Ulster
Unionist boss Red Reg Empey must formally merge
his party with the late Davy Ervine's Progressive
Unionists if the Loyalist working class are to
have a future political voice in the North.
Ervine's
memory could be best honoured by all Loyalist
terror gangs decommissioning and disbanding –
not just the UVF and Red Hand Commando he represented
in the PUP.
Ironically,
this year marks the 30th anniversary of another
fringe Unionist party chief dying suddenly.
Brian
Faulkner, the former Northern Premier and chief
of the pro-Sunningdale Unionist Party of Northern
Ireland, was killed in a hunting accident near
his Co Down home in March 1977. The party formally
folded in 1981.
The
harsh reality of Northern Unionist politics is
that without a dynamic leader, fringe parties
will eventually fade away.
And
if mainstream Unionism wants to commemorate the
work Ervine accomplished in bringing militant
Loyalism to the ceasefire Press conference, then
the UUP has a moral duty to officially bring on
board the PUP as well as the pro-UDA/UFF Ulster
Political Research Group.
But
surely the DUP is the largest Unionist party at
Stormont and at Westminster? The controlling Prod
fundamentalist clique in the DUP has ridden to
power on the backs of the Loyalist working class.
When
Ervine tried to formally join the UUP Assembly
team – a move which could have given Unionism
an extra ministerial seat in the power-sharing
Executive at the expense of the Shinners –
it was challenged by the Paisley camp.
The
DUP's political Pharisees seemed to have conveniently
overlooked their own roots with Loyalist paramilitary
groups such as the Ulster Protestant Volunteers,
Third Force, and Ulster Resistance.
Other
terrorists who would have at one time counted
themselves as Paisley supporters were the late
John McKeague, one of the founders of the notorious
Red Hand Commando, and the late William McGrath,
founder of Tara, the vehemently anti-Catholic
doomsday movement.
Both
McKeague and McGrath were also known homosexuals,
the latter dubbed the Beast of Kincora after his
convictions for abusing boys in his care in the
former east Belfast home.
Not
surprisingly, the snobbish Fur Coat Brigade within
the UUP also kicked up its high heels in a frenzy
at the thought of Ervine teaming up with the middle
class dominated Assembly team.
Since
the start of the Northern state, Unionism's Fur
Coat Brigade has been prepared to sit with the
Loyalist working class in Orange halls.
But
when it comes to sharing power with ordinary Prods,
Unionism's Fur Coat Brigade has a simple motto
– the working class can kiss my ass!
The
DUP may have promoted itself as the voice of the
Protestant working class, but it was Unionist
middle class votes which clinched the Paisleyites'
election victories over the UUP in November 2003
and June 2005.
Like
it or not, a sizeable chunk of the North's one
million Prods come from the working class. Without
a relevant, mainstream political voice such as
the UUP, Loyalism will descend even further into
the quagmire of criminality and bloody internal
turf wars.
Then
again, was the opposition within the UUP to Red
Reg trying to form an Assembly pact with Ervine
more about the party's liberal wing creating another
leadership coup?
Red
Reg has tried to distance himself policy-wise
from the party's disastrous Trimble era by introducing
a socialist bread and butter agenda.
Unfortunately,
to Unionism's ruling fundamentalist elite, any
mention of socialism sinks of atheistic communism,
the KGB, the Cold War and those nasty Russian
Soviets.
It
is not the future of the PUP which is at stake
with Ervine's demise – it is the very identity
and direction of the Loyalist working class.
Dublin
has already pledged to pump tens of millions of
pounds into the North. But Unionism's – and
especially the DUP's – fundamentalist middle
class ignores the Loyalist working class at its
peril.
These
Loyalist workers may not have the stomach for
another armed conflict against republicanism,
and the thought of asking Shinners to help them
get their brew forms completed sticks in their
throats.
But
what happens if Fianna Fail decides to organise
in Loyalist working class districts under the
banner: If Unionists won't get you your benefits,
we will!
Unionism
should remember that as the political cancer known
as apathy slowly reduces the Protestant middle
class vote, the Unionist parties need to rely
on the Loyalist working class to get elected in
supposedly safe seats.
Red
Reg should grow bigger political balls, face down
the Fur Coat Brigade liberals and revamp the UUP's
Unionist Labour Movement. That would be a genuinely
lasting memorial to Ervine instead of pious words
and empty rhetoric.
Meanwhile,
on the topic of icons - Mel Gibson is surely one
of the great iconic film directors of the new
millennium, and his latest masterpiece, Apocalypto,
is worthy of several Oscars for sheer entertaining
value for money.
It
is a graphic portrayal of the fight for existence
of an ancient Mayan civilisation in Mexico and
is Gibson's best work since The Passion of the
Christ about the trial and crucifixion of Jesus.
With
Apocalypto and Passion under his belt, Gibson
should make an ultimate flick – his interpretation
of the Biblical Book of Revelation.
This
should come complete with the real global apocalypse,
the final battle of Armageddon, and the Second
Coming of Christ.
Given
Gibson's devout religious faith, a film on Revelation
would make fundamentalist furore over the Passion
look like a Sunday School outing. I wonder who
Gibson would portray as the Anti Christ?
If
the Passion is taken as a benchmark, it should
have the fundamentalists up in arms about any
film on Revelation being another Popish Plot to
undermine Protestantism.
Did
it ever occur to these Hell fire fundamentalists
that what is really undermining the true Biblical
doctrine of Salvation are some of the crazy antics
of these fundamentalists themselves?
Unfortunately,
rather than looking to the true words of Jesus
Christ as written in the Biblical New Testament
text of St John Chpt 3, verse 16, they are judging
Salvation based on the utterances and behaviour
of so-called Christians and reaching the terrible
conclusion - if that's whats going to be in heaven,
Hell ain't a bad place to be!
