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One
of the more attractive features of this year’s
West Belfast festival was the debate on sectarianism
sponsored by Fourthwrite magazine. Unlike some
of the other debates or discussions the chances for
micromanagement of each word uttered were thankfully
non-existent. Those who went along could anticipate
a vibrant rather than a ‘tutored’ discussion.
The
speakers billed - all hailing from the political left
- were Joe Craig of Socialist Democracy, Mark Langhammer,
an independent councillor from Newtownabbey, the veteran
radical activist Bernadette McAliskey and Tommy McKearney
of Fourthwrite.
Despite
promises from all the speakers that they would restrict
themselves to ten minutes, and although each after
Joe Craig undertook to be less wordy than the previous
speaker, none of them abided by it. Fortunately, nobody
seemed to mind. Each had something interesting to
say, so the audience excused them their over-the-limit
lapses. A generosity doubtlessly aided by the reciprocation
from the chair who allowed plenty of time for questions
from the floor.
The
debate was surprisingly well attended given that it
took place on a hot and humid Friday evening and did
not seem to be advertised prominently in a week that
pulled luminaries such as Robert Fisk and Jeremy Hardy
to West Belfast. Nevertheless, the size of the audience
showed that speakers from our own society addressing
issues central to it can still capture the public
imagination.
Chaired
by Patricia Campbell of Fourthwrite, the first
speaker of the evening was Joe Craig. He felt that
sectarianism was on the increase; that in fact it
had become so all-pervasive that we were not even
aware of it taking place. He berated the Loyalist
Commission and its no first strike call, asking was
‘a second strike okay’ and was the Commission
merely trying to legitimise such a strike when it
did occur? Somehow I felt, in his formalism, he had
missed the point. He went on to reject the notion
of culture as automatically achieving legitimacy,
believing that people label their activities ‘cultural’
and then think that what follows from that culture
should be beyond criticism. In the world view of Joe
Craig sectarianism seeped through institutions such
as the church; it was also at the heart of the Good
Friday Agreement. The latter in particular came in
for extended criticism on the grounds that it had
released hundreds of loyalist sectarian killers.
On
a night in which we were invited to listen to a polemic
against sectarianism it seemed ironic, but characteristic
of the Left, that Joe Craig should make a case for
sectarianism by being critical of any tendency that
might think loyalism ought to be critically engaged.
For him loyalism was part of the problem and could
not, therefore, be part of the solution.
Joe
Craig’s contribution was made all the more focussed
by his background - he is a Protestant socialist who
initially lived on the Shankill Road. It requires
no small measure of courage to make the break as he
has so clearly done. And there were few surprises
when his proffered alternative to sectarianism was
to reject the notion of there being only two traditions
and to work to develop a third - socialism.
Joe
was followed by Bernadette McAliskey who wasted no
time in rapidly firing from the hip as she set about
ridiculing the narrow minded sectarianism of the ‘infinitesimally
small Left‘. It was not what the floor had anticipated
but they loved it all the same. It was vintage Bernadette
- sharp, lucid, proudly awkward and very persuasive.
She drew comparisons between the Left in Ireland and
scenes from The Life Of Brian to the merriment of
the audience. She disputed that sectarianism was on
the increase, asserting instead that it was deeply
ingrained within us all and like the herpes virus
would erupt from time to time. Sectarianism was not
something ‘they do’ nor is it manifested
in the violent acts of ‘others’. It is deep
within ourselves. She dissented from Joe Craig’s
notion about culture, arguing that orangeism was a
culture ‘not with a lot to recommend it but a
culture nonetheless’, illustrating her point
through reference to nazism which was also a culture,
albeit it a very repellent one.
Mark
Langhammer, who spoke next, was arguably the most
interesting speaker of the night. As eloquent and
talented as the others, the rarity of his presence
at such events made his views all the more tantalising.
He surprised his listeners by claiming that he shared
the view of Charlie Haughey that Northern Ireland
was ‘a failed political entity,’ adding
‘were he alive, I believe Sir Edward Carson would
hold that view too.’ He felt that the Good Friday
Agreement was a poor outcome of the peace process.
It had ‘frozen politics and stimulated communal
antagonisms.’ The centre piece of the Agreement
was Stormont where 108 Assembly members equated to
4000 MPs at Westminster - even more staff than George
Bush. It all sounded as if the big house on the hill
was wrapped in a brown envelope where goodies for
those within its walls rather than services for those
outside determined its functioning and set its agenda.
With
this crew of over-paid and under-talented place-seekers
determined to maintain their privilege by - even unconsciously
-keeping their respective constituencies perpetually
suspicious of their opponents on the other side of
the segregation line, there was now less space for
centre ground or left wing politics than at any time
in living memory. Stripped of anything other than
one-upmanship against the other side, ‘breeding’
now forms the substance of politics. Agreeing with
Joe Craig, he contended that sectarianism is on the
increase. He pointed to the expansion in the number
of interface areas where the marking out of territory
has become akin to ‘dog leg activity.’ There
is now more ‘engineered confrontation‘.
He described the findings of the research by the academic
Pete Shirlow as ‘frightening‘. The latter
concluded that society was now more divided than ever.
Elaborating on this Mark Langhammer charged the Good
Friday Agreement with ‘creating an infrastructure
of intolerance‘. As this continues to grow he
feared that the PUP was in danger of reverting to
type and failing to adequately confront the more sectarian
chords that were strummed with increasing stridency
within its constituency. Although he qualified this
to some extent by arguing that the PUP ‘had been
stripped of political cover by Trimble, who had been
unpicking the Agreement from the day and hour he signed
it’.
Perhaps
his most interesting observations were reserved for
the UDA. He disputed earlier claims by the Sinn Fein
president Gerry Adams that the UDA was in the process
of gravitating towards control being exercised by
a supreme commander. Postulating that the organisation
was ‘an unsophisticated apolitical body’
and was driven by local dynamics - for the most part
shaped by a struggle of who is to rule the areas -
he extended this reasoning to conclude that such a
structural factor acted as a bulwark against the formation
of a cohesive and centrally directed movement. He
subsequently feels the problem posed by the UDA could
be cleaned up very quickly if the political will was
there.
Referring
to the earlier political documents of Glen Barr and
Harry Chicken and a later one by John McMichael, he
claimed that these were things that were never read,
discussed or debated within the UDA itself. People
like Davy Adams and Gary McMichael who had some political
nous had ‘been hung out to dry‘. The organisation
lacked sophistication and most of its members ‘probably
voted the DUP.’
The
tightening of the UDA grip was linked to three other
developments. The social cement in Protestant communities
was traditionally provided by the churches. But their
urban presence and influence have been on the wane.
Whereas in previous years the trade union movement
in Protestant communities ensured that there was always
experience around on the ground in terms of negotiating
skills, it too had diminished to a point where the
vacuum is an open invitation to brawn rather brain.
On
top of these two elements Trimble, according to Mark
Langhammer is refusing to take responsibility for
his backwoodsmen, gives no leadership and is in part
responsible for the directionless afflicting working
class loyalist communities.
These
three factors have combined to allow an apolitical
UDA to acquire a prominence, but it lacks any of the
political savvy of its forbearers of 30 years ago
and has degenerated considerably since then.
The
proposed way forward is through the application of
normal party politics north and south. Fine Gael would
have little problem working with the unionists and
Martin Mansergh was said to be working on setting
up Fianna Fail in Derry as a pilot project for the
North in general. Ultimately Mark Langhammer concluded
that sectarianism would be eroded by the application
of strong state power whereby people would be dragged
into the processes of government and away from the
tribe that they presently belong to.
Tommy
McKearney in his presentation argued that sectarianism
was not a genetic ailment. Nor was it a theological
dispute. It had been carefully nurtured and put in
place by the ‘ruling order in the interests of
power.’ He drew on the experience of the Southern
states in America where in the interests of control
issues were manufactured within the power centre for
the explicit purpose of maintaining a divide between
black and white working class people. Although sectarianism
was ‘managed from the top down’ many at
grassroots level are content to benefit from ‘passive
sectarianism‘. Consequently ‘we are all
vulnerable to sectarianism’. Tommy McKearney
warned that it was imperative that ‘we eject
the smug notion that because we are nationalists,
republicans or socialists that we are somehow immune
to sectarianism’. He dismissed the plague on
both houses thinking at the heart of liberalism which
sees sectarianism as ‘six of one and half a dozen
of the other‘ finding in it a self assured evasiveness
resulting in an abysmal abdication of responsibility
for tackling the problem. And in a statement consistent
with the sentiment of the evening he raised no hackles
when praising North Belfast DUP MP Nigel Dodds for
the gesture of sympathy he made to the family of Gerard
Lawlor recently murdered by loyalists. In summing
up, Tommy McKearney stressed the need to avoid the
temptation of handing responsibility over to armed
secret groups. ‘Answers are not to be found in
gurus or Vaticans.’
The
audience participation was very lively with a wide
variety of questions coming from the floor. But the
whole debate was devoid of any notion that sectarianism,
rather than being something that was merely manipulated
from the top down, is in fact a powerful discursive
formation which was generated from below by a combination
of mutually reinforcing micro power points. In this
Foucauldian sense it is therefore “essentially
contingent, localised and context-specific“.
Subsequently this makes it all the more entrenched
and not susceptible to the dubious curative powers
of any one panacea. In fact such panaceas may nourish
its resistance thus making it even more ineradicable.
One
woman from a North Belfast interface whose home had
been attacked on numerous occasions asked the speakers
for answers, not theorising. The responses showed
the difficulties that confront the Left in an environment
like that of the North of Ireland today. The Left
is regrettably exposed when it comes to offering short
term solutions, opting instead to take the longer
view. And this makes little impact on people who want
answers that apply to the ‘here and now’.
With the Left unable to plug the gap the space is
created for the quick fix sectarian approach which
only seems to feed into the problem rather than obviating
it; living with it rather than confronting it. Perhaps
it is futile to hope for more in a region seemingly
communally immune to the more overarching projects
of the Left.
Unfortunately
I came away thinking that try as they did the speakers
gave us an insight into the depth of the problem but
not much really in terms of what to do about eradicating
it. They are certainly not the first which this can
be said of. The ‘socialism’ of Joe Craig
sounded little other than a rhetorical aid with which
to sidestep any real answer. Mark Langhammer’s
view that the application of state power would lead
to its erosion seemed not to deal with state power
as a structural ensemble, indicating instead that
if only the will was there the problem would be tackled.
Yet state power, whatever else may constitute it,
is very much shaped by and bears the stamp of the
sectarian society we live in. Bernadette McAliskey
and Tommy McKearney avoided offering any easy answers
and perhaps they were most sagacious in doing just
that. Their reminder that sectarianism was deeply
embedded in us all was the one sobering thought to
leave the hall with. Better that we walked home along
the Falls Road looking uncomfortably within ourselves
for sectarianism rather than gazing across the segregation
wall to the Shankill for the easy answer.
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