Loyalists must learn to command places in Northern Ireland’s legal profession, journalism and academia if they are to win a politically-influential voice, loyalist activist Jamie Bryson has told a House of Commons committee.
“The best message I can give to a young boy is that the best weapon that you can pick up to defend the Union is the law,” he said. “You will have more success in the high court than you will on the street with a petrol bomb.”
Pointing to a 2018 letter on the Brexit negotiations sent to Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and signed by 1,000 leading Northern Ireland nationalists, Mr Bryson said it was striking that so many professionals were prepared openly to identify themselves as nationalists.
By contrast, he said he did not believe he could get one Belfast-based Protestant barrister to sign a letter about the rights of the loyalist community and to identify themselves as loyalists.
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“So, I think there is a real imbalance in terms of the professional class,” he told Simon Hoare MP, chairman of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, which is investigating the effect of paramilitary activity and organised crime on society in the North.
Paths to get young loyalists into the law, media and academia must be found, he added. “I shamelessly say to young loyalists, it’s the best way to advance your political cause.”
Doing so would be the best way to advance the “cultural, constitutional” rights of the loyalist community and its economic prosperity, Mr Bryson said. “Don’t let anybody say to young loyalists, you’re not good enough.”
Sharp questioning of Mr Bryson by Conservative MPs prompted a complaint from DUP MP Carla Lockhart, who said he had been treated with hostility. “I believe it’s been like a character assassination,” she said.
Loyalism has become an “underclass”, said Mr Bryson, the director of Northern Ireland policy at the Centre for the Union, adding that it has been treated that way by the North’s professional class.
“My simple message is, ‘No more’. We’re going to go to the courts and we’re going to stand up,” he said. “We’re going to argue our cases and we’re going to do it competently and professionally.
“We’re going to engage in the media. We’re going to come to the Houses of Parliament and we’re going to fearlessly engage with MPs, even if we respectfully disagree.
“We’re going to take our message. That’s where loyalism is going. And I’m not going to let anybody criminalise or demonise my community. And the fight in that respect goes on,” he declared.
Saying that the loyalist community has been “demonised”, and that this suits the interests of others, Mr Bryson said the community needs to have confidence that the PSNI will tackle criminality on their streets, especially drug dealing.
Criminality has been allowed to “embed itself in loyalist communities over the last 25 years”, he said.
“Does that suit some people’s interests fairly well to have working-class loyalist communities criminalised?” he asked.
Opinion in loyalist communities has hardened because of the row over the Northern Ireland protocol, he said, and many young loyalists had sought to join paramilitary groups, though he claimed they were not accepted.
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The DUP and its leader, Jeffrey Donaldson, have “massive support” from loyalist communities for the stand the party has taken against the protocol.
However, he said he feared that Northern Ireland would go backwards and, unless changes are made to the deal between London and Brussels, a new generation of young loyalists would take a course “which I don’t think they ought to take”.
The solution to the protocol row is “very clear”, he believed, arguing that Northern Irish companies who want to trade with the European Union should “assume the obligation to follow EU law”. However, trade between Northern Ireland and Britain that is not going onwards to EU markets should not be subject to custom checks, he told the committee.
