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As
I sit down to write a response to David Rose of the
PUP, the headline in today’s Telegraph tells
us that the ordeal of the children at Holy Cross is
not yet over: a pipe bomb was found strapped to the
school gates this morning. These are the children
that David Rose, who describes himself as an anti-sectarian
and an upholder of the ideals of the United Irishmen,
could only find a “yawn” for in his previous
letter of December 16th. My contention that any self-respecting
socialist organization would expel him was not based
on Rose’s shoddy and dishonest manipulation of
history, but on the sneering sectarianism so evident
in letter of December 16th. I will let your readers
decide whether I was right to characterize Rose’s
contribution this way, and I believe that any fair-minded
person of any religious persuasion (or none) would
support my view.
My
guess is that many in nationalist working class communities
across the north were cautiously enthusiastic when
the PUP was first formed. Misgivings aside, the emergence
of a party that aimed to bring non-sectarian class
politics into Protestant working class areas could
not be anything but positive. But along with other
recent developments, the tone of Rose’s letter
seemed to confirm that the PUP has reverted to sectarianism.
In particular, their party leader’s posture around
the events in the Short Strand has been unworthy of
a party that calls itself socialist. For someone who
spends so much of his airtime complaining about the
“pan-nationalist alliance,” David Ervine’s
decision to sign up to a statement with the DUP and
other right-wing sectarians blaming the trouble on
“republican-orchestrated violence” is hypocritical
in the extreme-as was his decision to join the fur
coat brigade for a unionist pow-wow in South Africa.
The perception from the outside is that the PUP is
locked into competition with others to prove that
they are the best ‘defenders’ of Protestant
areas against the fenians, a competition that can
only lead back into the dead end of sectarianism.
There
is a great deal in Rose’s latest letter that
is simply not worth responding to. But I will respond
to his assertion that I put forward an “Adamsesque
Irish history lecture”. The grounds for this,
I’m guessing, are that 1) I mentioned the fact
that the United Irishmen set out to break the connection
with Britain; and 2) I explained that the Orange tradition
arose as a sectarian, counterrevolutionary force led
by the gentry and egged on by the British, and that
therefore loyalists would have been more likely to
be found in Henry Joy McCracken’s hanging party
than among his followers. If Adams agrees with this,
then he is right, and there’s not much I can
do about that. They are what you might call “facts”.
If these facts are being conveyed to the young men
and women of Ballymena and Harryville, all well and
good.
I
argued in my first response to Rose that one cannot
straddle the Orange tradition and socialist politics,
and that one cannot defend the empire and at the same
time claim to share McCracken’s outlook. Rose
provides us with a perfect example of that impossibility.
“For us the link with Britain was and is the
best guarantee of equality to Protestant, Catholic
and Dissenter”. If you believe that, David, you
certainly have no right to claim to follow in McCracken’s
footsteps. The “link” has been the main
prop to sectarianism for centuries, and even the most
agile revisionist would have a hard time concocting
an alternative reading of the past.
Despite
my disagreements with the PUP, like many of those
who have contributed to this debate, I believe that
it cannot be anything but a positive development that
working class Protestants are looking back at the
history of the 1798 Rebellion. To a degree, I would
also agree with their assertion that conservative
nationalists (and large numbers of republicans would
not fit into this category)-led by the Catholic hierarchy-have
interpreted the events in a way that flattens out
its complexities and robs the events of their radical
content. Indeed the two pillars upon which British
imperialism relied for suppressing the Rebellion were
the Orange Order and the Catholic hierarchy, which
despite the heroic actions of individual priests,
threatened excommunication to those who took part.
Finally,
despite the gloom that seems to hang over this place
there are real opportunities for building an anti-sectarian
and working class alternative. The recent march in
support of the firefighters, which brought together
workers from the Shankill and the Falls, offers a
glimpse of what is possible. David Rose will be happy
to know that FBU supporters recently collected almost
£1000 in a period of two hours from shoppers
in the Kennedy Centre on the Falls Rd., which would
seem to suggest that opposition to British imperialism
doesn’t get in the way of working class solidarity.
Maybe it even strengthens it.
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