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In
the world of publishing, loyalism is not the marketable
commodity that has earned republicanism considerable
capital in terms of public interest. Many shelves
in a library could be packed with works on republicanism
whereas it would take little out of a librarian's
time to catalogue the loyalist collection. Henry Sinnerton's
recent biography of David Ervine on its own will do
little to break the mould but it is no less welcome
for that. Even with other works presently under progress,
the republican/loyalist imbalance shows few signs
of being incrementally adjusted, loyalism permanently
locked in the catch up spot.
This is an easy book to get through. Perhaps that
is one of the problems with it. Reading it at the
same time as another - David Macey's biography on
Michel Foucault - the contrast in styles is illuminating.
Macey is flush with detail and trawls through a seemingly
bottomless reservoir of sources. In comparison Sinnerton
skims over his sources. Penned in a non-academic style
his work easily avoids becoming ensnared in the tedium
that all too often accompanies academic writing. Invariably
this has a downside and in Sinnerton's case, one has
to ask how well do we really know David Ervine having
completed the 250 pages? Arguably, there is a sense
in which we wish to grapple with the depth of our
politicians, employing an energy that we would never
consider expending on sports personalities. But Sinnerton
writes of David Ervine in the way that a sports journalist
might pen a biography of, say, John McEnroe. It is
not a heavyweight political biography.
In many senses what is charted here is the progress
of a certain strain of loyalist political thinking
from the Gusty Spence run cages of Long Kesh to the
PUP of the new millennium. It deals with Ervine, the
main character, surprisingly lightly, which lends
itself to an aura of superficiality. One suspects
that Ervine was constrained in his ability to be forthcoming
to his biographer. The reader is left feeling that
only he was arrested with explosives in 1974 there
would have been no mention of involvement in the UVF.
Puzzling but unexplained is how a loyalist operative
as central and senior as Billy Wright could have 'mistaken'
Ervine for a senior UVF leader. Moreover, apart from
a critical objection raised by Eddie Kinner, the internal
impact of the brutal activity of the Shankill Butchers
never featured in this version.
This
serves to place the book very much in the uncritical
frame. The author is by no means a hostile or even
critical witness. At points it is tempting to view
his account as a PR exercise for the PUP. The attempt
to distance the party from the UVF seems as unpersuasive
as those accounts which segregate Sinn Fein from the
IRA. One suspects that by the time we reach a truth
and reconciliation commission, the dance of deceit
on these matters will have been performed for so long,
that no one will be found who was ever in any organisation
other than Christian charities.
Besides possessing a strong radical bent Ervine emerges
as a shrewd reader of political trends. His firm belief
that republicans were breaking on the consent principle
helped sustain his faith in the strength of his politicisation
project. He never seemed in any doubt that republican
involvement in the peace process posed no threat to
the safety of the union. His optimism has not proven
unfounded. Moreover, the certainty with which the
PUP and UVF knew the IRA ceasefire of 1994 was coming
casts even further doubt on the republican claim that
the British and Unionists were caught wrong footed
by the development.
Where it will all lead to is anybody's guess. But
Sinnerton helps convince his audience that with Ervine
and his coterie of comrades and advisers at the helm,
the PUP is a serious bulwark against any resumption
of UVF armed force.
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