By: Aaron Edwards and Stephen Bloomer

As the UVF leadership consults with its rank-and-file membership over the future direction of its military campaign, questions must be asked about what the people beneath the woollen faces actually want out of the current ‘peace process’.  While Brian Rowan’s interview with a member of the UVF Brigade Staff in April threw the organisation’s attitude to decommissioning in sharp relief, he failed to query the leadership on its intentions towards the wider Protestant working class community.

Over the past two years we too have been asking hard questions of Progressive Loyalism (the term we give to the UVF-RHC-PUP constituency) about its political strategy.  Gaining invaluable access to the UVF leadership on two separate occasions, our judgement was that we were observing an organisation very much at the crossroads.  Analysing Progressive Loyalism ten years on from the paramilitary ceasefires our findings were that some PUP members wished to break their party’s links with the UVF and RHC, while others  wished to take on the role of ‘conflict transformers’, working from the ‘bottom up’ to facilitate a move towards the peaceful dispensation envisaged in the Belfast Agreement. Despite our recommendations (although both authors are divided on their personal opinions) the PUP chose the latter option: what we would refer to restively as the ‘ Provo manoeuvre’.

One of the most ridiculous lies spread by the Provo propaganda machine over the course of the conflict has been Sinn Fein’s illusory disassociation with the Provisional IRA. In reality, as the expert journalism of Ed Maloney has shown us, they are one and the same, with prominent politicos holding sometime key positions on the ruling Army Council. The same, however, was not true of the PUP-UVF-RHC relationship, which until October 2005 was always tenuous at best. ‘Lots of foreplay, but no sex’, as one activist described it. After October 2005, amid confused media speculation, the PUP and UVF-RHC have to all intents and purposes become a movement (with two ‘wings’) in much the same way as Provisional republicanism.

In our latest pamphlet (accessible at http://www.linc-ncm.org/CTP_12.PDF) we offered a critical evaluation of Progressive Loyalist intentions towards the ‘peace process’.  Although Rowan certainly gave us a rare glimpse into UVF thinking he neglected to fill out the entire picture of that organisation’s movements at ground-level.  In fact, close observation would reveal that the UVF has endorsed the conflict transformation project presently being superintended by Progressive Loyalists in East Antrim as a test case to be rolled out across the remainder of the Province.  Our continued analysis of Progressive Loyalism is based on empirical facts, not on tabloid speculation or sensationalism.  It is, moreover, research animated by the kinds of difficult questions no-one else (whether journalist or academic) seems prepared to ask on behalf of those living cheek by jowl with paramilitants. At a critical time in the Northern Ireland ‘peace process’ one would think it imperative that hard questions are asked of those engaged in jingoistic militarism.  Sadly, this is not at all the case.

In an interview with the UVF leadership back in November 2005 we were told that: ‘I personally don’t think the UVF are in any position, anywhere even close, to decommissioning. Paramilitarism going away – that’s a different ball game.  They believe very much in that and they would see a marked difference between going away and decommissioning.  They don’t see the two running in parallel’. Significantly, just prior to our interview, the PUP emerged from its October 2005 conference with a cavalier determination to facilitate the UVF’s transformation beyond violence. The ‘politicos’ chose to align themselves more closely with their ‘militarist’ partners, with David Ervine announcing that: ‘The PUP is committed to conflict transformation and the processes that empower and build a strong, confident and vibrant loyalist community’ (Sunday Times, 16 October 2005).

Accepting its electoral bankruptcy in light of a continued association with its militarist partners the PUP has taken a pragmatic approach towards its own political future. Some would argue that the PUP is at the end of its political road; however, we would argue that recent shifts in the plateaus plates at ground level have thrown up a PUP which is only beginning to grapple with its political purpose and identity. In many ways what is emerging is a type of loyalism more self-confident and community orientated than ever before. As Dawn Purvis writes in the preface to our latest pamphlet, ‘our social res ponsibilities and our desire to empower the most disadvantaged is in stark contrast to the present populist political leadership that would have us looking at our feet’. Whatever its altruistic intentions it will remain for some time a loyalism judged by the actions of its paramilitary bedfellows.

It has probably failed to register on the minds of many people that the UVF has been in regular back-channel contact with mainstream Unionism throughout the Ulster troubles. Indeed the modern UVF was allegedly founded by shadowy figures in the Unionist Party back in 1965, when its first commander, Gusty Spence, was used unashamedly as a political pawn in a clandestine plot to destabilise the liberal Unionist regime of Terence O’Neill; a legacy which the party’s p res ent-day leader, Sir Reg Empey, has recently set about rectifying (Irish News, 26 March 2006). Nevertheless, forty years after its formation the UVF is still in existence, with little immediate prospect of its guns being decommissioned or its military structure being disbanded; it is recalibrating its strategy in light of rumours of an ‘imminent’ threat to Ulster ’s constitutional position.

The spectre of a ‘Plan B’ (or ‘direct rule with a green tinge’ in Paul Bew ’s oft-quoted phrase) is clearly haunting some Unionist political elites. While it could in theory lead to a strengthened British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference (incidentally, something already provided for in the Agreement’s institutional architecture) it is unlikely that this would invariably provoke loyalist paramilitaries into the kind of wanton mayhem unleashed in the wake of the Anglo Irish Agreement (1985).  In any event let’s hope that a settlement between the extremes is not found wanting.

Aaron Edwards is a PhD student in the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy, Queen’s University Belfast.

Stephen Bloomer is Research and Publications Officer at Interaction Belfast.

For an extended analysis see our pamphlet, Democratising the Peace in Northern Ireland: Progressive Loyalists and the Politics of Conflict Transformation, accessible online at http://www.linc-ncm.org/CTP_12.PDF