Some
time within the past year BBC Talk Back featured
a contributor mounting a forceful defence of dissent.
His main point was that it was not some sort of
optional extra but essential to progress in all
countries. Dissent is how a society breathes and
revitalises itself. The person giving forth that
day was Davy Adams, formerly of the Ulster Democratic
Party and now a writer and political commentator.
It was a robust performance and it raised the question
of how people who are either cursed or blessed with
an ability to think differently can actually live
out their fidelity to dissent in the daily lives
that they lead in some loyalist communities. While
dissent is as unwelcome in the republican community
as it is in its loyalist equivalent, and is a cost-free
exercise in neither, it is nevertheless generally
less fraught with risk in republican heartlands.
In
August one of Sinn Fein’s more progressive
councillors suggested to me that republican critics
of the party had vastly overstated the extent to
which it actively suppresses dissent. That the Provisional
Republican Movement does not pursue the lethal option
against those who align with no alternative armed
group but who nevertheless oppose its writ is arguably
less the result of democratic sentiment within its
ranks, than it is an astute awareness on the part
of the movement's leadership of external democratic
constraints. Evidence of the impact of such constraints
within the underworld of violent loyalism, however,
seems, where it exists at all, to lead a successful
undercover existence.
There
would seem to be a fitting parallel between the
'droogs' of the UDA and the soccer hooligans of
Red Star Belgrade who made up Arkan’s Tigers
in Serbia, of whom it was said, ‘murdered under
the banner of Serbian nationalism but were motivated
by the dynamics of organised crime.’ The instinct
of organised crime, while replete with self-preservation,
is rarely as attuned to political constraints as
those who have a political motivation for their
violence.
It
is against the backdrop of such a localised power
structure that Davy Adams strives to make his voice
heard. He is much less vociferous in his criticism
of the UDA than those republican critics who are
at odds with the Provisional IRA. He seems merely
to have assumed an independent stance and taken
up the pen. He also serves on the local District
Policing Partnership board. In both his column for
the Irish Times and his slot on Talk Back, he expresses
views on a wide range of issues which, agree with
him or not, benefit hugely from discussion. It is
to his credit that he continues not to take directions
from the ‘ideological traffic police’
in their efforts to nail easily categorised number
plates onto the backs of anyone within barking distance.
For that he and his family have been forced to pay
the price exacted by local UDA gang leaders. A number
of weeks ago the family pet dog was killed. Hate
mail has been posted to the family home, which has
also been the target of paint bombers. This week
the severed head of a pig was placed in the driver's
seat of a car belonging to the wife of Davy Adams.
Like the Godfather scene, where the bloodied head
of a horse greeted a man not amenable to the normal
means of persuasion, a gradation in menace is being
applied to the former loyalist politician.
In
a bid to suppress public awareness of the ongoing
campaign to silence the Lisburn writer, DUP member
and local District Policing Partnership head, Paul
Porter, advised the PSNI not to investigate complaints
pertaining to the intimidation. Davy Adams is to
be outlawed by a representative of the party which
ostensibly elevates the rule of law and has the
chutzpah to berate Sinn Fein for not being forthcoming
about IRA activity. On whose behalf does Paul Porter
want Davy Adams silenced and denied the protection
of the law his party claims is for the benefit of
everyone?
What
Davy Adams and his family are being subjected to
in Lisburn, in addition to being horrific for them,
is nothing short of a criminal assault on the public
right to know. Other writers, regardless of how
they view the produce of his pen or how far removed
they may be from his political outlook, should not
take the lead of the Loyalist Commission on the
matter and ponder the significance of events in
Lisburn in a state of stupified silence. The more
thugs, masquerading as assets to a community, use
violence to suppress ideas not to their liking the
more imperative it becomes to risk their violence
in order to frustrate and subvert them. Three years
ago this month Lurgan journalist Marty O'Hagan was
murdered by that vicious strain of loyalist criminality
that is today persecuting Davy Adams. Paul Porter
and his ilk should not be given free reign to understate
the level of threat. It would be a damning legacy
if Davy Adams were to emerge from this experience,
in the words of Martin Luther King, remembering
not the words of his enemies, but the silence of
his friends.
