IT IS as if everything we have learned about the Northern Protestant extremists had been completely forgotten in the floodtide of well meaning humbug which has been used to describe our sundered brethren. How often have I heard southerners compare the attitude of David Trimble with that of those gentlemen with the odd eyes from the Progressive Unionist Party and the Unionist Democratic Party.
Trimble is said to be unhelpful, reactionary, unconstructive; but the PUP and UDP are said to be thoughtful, positive and positively helpful. At a time when Dick Spring was stirring the Anglo Irish pot with his attacks on the British on the radio, even as the bomb was trundling Canary Wharfwards, he was still able to reserve a few statesmanlike words for the representatives of the Protestant paramilitaries, about their vision and their sense of responsibility.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man,
There are only four things cer-
tain since Social Progress began;
That the Dog returns to his vomit and the Sow returns to her
Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the fire.
Paramilitary Folk Heroes
Do we remember nothing? Do we conjure out of the appalling Northern imbroglio whatever phantasms which please our passing requirements most, regardless of the reality? We see fascist killers who speak smoothly; and because they apparently have ceased, to threaten us, we turn them into paragons of virtue. They are not.
They are what they have always been warriors for Ulster. They have entered a pragmatic peaceful accord with the various warrior factions in the North; but they have no more abandoned their aims than have their mirror images on the republican side. Does the Hitler Ribbentrop pact ring any bells?
Let us remember who started this killing business this time around in the North, not 25 years ago in 1969, but 30 years ago spring. That was when the vital fissures began to open in Northern society, when the taking of human life became a laudable aim.
The first killings were those by Gusty Spence's Ulster Volunteer Force, which murdered a Protestant woman, Martha Gould, in an attack on a Catholic off licence; fatally wounded John Scullion on the Falls Road; shot dead Peter Ward in Malvern Street.
If these killings were the work of a single demented man they would have no significance. But they were in time applauded by Northern loyalists and the man responsible, Gusty Spence, was the first paramilitary folk hero in the North.
His deeds fed the fantasies of the inadequate, the bigoted, the paranoid, who are remarkably numerous within loyalist working class communities. That his killings were contemptible, squalid and purposeless was lost in the brainless applause which the name Gusty Spence came to evoke. When a community came to embrace such as him, that community was in deep, deep trouble.
The Deed is All
Was and is. Never mind the language of such people. The language is nothing. The deed is all. I first met the man who now leads the UVF - not Gusty Spence - way back in 1973. He said barely a word, but merely looked at me with a gun in his hand as I talked to his colleagues.
Indeed the only words he had spoken to me at this point had come in the form of a reprimand for being early for my appointment. "If you disobey orders again, you'll answer to this," he said softly, pointing at his Browning 9mm.
He never said another word to me during the interview, just sat gazing at me, his porkpie hat over his forehead, his fat muscles bulging through his black leather jacket.
His more voluble UVF colleagues told me how they were all socialists and they yearned for understanding with their fellow working class Catholics and for peace in Ulster, a great wee country so it is, once the IRA campaign was over. Sure we all want civil rights, decent housing, one man one vote, etc., etc., etc.
Some of these men were half witted killers. Some were semi plausible men who used words as tools to create an image without really examining what these words meant.
But as for my fat friend sighing with boredom in the seat behind me, rustling his chair, clearing his throat, coughing, whistling between his teeth; no words meant nothing to him. Nothing.
This man was killing then, I do not doubt, and he has not stopped killing since. He is now the man in charge of the UVP and no doubt now he is picking his teeth and restlessly shifting his feet even while his smooth tongued colleagues engage in dialogue and appear plausible and reasonable and accommodating.
Folly and Foolishness
Let us say these words as softly as we can, so as not to cause offence. These men will not rest until their place within the United Kingdom is secure and Protestant Ulster is safe. And merely because they are in talks does not mean that their guns are stilled.
Who am I to say this? How dare I doubt their long term peaceful intentions? Who better, I reply, for in my naive ignorance in 1974, I helped to arrange peace talks between the UVF and the IRA. It was folly and foolishness, but I thought the two extremes could bring peace when the centre had failed.
Two delegations met in Cavan. Daithi O Conaill and a man who called himself Brian Maguire represented the IRA. Representing the UVF was Billy Mitchell and Jim Hanna.
The outcome of the meeting? This was where I was initially pleased with myself, for the IRA stopped murdering UDR men and the UVF abandoned no warning bombings of Catholic pubs.
But within a few weeks Jim Hanna was dead, murdered by his own people, the UVF bombed Dublin and Monaghan, killing nearly three dozen people, and the murders of UDR men resumed. Billy Mitchell was himself soon doing life for murder.
"Brian Maguire" is now a militant on the Army Council of the IRA. My fat friend with the pork pie hat runs the UVF; and the burnt fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the fire.