The phrase “Be careful what you wish for” might have crossed the minds of some on the left following Saturday’s scenes in Belfast – given that “unity of the working class” has long been a fantasy pipedream of the reds and those within the republican movement deluded into such thinking.
Indeed, the “Up the Shankill” trope – originating in the IRA’s refusal to allow a communist group march at Bodenstown in 1934 – is central to their mythology. It is a rare “republican left” or communist tract that does not hark back to this minor historical footnote as the Rosetta Stone they require to unlock the key to the Great Proletarian Revolution.
Hence the losing of the plot over the turning up of some randomers connected with the Coolock protest to what appears to have been a loyalist-organised protest in Belfast yesterday.
One of the loyalists who was present, per multiple media reports, was Glen Kane who in 1992 was part of a gang who battered Catholic Kieran Abram to death with nailed planks. One might suggest that this is not the kind of company many Irish people would expect an Irish nationalist to be keeping – a point made, fairly, by many commentators over the weekend.
Mostly, Sinn Féin and the left are secretly pleased because the Belfast protest allowed them to portray the presence of a small number of people from Dublin as not only representing one of the community protest groups, but to claim that the entire movement of opposition to the impact of the accommodation centres is linked to loyalism – and indeed to the English allies of Ulster loyalism.
We must assume, out of fairness, that most of those present over the weekend were not the sorts who were members of loyalist paramilitary groups. But the presence of Kane would indicate that at least some of that old fraternity see an opportunity here to return to relevance. They are in need of a cause, because as of today, Loyalist groups represent no one. They do exert control in Protestant working class parts of Belfast and in various towns but that is through criminality. Many are drug dealers and protection racketeers. That is why nobody votes for them and none of the paramilitary organisations even bother contesting elections now since the Progressive Unionist Party basically disowned the UVF.
Secondly, and most importantly, cavorting with loyalists like Kane whose organisations murdered hundreds of innocent Catholics and acted as death squads for the British state is stomach churning. That was their raison d’etre before they were pensioned off – and some would claim that they have been allowed to boost their pensions with the proceeds of crime.
They may only occasionally ‘kill a Taig’ now, but by God are they proud of having done so. If you do not believe me, call around to a bonfire night and read the slogans festooning the effigies. Listen to their songs. A symphony of hatred and celebration of murdering Catholic Irish people, and their occasional Protestant ally, stretching back hundreds of years.
Any “nationalist” who thinks that the symbolism of this is other than an insult to the families and communities which endured that terror, and who have a folk memory of that terror stretching back generations, beyond 1969 and the Shankill butchers and even 1920, into the 1800s and 1790s needs to have a long look at themselves.
In the meantime, extreme loyalists, right down to grassroots level, are content with opposing with threats and intimidation the establishment of Gaelscoileanna and even the involvement of Protestants in gaelic games. They also look unfavourably upon Taigs getting houses in the estates they control.
If that upsets them too much or provides a convenient target when one of their hootenannys is obstructed then said Taigs might be visited with the same fate as the Quinn children, aged 9, 10, and 11 who were burnt to death on July 12, 1998 when loyalists fire bombed their house in Ballymoney.
Understanding that these people represent nothing friendly for Irish nationalism is really not that difficult.