Obituary: Gerry Fitt (1926-2005)

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	Obituary: Gerry Fitt (1926-2005) The failure of collaboration – Death of a lonely exile John McAnulty 31st August 2005 ‘History will be kind to him’. That was the verdict of former colleague Austin Currie on hearing of the death of Lord Fitt. The reaction is understandable. History will judge Fitt and Currie together. In neither case is the result likely to be favourable. The right-wing opportunist, nicknamed Curryfavour by nationalist workers, can at least plead that he represented the interests of his class. Gerry Brit, who himself came from the working class, has no such defence. The tragedy of Gerry Fitt’s life was that he came from within the working class but gradually transformed into an instrument of its most vicious oppressors. The spokesperson for Republican Labour became Lord Fitt, ready at the price of a pint to appear in the media to denounce any aspect of Irish resistance to British rule. The man situated in North Belfast and within the trade union milieu became a lonely exile, fleeing from a nationalist working class that had once fervently supported him. But there was one constant to his life. Behind all the labels Fitt was a fervent constitutional nationalist. He repudiated both mass political resistance and armed resistance, seeing the only possibility of change in a patient lobbying of the imperial masters in Westminster. The incident in Derry that led to the song ‘We’ll guard old Gerry’s balls’ was the exception that proved the rule. Even then, typically, he was pleading with the RUC man who assaulted him rather than expressing any defiance. Fitt very quickly moved to a back seat in the mass demonstrations and eventually to outright hostility to the mass mobilisations. The logic of his position eventually led to the sad creature, captive of the Thatcher government, whose role was to denounce Irish resistance. No account of Fitt’s life would be complete without dealing with the issue of corruption. The nationalist politics of his time were corrupt, aimed at maximising what was called the ‘graveyard vote’. His supporters voted early and often. The vote was used to fuel behind the scenes deals with unionism – supporters of the unionist leader Brian Faulkner alleged bitterly that Fitt had agreed to support the introduction of internment, only to renege when the size of the opposition became clear. Even more corrupt was the trade unionism of the time. Rather than opposing the rigid discrimination, verging on apartheid, it enforced and policed sectarian divisions in the workplace, nowhere more so than in the docks. Fitt’s corruption and opportunism led to the formation of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, an assembly of local nationalist electoral fiefdoms united by no principle other than electoral survival. His cynical approach to fixing elections may be his enduring legacy, feeding through his role as advisor to Bernadette McAliskey’s early election as Nationalist ‘Unity’ candidate and on to the practices that Sinn Fein adopted when it eventually contested elections. Fitt’s failings were the failings of the nationalist politicians of his generation. The high point of their strategy came when, after years of patient collaboration and lobbying, they were allowed a junior partnership in the unionist Sunningdale administration. They watched aghast as the unionists rejected the deal and the British, under cover of the loyalist work stoppage, allowed the deal to collapse. The rest was ignominy, exile and obscurity. It hardly seems necessary to point out the irony of Gerry Fitt’s death at this time, when yet another group of nationalist politicians are waiting anxiously for the British to do the right thing and preserve an agreement that their unionist base has decisively rejected.

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