With
Big Ian about to assume the mantel of First Minister,
why would the DUP boss worry about a few resignations
in Ballymena council when within a couple of years,
that borough will cease to exist?
But
a word of caution – don’t completely
write off the political beast known as Hardline
Right-wing Unionism as, like the Biblical Lazarus,
it has a nasty habit of coming back from the dead
when you least expect it.
On
paper, Unionism’s ‘Never power-share
with Provies’ brigade should be a political
corpse after the firm hammering Big Bob McCartney’s
UK Unionists suffered in last month’s Stormont
poll.
Paisley
Senior now dominates the Centre Right stage and
bar any disruptive sex allegations in the Unionist
family, the Executive is a dead cert for 8 May,
so let the good times roll.
The
problem for those who still consider themselves
as being on the Unionist Hard Right is where they
go from 8 May.
What
will traditional Right-wingers do if the power-sharing
DUP/Sinn Fein Executive ushers in a time of economic
prosperity, job creation, a boost in tourism and
community calm?
What
exactly has the mooted new ultra Right-wing alliance
of ex-Paisleyites got to offer modern 'Loyal Ulster'?
What
is there for them to either protest about, or
yell ‘No Surrender’ or ‘Never,
never, never’, to? Again, there is no rational
reason for the continued existence of the Unionist
Right-wing.
But
history has an awful habit of repeating itself
in the North. In the Depression days of the 1930s,
many urban militant working class Loyalists banded
themselves together to form the fascist Ulster
Protestant League.
The
League briefly re-appeared again in the late 1980s
under the leadership of the notorious ex-DUP Assembly
member George Seawright, who was booted out of
the Paisley camp because of his ‘burn Catholics’
jibe.
Seawright,
a committed UVF supporter, also formed his own
hardline Protestant Unionist Party before being
murdered by the republican splinter group, the
IPLO.
Paisley
Senior shot to political fame in the late 1960s
by chucking snowballs at the car taking Southern
Premier Sean Lemass to Stormont for a chat with
his Northern counterpart, Terence O’Neill.
That
chat brought chants of ‘O’Neill Must
Go’ from the Paisley camp. Yet Paisley has
gone considerably further than O’Neill, or
even Brian Faulkner – Paisley has formed
a power-sharing government with the IRA’s
political wing, Sinn Fein.
So
it stands to reason, it is only a matter of time
before the Unionist Right wing launches yet another
hardline party – possibly in time for the
2009 super council or European elections.
What
the Unionist Right presently lacks is an iconic
firebrand. Just as Big Ian was the saviour of
the Right in the late 1960s with his fledgling
Protestant Unionist movement, who will be the
new Paisley?
Will
the Unionist Right re-emerge as a religious fundamentalist
front like the old Protestant Reformation Party;
as an anti-European group like the UK Independence
Party in Britain, or an anti-migrant movement
more akin to the Far Right British National Party,
or maybe even a combination of all three?
And
don’t assume the Orange Order will once again
take up the cudgels and brollies of militant Protestantism.
The
parades debacle and the Spirit of Drumcree pressure
group effectively castrated the organisation which
dominated the Unionist majority rule Stormont
government.
Orangeism
needs to radically re-organise itself into hosting
a series of non-contentious Rossnowlagh-style
annual danders. No more Portadown confrontations.
Edward
Carson, James Craig, Brookeborough and even Paisley
are heroes of the political Hard Right of Unionism
who eventually settled into the role of accommodating
leaders.
Unionism
will always have its Hard Right. It’s muted
at the moment, maybe even dumb founded –
but re-emerge it will. Rumours are, the rumblings
are just beginning again.
