops on referenda on same-sex marriage and abortion.
Okay, you could argue this was evidence of increasing secularism in the 26 Counties, but surely there must be an element of protest against the Catholic Church and allegations of clerical sex abuse which seem to surface on an almost monthly basis.
There is still a thriving conservative evangelical Christian movement developing south of the Irish border, although it may not sing its praises as loudly as it should.
A ‘Bash The Irish Bishops’ campaign might work in the South, but the Shinners have a legacy of slaughter to overcome in the North.
What about the Remembrance Sunday massacre in Enniskillen? What about the murder of Mary Travers as she left Mass with her judge dad in Belfast?
Republican socialists have an even worse legacy to deal with. What about the three church elders massacred by the INLA posing as the South Armagh Republican Action Force at the Darkley Mission Hall as Sunday evening worship began? Rumours and conspiracy theories abound as to why republican gunmen would attack Protestant worshippers.
Was it simply a case of ‘Any Prod will do’ and Darkley was a convenient gathering of Protestants to attack? Was the INLA trying to spark a sectarian bloodbath in the same way as the KKK attacked Afro-American Southern Baptist Churches during the civil rights era?
Did they mistake the Pentecostal Church at Darkley for one of Ian Paisley senior’s Free Presbyterian Churches? Was it part of a Maoist-style terror campaign to create so-called ‘liberated zones’ which had been ethnically cleansed of Protestants?
Is there any chance Sinn Fein could put the Bible into modern nationalism? Christians point to how one of the notorious killers of Christians in the Bible, Saul of Tarsus, became the Apostle Paul – one of the faith’s greatest evangelists.
Is there any one, or group of people in Sinn Fein, who might find a Saul-style Road to Damascus spiritual conversion and lead the party into becoming one of the island’s major defenders of the Biblical Christian faith?
With Christian values under such attacks across the island, it would be one of the great ironies of Irish history that Sinn Fein – the one-time apologist for Ireland’s most bloody terrorist gang – became a more vocal standard bearer for the Bible than the Scripture-quoting Orange Order. Miracles never cease!
Speaking of legends, while penning this latest Ballymena Accent column, I’ve been taking the occasional slurp of tea from a Daily Mail mug bearing an image of former PM Maggie Thatcher with the slogan she uttered at the start of the 1982 Falklands War – ‘Defeat? I do not recognise the meaning of the word!’
That legendary quote reminded me of another legend – Hollywood screen legend Meryl Streep.
She will have to made a second blockbuster flick about Thatcher entitled The Real Iron Lady.
While the current film featured numerous scenes with Maggie chatting to her hubby’s dead spirit, Denis, it is the Irish ghosts which are sadly lacking in this masterpiece.
In reality, the Iron Lady is just a cheap publicity stunt simply to get Streep more recognition.
The 1981 hunger strikes are briefly glanced over, and especially Maggie’s secret talks with the IRA to end the death fast.
While republicans demonise Thatcher for the deaths of the 10 Maze inmates, it is becoming clear the Provisional leadership of the time deliberately sacrificed a number of the hunger strikes simply to milk the propaganda for Sinn Fein to the maximum.
A scene was needed in which Maggie’s contacts put the prisoners’ demands to the Provo command and they were snubbed by the IRA bosses.
Another scene required Maggie confiding in her security chiefs that she could not afford to let the late Ian Paisley senior and the Unionist community know that she was secretly talking to the IRA behind their backs, otherwise the loyalist death squads would go on the rampage, sparking a second Irish Civil War.
But the real disappointment with The Iron Lady was the pathetic treatment of the INLA murder of Maggie’s right-hand man and Colditz war hero Airey Neave.
Neave died in a booby trap car blast at the Westminster carpark a matter of weeks before the Tories election win which saw Maggie swept to power.
Had he lived, Neave would have become the ‘no-nonsense’, hardline, Right-wing Northern Secretary, implementing a security policy built heavily on ‘shoot to kill’ which would have left a legacy of nationalist bitterness lasting for another 800 years.
There was no mention of any of the conspiracy theories surrounding Neave’s assassination.
Given Neave’s enthusiasm for a military crackdown on the IRA, he was certainly the key Conservative politician who could throw a spanner in the works of secret deals with the Provos.
The person tasked to organise Neave’s assassination was INLA leader Ronnie Bunting, the Protestant son of former Paisley political lieutenant Major Ronald Bunting.
On the surface, Bunting junior was a committed republican socialist who had turned his back on his dad’s fundamentalist Unionist politics. But he was always suspected of being a British plant within the INLA.
That suspicion was intensified after he was murdered by undercover soldiers under the banner of the UDA. Bunting junior’s death was necessary to plug any leak that British establishment figures had secretly plotted Neave’s removal.
At Bunting junior’s funeral in a Protestant cemetery, the ageing Major Ronald – once the loyalist hardnut who provided muscle for Paisley’s fledgling political movement – publicly wept uncontrollably.
This was clearly not the behaviour of a staunchly Unionist dad who should have disowned his son, the INLA’s Director of Intelligence.
Bunting junior had outlived his usefulness as a spy within the INLA and in the Irish ‘dirty war’ had to be disposed off.
A number of other republican socialists who had been Bunting’s comrades also died in mysterious circumstances to cover up the Bunting murder.
These included IRSP members Noel Lyttle and Miriam Daly and IIP boss John Turnley.
While Streep’s acting gained her a bucketful of credits, if Hollywood continues to produce lily-livered portrayals of key people in the Irish Troubles, then the real truth of the ‘dirty war’ will never be unmasked.
Imagine doing a Hollywood blockbuster on the life of Paisley senior which ignored his links with the Ulster Protestant Volunteers, Third Force and Ulster Resistance vigilante movements?
Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter
Bottoms up for Unionist Unity! Controversial Radical Unionist and conservative evangelical Christian commentator, Dr John Coulter, is not recommending a massive drinking binge to bring all elements of the pro-Union community together in his latest Ballymena Accent column. Rather he is suggesting the formation of a grassroots New Vanguard Movement to build Unionist unity from the bottom up.
Unionist infighting – that is a term which always caused me to squirm throughout my career in journalism, making me wonder if the concept of Unionist Unity is politically achievable, or whether it has become as big a myth as a 32-county democratic socialist united Ireland.
Unionists have had to bond together in the past when faced with a political crisis. For many years since the formation of the Ulster Unionist Council in 1905, the Unionist family had the Loyal Orders – especially the Orange – as the cement to bind Unionism together.
In 1974, in spite of there being political fragmentation with numerous Unionist parties, the United Ulster Unionist Council, commonly known as the Unionist Coalition or Treble UC, brought together the Ulster Unionist Party, Democratic Unionist Party, Vanguard Unionist Party, and United Ulster Unionist Party in an election pact which saw Unionist candidates scoop up 11 of the 12 Westminster seats in the February General Election with only Gerry Fitt’s West Belfast bolthole out of reach.
In 1985, following the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement, the Ulster Clubs Movement was launched to galvanise Unionists behind the Ulster Says No campaign.
While Unionists faced different threats in 1905, 1974 and 1985, there was one clear factor – indeed, the crucial lynchpin – in Unionist opposition, the role of ordinary, but organised, grassroots Unionist opposition. While the political leaderships of Unionism may have been making the key Press statements, it was the Unionist grassroots which called the directional shots.
In 1905, it was the Loyal Orders; in 1974, it was the then legal Ulster Defence Association; and in 1985, it was the Ulster Clubs movement (based on the Unionist Clubs which organised grassroots opposition to Home Rule).
However, the failure of the Ulster Clubs Movement in 1985/86 to overturn the Anglo-Irish Agreement compared to how the Unionist grassroots forced the end of the power-sharing Sunningdale Executive in 1974 reveals the root cause of the current lack of Unionist clout or cohesion in Northern Ireland. In essence, the Unionist grassroots have lost control of Unionism to the Unionist political leaderships.
The success of the original Vanguard Unionist Movement of the 1970s was that it was a grassroots pressure group to mobilise ordinary Unionists to rally to the defence of the Union, but equally significantly, it was a movement of the people which the leadership could not afford to ignore.
Vanguard’s greatest mistake was to copy the UUP and DUP and become a political party, thereby further fragmenting the Unionist vote. Once one of its key founders, Bill Craig, went to the Ulster Unionists and then lost the safe UUP Westminster seat of East Belfast to a youthful Peter Robinson, there was no coming back for Vanguard.
Any New Vanguard Movement must never make that same mistake of eventually becoming yet another Unionist political party.
And it must never adopt a Neville Chamberlain-style ethos of ‘peace in our time’, as a core sentiment of Unionism is ‘fear of the enemy’. For Unionism to remain as a significant force, it must educate its voters to ‘fear something’.
The post peace process era has made Unionism too comfortable. Unionism needs to be moved out of its political comfort zone; basically, it must learn to fear the potential long-term consequences of Brexit – that Northern Ireland leaving the European Union with the rest of the United Kingdom could eventually lead to a united Ireland.
Given the massive rallies against the anglo-Irish Agreement at Belfast City Hall in 1985 and 1986, how come the Belfast Accord lasted so long before it was eventually replaced with the 1998 Good Friday Agreement?
The core theory of the Ulster Clubs in the 1980s was to fuse the power of the Loyal Orders with the Unionist grassroots. Orange and non-Orange alike would mobilise behind the banner of the Ulster Clubs. Indeed, one of its key spokesmen in the late 1980s also a leading member of the Portadown Orange District.
But the Ulster Clubs strategy contained one politically fatal flaw – it could not find a cohesive role for the loyalist paramilitaries, and it could not control the actions of those paramilitaries during the notorious Day of Action in 1986, which ended in loyalist street violence.
Before the Day of Action, the Unionist middle class was prepared to support the Ulster Says No and Ulster Still Says No campaigns; it even supported tentatively the Unionist campaign of civil disobedience against the Agreement.
But once the street violence erupts, that Unionist middle class support largely evaporated, leaving the Ulster Clubs a largely muted force within Unionism.
The New Vanguard Movement must firstly get the Unionist grassroots to re-engage with the political process. Practically, this means getting the pro-Union community not simply registered to vote, but to actually turn out in very significant numbers on polling days.
The New Vanguard Movement should be organised into chapters or branches based in Loyal Order halls, church halls, and band halls. These three once influential core elements of the pro-Union community generally feel their political parties have deserted them – they are the Loyal Orders, the Protestant denominations, and the marching band fraternity.
One of the strengths of the original Ulster Unionist Party was the public meetings which it organised in Orange halls, which enabled the grassroots to hold public discussions on the political topics of the day.
Such meetings became an accurate pulse on the heart and soul of Unionism, and enabled the Unionist leadership to make policy judgement calls based on the feedback from these debates and discussions.
The New Vanguard Movement can become a political vehicle to allow Unionism to begin talking to and about itself again. And once the grassroots has become both motivated and mobilised, the Unionist leadership of the DUP, UUP, TUV and PUP will have to listen.
In practical terms, the various chapters or branches of the New Vanguard Movement would function in the same way as the Conservative Policy Committees operated in constituencies in the early 1990s.
Conservative headquarters would select a topic for discussion, which the Tory grassroots would debate under the CPC banner and send their constituency opinions back to head office.
In the New Vanguard Movement, a central co-ordinating committee would compile the discussion conclusions of its various branches, formulate a policy on the pulse of the Unionist grassroots and firmly convey those views to the political leadership of Unionism.
By adopting this strategy, Right-wing Unionism will once again be in the ascendancy and the scourge of liberalism will be eradicated once and for all from the pro-Union thinking.
If you can’t beat them, form an alternative to outwit them! In his latest Ballymena Accent column, Radical Unionist and conservative evangelical Christian commentator DR JOHN COULTER poses the controversial view that a new Liberal Unionist party could be the solution to outwitting the Alliance Party.
How can the trendy Liberal Left bandwagon which is Alliance under Naomi Long’s leadership be stopped from eating even further into Unionism?
As we get closer to Brexit in March 2019, and with no prospect of even a solution to the Stormont impasse, the traditional and social media seem jam-packed with spokespeople and politicians playing the so-called ‘middle ground’, ‘centrist’, ‘moderate’ and ‘liberal centre ground’ tickets.
Unfortunately, the reality is that the so-called middle ground in Northern Irish politics does not exist. It is merely the Alliance Party putting ideological meat on its previously decades-long (no pun intended!) of fluffy bunny politics.
The Ulster Unionists have certainly fallen into the pitfall of trying to develop a liberal agenda – in practice, that merely saw the party slip even further behind the DUP in the polls.
Even hard core UUP activists now fear if there was another Stormont poll, it would see the party slide into the unthinkable – returned to Parliament Buildings with only single figure MLAs.
There are even suggestions the once rock-solid Right-wing DUP is even considering dabbling with liberalism in a post-Paisleyite era.
So how can this Alliance bandwagon be stopped before it finally wrecks the UUP and a substantial section of the traditional mainstream Irish Presbyterian Church?
Ever since high-profile former MLAs Basil McCrea and John McCallister quit the slowly dwindling Ulster Unionists to form the doomed NI21 experiment, a number of questions have remained unanswered.
Primarily, can the already heavily fragmented Unionist family sustain yet another Unionist Party? Secondly, will any new future Liberal Unionist party actually survive, or will it join another liberal Unionist movement – the Unionist Party of Northern Ireland (UPNI) – in the dustbin of pro-Union history?
For the purposes of this specific column, I will refer to the new movement as the New Party. My conclusions are based on private conversations with liberal politicians and activists, whom I have known for a number of years.
Ironically, it was a relative of mine who first introduced Basil McCrea to the Unionist politics of the UUP.
I have never hidden my own desire for the ideal way forward for the pro-Union community. It is for a single Unionist Party to represent the entire Unionist family, with the various factions represented within that party by a series of pressure groups.
This would operate in the same manner that pressure groups have existed successfully within both the Conservative and Labour parties in Great Britain.
Bearing this in mind, it might seem a little strange for an overtly Radical Right-wing Unionist like myself suggesting there was a role for a separate liberal movement, the New Party, especially given the disastrous end of NI21.
Firstly, we need to recognize that there has always been a liberal Unionist strain among Northern Protestants. You need only look at the membership of the current Alliance Party to see the number of Protestants in their ranks and elected members – and especially the party’s infiltration of the Irish Presbyterian Church.
Even during the Home Rule crisis of more than a century ago, there was a strong liberal Unionist hotbed of support in Co Antrim, the supposed heart of the modern Unionist Ulster/DUP/TUV Bible Belt.
In the eventual creation of a single Unionist Party, the Alliance Party will have to be permanently eradicated from the electoral map. The current UUP – and even a more socially Left-leaning DUP – are not in a position to accomplish this feat.
In fact, the unthinkable is actually the bitter medicine of present politics – Alliance is slowly, but surely taking over – and expanding – the centre ground once occupied by the UUP. That is, whatever centre ground once held by the UUP which has not been snatched by the DUP under both Paisley senior and Robinson, and even to a certain degree by Arlene Foster since 2003.
The UUP and DUP should not underestimate the threat posed by Alliance. Ulster and Democratic Unionists should equally never dismiss the determination of Protestants associated with Alliance to maintain the Alliance position.
I went to school at Ballymena Academy and served in the Boys’ Brigade with John Alderdice, now Lord Alderdice, a former Alliance boss. During my time as a weekly newspaper editor in Carrickfergus, I reported regularly on the political activities of Stewart Dickson, now an East Antrim Alliance MLA.
I was left in no doubt about one clear conclusion – the determination of Protestants like John and Stewart to make liberal politics and their party work for the benefit of the electorate.
Now Naomi Long has taken up that political cudgel and fashioned Alliance into a clear Liberal Party, not just a trendy wine and cheese supper club for moderates.
So the threat posed by the Alliance Party to whatever is left of the UUP as well as progressive elements within the DUP will not be combated by sending the election-battered UUP into battle again against Alliance. A new Unionist champion is needed to wipe the polling floor with Alliance – now step forward the New Party.
We need a batch of Garden Centre Prods who have the personality, experience and profile to build a pluralist liberal movement which can fulfil this important primary goal of wrecking Alliance once and for all.
Like all parties, Alliance has had its good and bad times. One of the lowest points in its history – in fact, its last low point – came in the 1999 European poll when it ran its new leader, Sean Neeson from East Antrim, and scored only 2.1%
Since then, Alliance has never looked back. It chalked up two Stormont Ministries, its first Westminster MP and opinion polls predict it will eclipse the UUP in any future Stormont election, with Alliance holding on to its eight seats, and the UUP returning five MLAs at best.
If the party can survive the Union flag dispute, as well as any future loyalist flag or Protestant bonfire disputes, Alliance could be around as a major Liberal third force in Northern politics for generations to come behind both Sinn Fein and the DUP
Many Alliance elected representatives get and hold their seats because of transfers from Unionist voters.
The key question Alliance was able to successfully address – in a future election, will the anti-Alliance sentiment so apparent after the fateful Belfast City Hall flag decision a few years ago manifest itself in a polling booth boycott of Alliance?
The answer is simple – it didn’t. In spite of Unionist-bashing, Alliance not only survived, it thrived.
Indeed, If pro-Union voters continue to transfer to Alliance tactically to keep nationalists and republicans out, then the Union flag controversy has evaporated. For Alliance to struggle in the future, it won’t be because of a Unionist electoral boycott, but because its voter base has been split by a rival Liberal party.
So enter the New Party stage left! Just as Jim Allister’s Traditional Unionist Voice party dented the DUP, the New Party can severely dent Alliance.
The New Party will not last long-term, but it could last long enough to fatally injure the Alliance Party and see it either permanently removed from the Northern Ireland electoral stage, or reduced to fringe status, like the Progressive Unionist Party or Irish Republican Socialist Party.
Such a tactic has worked before in Unionism in the late 1980s and early 1990s when the first Tory Party experiment came to Northern Ireland under the then guidance of North Down’s Dr Laurence Kennedy.
He was the brain child behind the development and recognition of a series of constituency associations across Northern Ireland. In the run-up to the 1992 Westminster General Election, there was the real possibility that the intervention of Tory candidates could take enough votes off the UUP to see previously safe Ulster Unionist seats swing to the DUP.
To avoid the potential loss of Commons seats in 1992, a number of UUP activists infiltrated their local Tory associations with the simple purpose of influencing the outcome of the Westminster candidate selection process.
An example of this infiltration process was in East Antrim, where sitting UUP MP Roy Beggs senior was facing a strong challenge from DUP runner Nigel Dodds (now the North Belfast MP).
The East Antrim Conservative Association was then viewed as one of the most Right-wing of the new Tory associations. It was abundantly clear if a Right-wing Tory candidate split the traditional UUP vote, either Dodds or Alliance’s Sean Neeson could snatch the seat as Beggs senior had originally done in 1983 when the Commons seat was created.
In 1983, Beggs senior had defeated the DUP’s Jim Allister (now TUV leader and North Antrim MLA) by only 367 votes, making it one of the most marginal seats in the entire UK.
A UUP member in East Antrim managed to get on the Tory selection panel for the 1992 election and pushed the association to select a more liberal Conservative candidate rather than an overt Right-winger. The aim was to pitch the Tory Party in a head-to-head with Alliance for the centre vote.
The end result was that the Tory candidate polled almost 3,500 votes. Dodds pipped Neeson by around 400 votes, but more significantly Beggs senior held the seat with a majority of almost 7,500. Ironically, the East Antrim Westminster seat was lost some years later to the DUP’s Sammy Wilson.
If the DUP and UUP leaderships want to put Alliance in its box, the tactic is not to attack it directly with fluffy bunny liberal statements in the media. The best way to upset the Alliance apple cart is to pitch a new liberal alternative to that section of the electorate, hence the important of the New Party in this exercise.
The real aim of the New Party should be to ensure that Alliance does not become the real third or fourth force in Ulster politics behind the DUP and Sinn Fein. Those two parties look like holding their positions within their respective communities for the next few years.
This could leave a three-way battle for third place in the Stormont Executive between what is left of the UUP, the SDLP and Alliance. Set aside how a Unionist Unity ticket could guarantee the UUP’s survival in the short term. The New Party, ironically, could spell its long-term existence.
Rather than the badly-wounded UUP going back into the polling front line against Alliance, the pro-Union community should encourage the New Party to take up the electoral cudgels of giving Alliance a massive battering at the polls.
As an amended version of the old maxim states – if you want to beat them, undermine them with an alternative. Remember in mainland Britain how the old Social Democratic Party (SDP) sliced the then Liberal Party?
Any takers for the post of Chairman of the new Northern Ireland Liberal Party?
Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter
Don’t give to the freewill offering and we’ll starve them out! Controversial political commentator, Dr John Coulter, uses a quote from a row in a Presbyterian Church 40 years ago to put the currently unthinkable case that a Hard Brexit could force the Irish Republic back into the United Kingdom. This is the path he outlines in his latest Ballymena Accent column.
Four decades ago, during a row in a rural Presbyterian church, a worshipper at that church trying to force out the clergyman uttered this advice to his henchmen – don’t give to the freewill offering and we’ll starve them out!
This was a crude reference to withholding funding to the church collection, known as the freewill offering, and by doing so it would seriously affect the stipend – or salary – which that church could give to its minister. With a substantially reduced salary, that cleric would have to leave the church!
With the clock ticking rapidly towards Brexit in March 2019, and still no agreement on a Hard, Soft, or Pliable border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, the key question remains – what financially is the Republic really afraid off?
Those who maintain Brexit, and even some kind of Soft Border, will pave the way towards a united Ireland are merely sabre-rattling. The bitter reality is that the South cannot afford the North. Even in basic health terms, and even without a functioning Stormont Executive, Northern Ireland still enjoys the luxury of free prescriptions. In the Republic, if you need to make a medical or dental appointment, you need to splash out a basic 50 euros.
And let’s not forget when the once-vibrant Celtic Tiger economy collapsed a few years ago, it was UK funding as part of an EU multi-million euro rescue bailout which saved the Republic’s economy.
Are all the republicans in Northern Ireland who are enjoying the privileges of ‘benefit street’ seriously wanting to abandon these for a 32-county democratic socialist republic where social security benefits will evaporate?
The Hard Brexit Border is feared by republicans and Southern politicians alike because such a scenario will in the long-term force the Republic to abandon its ‘republic status’ and re-negotiate a new Anglo-Irish Treaty which will see the South rejoin a closer formal relationship with the UK.
A Hard Brexit, if worked properly by Northern Ireland Unionists and hardline Brexiteers in the Tory Party, will not see an end to the Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but a long-term extension of that Union.
Whether by the DUP dealing at Westminster, or by a reconvened Stormont Executive, Brexiteers must look to the increasingly powerful Commonwealth Parliamentary Association if they are serious about inward investment and bringing much-needed jobs to Ulster in a post Brexit Ireland.
While Northern Ireland voted ‘remain’ in the EU referendum, it should not be forgotten that there is a strong history of Euro scepticism across the geographical island of Ireland, north and south.
Be it the Stormont Executive or a Westminster group of DUP MPs and Tory Euro skeptics under Rees Mogg, such a clique must get its act in gear and begin negotiations with Commonwealth nations and beyond to fill the jobs black hole which has devastated both my home town of Ballymena and the wider Northern Ireland.
Several months ago, hundreds of people braved the cold weather to protest at the Rally for a Future, thereby sending a clear message to the then Stormont Executive that the time for fancy rhetoric is over and jobs have to be delivered for Ballymena.
The Executive (if it can be returned) or Westminster can no longer sit idly by and allow Ballymena to systematically become an economic wasteland and a jobs wilderness.
In practical terms, either the Executive or Westminster needs to urgently get its act in gear and look to our partner parliaments in the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) and beyond to bring much-needed new employment, not just to Ballymena, but right across Ulster.
If Sinn Fein and the DUP, which dominate the Stormont Executive, can get devolution back in place, both parties need to set aside their petty party differences and start working for the people. The speakers and public at the Rally for a Future all those months ago sent a loud demand to the Executive – Ballymena wants to work, and Ballymena needs work!
The CPA was formed in 1911 as the Empire Parliamentary Association with Ireland as a founder member when the island was united under the Union.
It now represents more than 50 national and regional parliaments throughout the globe. The Executive or Westminster needs to speak to many of these parliaments to see if firms can be encouraged to locate in Ulster, thereby creating the much-needed employment.
The Executive or Westminster needs to think far beyond the United Kingdom’s partner states within the European Union. The bitter economic reality we must face is that many of our EU partner states can provide products at a cheaper rate than us in Northern Ireland.
We need to develop our links with rapidly developing economies in nations, such as India, China, Brazil and even Russia.
However, on the dark side of this argument, if under Arlene Foster’s watch the DUP lost the First Minister’s post to Sinn Fein, it could spark further fragmentation within the unionist community as the various unionist movements vent their anger against the DUP.
And there’s no way Sinn Fein will want anything to do with the CPA. So what should Arlene’s answer be in this situation? Unionists must begin thinking outside the box – this means persuading the Republic to engage with the CPA.
The South has witnessed the Celtic Tiger slowly but surely crawling back onto its feet; when the UK leaves the EU, it will leave the Republic isolated on the fringes of Europe politically and geographically – even if under a second referendum, Scotland votes to leave the UK, but remain in the EU.
At the same time, Arlene can use her Westminster team headed up by Nigel Dodds MP to get hard Left Labour Jeremy Corbyn to persuade Sinn Fein to ditch its traditional policy of abstentionism at Westminster and take it Commons seats, thereby sucking Sinn Fein even further into the democratic process and British establishment.
Even if Sinn Fein becomes a minority government partner in the next Dail coalition in Dublin, the voters of Southern Ireland will never forgive the republican movement if it puts historic principles before putting people first.
Sinn Fein did this almost a century ago when it rejected the Anglo-Irish Treaty, split republicanism and sparked the very bloody and brutal Irish Civil War which saw republican butcher republican.
Dr John Coulter has been a journalist working in Ireland for 40 years. Follow him on Twitter. @JohnAHCoulter
Edge of the Union
Which Union?
For the last 40 years Northern Ireland has been in two Unions. The United kingdom and the European Union. Well technically we have only been in the EU since 1993. And very soon we will not be in the EU. It is also possible that NI will not be in the United kingdom for long either. Equally there will be a large number of people in NI who will carry Irish passports and therefore continue to be treated as EU citizens. So for a variety of reasons Northern Ireland will be at the edge of the Union.
If the constitutional and political Unions seem in a process of flux there is no point in looking to the religious and moral for stability because that area is also in a state of flux. In the short time between the last Papal visit in 1982 and now the religious and social direction of the Irish Republic has changed significantly to the point where many socially conservative Roman Catholics now believe themselves to be closest to the position of the DUP.
In the other initial essay on Edge of the Union Dr John Coulter makes a case for a socially and politically conservative Unionist party. It is fair to say that while John and I share a sense of humour and the absurd we are not aligned politically. What we do also share is a sense that our current arrangements are volatile and likely to fragment.
I have appreciated the way in which new social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have encouraged me to write more. They have also enabled me to interact with writers and journalists in a way that would have been difficult 20 years ago. And yet they are limited both in their incessant need for growth and encouragement of excess and in their ownership of their contributors’ intellectual property. So, finally and slowly I have reached the conclusion that a blog like this which gives a variety of writers from a loosely unionist (EU and/or UK) perspective a bit of space to write is a worthwhile project.
So how badly would Brexit need to perform before it caused an end to the status of Northern Ireland as a part of the United Kingdom? There is no sign that there is a majority within Northern Ireland who would vote for Unification at present. That is not the issue. The EU and HMG are set on a collision course over the economic status of Northern Ireland. It seems incomprehensible that a Conservative government propped up by the DUP would accede to EU demands that NI stay within the customs union while GB is outside yet that is the consequence of the backstop which Mrs May signed last December.
It is notable that major EU figures such as Michel Barnier, EU Chief Negotiator, Guy Verhofstadt, European Parliament Brexit representative, Donald Tusk, European Council President and Jean-Claude Juncker, EU President, have all paid lengthy visits to Ireland including the border. Some have even travelled to NI. Contrast this with the reluctance of major pro-Brexit English politicians such as Jacob Rees-Mogg to actually visit Northern Ireland or of the farcical episode where David Davis, Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union apologised for not informing the local MP when he made a fleeting visit to the border.
The Irish Border is a significant stumbling block to those who want a Hard Brexit and their response usually takes one of two options. Either ignore it completely as in the letter from Economists for Free Trade to the P.M. on 22nd June or insist that the Irish Republic back down in their insistence on a frictionless border. This is more usually the response from Unionist politicians. It is to Mrs May’s credit that she has acted responsibly throughout all the negotiations and shows no sign of altering course now which perhaps explains the increasing desperation of those in favour of a No-deal Brexit.
Of course the departure of the United Kingdom from the EU will throw a spanner or two into their works. This however may not be the disintegration so aspired to by those who support Brexit. The tension between Federal and National may be resolved peacefully without the strong-arm tactics applied to Greece and now Italy. At all levels from micro-state to transnational Federation we are once again experiencing the turbulence described by the magnificently conflicted W B Yeats. We are at the edges of many Unions.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Would the real Hard Right of Unionism please stand up?