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The fall of ‘working class’ unionism, the PUP, and Dawn Purvis

John McAnulty

2 July  2010
 

When Loyalist MLA Dawn Purvis announced that she was leaving the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) following the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) murder of Shankill Loyalist Bobby Moffett on the 28th May, almost the first comment came from Alex Maskey of Sinn Fein. In his view it was a matter of grave concern that a section of the Protestant working class was left without political representation.

Maskey's views almost beggar analysis. The UVF, a right-wing death squad sponsored by the British state, is seen as representing Protestant workers, even though they have been unable throughout their history to garner any significant support from working class Protestants. The real relationship of the UVF to the Protestant working class on the Shankill was shown by death threats to those attending the victim’s funeral and photographs of the dying man distributed by mobile phone in a further attempt to intimidate.

The UVF/PUP have further handicaps beyond their lack of support. Widely seen as the intellectual giants of loyalist paramilitarism compared to the UDA, their genius has never extended beyond sectarian hatred and criminality as far as possession of a political program. At most they had a thin patter of class envy of upper crust Protestants, made more bitter because they believed that leading figures such as Ian Paisley encouraged them to take up the gun and then abandoned them to further his own career.  That thin veneer evaporated whenever a demonstration of sectarian unity was required and they had to fall into line behind their capitalist masters.

So why is it so imperative that gangs of sectarian killers and drug dealers be brought inside the political process? The answer is that this is what the peace process is: an attempt to freeze politics inside a sectarian jigsaw where different sectarian privileges are built into every sector of society and normal democratic structures or issues of class are permanently excluded. The problem with this solution is that it does not solve the problem. Loyalist sectarians remain ensconced at every level of society because the British Government puts them there and throws money at them. UDA "brigadier" Jackie McDonald receives millions from both British and Irish governments despite never having been elected to anything, but even with this level of support and resources they are unable to win working class support.

This is the case even though the recent election demonstrated that there remains widespread public support for this corrupt deal. In part this is fear of a return to the blood-soaked days of the Troubles. In part it demonstrates the utter collapse of class-consciousness and the internalisation of sectarian consciousness. In part it is simply the apparent absence of any alternative to a system where all the parties and working class organizations are inside the sectarian and colonial tent.

So if Sinn Fein's call for the UVF to be kept inside the tent represents popular understanding and has widespread support, why is it that all attempts to construct a political movement representing loyalist paramilitarism fail? Why does Dawn Purvis represent the end of the road?

The answer is quite simple. The official ideology does not coincide with reality. History does not revolve around sectarian blocs, but around class, and this reality continues to assert itself. The majority of Protestant workers believe that partition is in their interest and they vote for Unionist parties and support the state forces. Protestant paramilitarism is peripheral to that, mainly serving as a mechanism for intimidating Catholic (and now increasingly foreign) workers in particular workforces and residential areas. An unacknowledged role is their very efficient policing of Protestant workers and suppression of non-sectarian and socialist currents. 

However the realities of everyday life constantly rub the noses of workers in the fact that the bosses and police are not their friends but their oppressors. A subtext of partition has been a constant unsuccessful struggle by Protestant workers to escape the cage of unionism. The paramilitaries help to ensure they stay in their cage. Yet a constant refrain of loyalist paramilitarism has been that they represent the key to that escape. Alongside psychopathic sectarianism and thuggish criminality they claim to represent the resentments of those trapped at the bottom of the unionist class alliance.

The decade since the various loyalist ceasefires has seen a major attempt to transform class envy into a political program and hoist the loyalist paramilitaries into the political arena. In part this was a conscious effort by the groups to redefine themselves in a changing environment.  However a much stronger element was the British policy designed to transform them into a bedrock of the new civic society. So the British designed the original convention that led to the Good Friday Agreement so that both the UVF and UDA would be elected on a tiny vote (the same electoral arrangements excluded for the voting roll republican groups that opposed the settlement). The British openly manoeuvred to establish ‘Mad Dog’ Adair as UDA supremo and then manoeuvred to remove him and stabilize the patchwork that was left. They poured millions into peace funds that reinvented the paramilitaries as paid community workers.  They had plenty of support.  The Irish president and her husband funnelled millions into the UDA. Fianna Fail ran a charm offensive, inviting leading loyalist figures to Dublin and speaking various loyalist jamborees.  Sinn Fein moved into an easy relationship, setting up ‘cross-community’ groups that split the peace funds and patronage along sectarian lines. 

The departure of Dawn Purvis marks the death knell of a key element of the experiment. Whatever the future of loyalism, it will not be able to convincingly dawn a mantle as representatives of the Protestant working class

What is significant about this failure is that it was entirely due to its own internal contradictions. David Ervine was able to win a vote in East Belfast, and Dawn Purvis was able to hold the seat, not because they represented the UVF but because they claimed it was being wound up and that they would deliver a new and transforming politics. When it became evident that this was not the case the basis on which the seat was held eroded and Purvis moved to save herself. These internal contradictions are not enough to allow a real working class movement. In East Belfast, despite the thuggery of the UVF and the major scandal of the Robinson family, despite the ability of voters to oust Peter Robinson and reject the paramilitaries, they remain firmly within the unionist camp, with the far left of the political spectrum the Alliance party and their new MLA Naomi Long  – a capitalist and unionist party that declares itself non-sectarian up to the point where it has to step in and wear the Orange badge – with, for example, its leader David Ford taking up the role of justice minister to ensure that the job did not go to a nationalist.

The fundamental problem of the continuation of sectarianism in the North today is that labour and democratic organizations enthusiastically support its continuation. Dawn Purvis was a frequent guest on the platform of trade union organizations. It was not the bureaucracy that saw any difficulty in her UVF links - that was left to her constituents. As we have already seen, Sinn Fein bemoans the fall of the PUP and want it resurrected.

There is an alternative to the hatreds of loyalism. That alternative is a common membership of the Irish working class. Workers need organizations that assert that reality, not ones that kow-tow to sectarianism.
 

 

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