Gerald Dawe speaks to the #NorthernIreland2016 Interview Project

Gerald was born in north Belfast. He grew up there with his mother, grandmother and sister in the 1950s. He went to school in Orangefield and studied at Ulster University before moving to Galway in 1974 under a major state award where he wrote a thesis on William Carleton. Gerald lived and worked in Galway for twenty years before moving to Trinity College where he have taught since 1988. Gerald now lives on the coast a few miles south of Dublin. He published his first book of poems, Sheltering Places, in 1978 and his most recent, Mickey Finn's Air, in 2014. He has also published several books of literary and cultural studies and edited various anthologies including Earth Voices Whispering: irish poetry of war 1914-1945.

The Lundy Terror, Ctd

Modern unionism is a heterodoxy, not an orthodoxy. It is multi-, not mono-confessional. You can be a ruthless critic of a belief and still be an exponent of that belief. You can be a ruthless critic of unionism and still be a unionism. As the Orwell Method has shown, self-examination and self-interrogation of your beliefs strengthens the precepts and principles that form the basis of that belief.

The Lundy terror, Ctd

The scene in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, as spectators watch the annual Burning of Lundy ceremony. Robert Lundy

I was struck by the Israel-Gaza debate. One point repeatedly made, as Ed O'Loughlin did, was that it is eminently possible to be fiercely critical of Israel policy without hating Jewish people. What a perfect epigram to articulate the situation in Northern Ireland - it's eminently possible to be fiercely critical of loyalist policy and conduct without hating the loyalist people.

Yet it remains that anyone who criticises loyalism is automatically calumnied, castigated and cast aside as either, a demoniser/generaliser (though it be eminently self-evident that loyalism does the demonisers work for them) or, a "Lundy", "Guilty Prod" or "Rotten Prod". This second reaction is by far the more dangerous, coming as it does with an exterminationist impulse, so let me look at the "Lundy"-"Guilty Prod"-"Rotten Prod" pejorative and slander more closely.

The authoritarianism of "West-Brit"

Study of Sean O’Casey by Dublin artist Reginald Gray, for the New York Times (1966)

"Sean O’Casey... a ‘West Brit’ or a ‘shoneen’?" This is the question southern protestant Irish blogger Patrick Comerford asked sardonically. A jibe at the violently hysterical reaction to his play 'The Play and the Stars' in which he challenged the unchallengeable - the inviolable 1916 revolutionary orthodoxy. That blog post written in 2011 looked directly at the term "west-Brit", it's origins and etymology in an article entitled, "‘West Brit’ is a racist and pejorative term unacceptable in a pluralist democracy". Patrick began by explaining that the term started out as a non-pejorative, positive sobriquet:

"Daniel O’Connell used the term positively in a debate in the House of Commons in 1832 when he said: “The people of Ireland are ready to become a portion of the Empire, provided they be made so in reality and not in name alone; they are ready to become a kind of West Briton if made so in benefits and justice; but if not, we are Irishmen again.”

It then became a negative, pejorative term:

"The term “West Brit” gained prominent usage in the land struggle of the 1880s. By the 1900s, DP Moran, founder of The Leader, was using the term frequently to describe people he did not consider to be sufficiently Irish. It was synonymous with those he described as “Sourfaces,” those who mourned the death of Queen Victoria, and It included virtually all members of the Church of Ireland and those Roman Catholics who did not measure up to his definition of “Irish Irelanders”."

The authoritarian terror of Lundyism

Cartoon by Ian Knox of Alliance leader and NI Justice Minister, David Ford MLA

Any unionist opinion that deviates from the hardline, reactionary fringe is immediately and unavoidably smeared "Lundy." The colloquial curse word for the moderate member of the Unionist community. And you see it with the PSNI - An eire-phobia - where the slightest criticism of or incursion against loyalist promiscuity is labelled IRA. (Yet the irony is that in calling PSNI the PSNI-IRA, loyalists sound like republicans who call PSNI the PSNI-RUC.) A plurality and diversity of unionist opinion isn't just disapproved, but effectively outlawed. A total prohibition on anything not outwardly and chauvinistically Protestant.

The Lundy is the kuffar. The traitor. The heretic and apostate who has gone prostrate before the enemy. Only the deep and double-dyed sectarians and tribalists are the true and authentic holders and representatives of the community.

Of course this is nonsense. By their hysterical reactionism - the deep and double-dyed sectarian, so sure of themselves, so self-loving, so unbending - becomes a parody and caricature of the tradition they purport to represent. They don't seem to have any mechanism to question or analyse their own method and direction. This is not only incredibly self-satisfied but self-destructive. He who doesn't have the ability to adapt and and mould with the changing of events is doomed.

I want to live in a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-confessional society and live with a multi-confessional unionism. It's only through argument and dissent and the constant challenging of ideas that you can refine and develop political ideology and practice.

I've variously been called a "Unionists my arse". A "condescending appeaser" by Jamie Bryson. Nick Garbutt being called a "snob" by Willie Frazer

The other colloquial swear word and pjejorative term for the unionist that deviates from the hardline, is "guilty prod". Glenn Bradley explained being called a "guilty prod" here.

My previous post on the authoritarianism of fringe unionism against the moderate, here. See all my posts on Ian Knox, who did the cartoon above, here.

Yelling Lundy! is the hallmark of authoritarianism

Lieutenant Colonel Robert Lundy, Governor of Londonderry during the Great Siege of 1688-89

The hallmark of authoritarianism is yelling LUNDY! at anyone questioning loyalism. The extremists are a minority. Buy the ultra-reactionary radical insurgency opposed to rationality, to political compromise, to participation in a parliamentary system, is a loud and vocal one. And unfortunately a lot of this sort of intimidation is meated out with the consent and collusion of political unionism. They repress the moderate and rally the fringe with hysterics, bombast and propaganda.

Loyalism can't and won't take criticism. Loyalism can't and won't learn from shortcomings and wrongdoings. Brian Feeney said in the Irish News, ''Liberal unionists' like Lo labelled Lundies':

"The unionist view of the world... it simply this: to deny the validity and sanctity of the Act of Union is automatically told hold a false, untenable position.

He continued:

"The fiercest unionist reaction is and always has been reserved for anyone perceived to be any class of unionist who utters a word in suspecy of any aspect of nationalism."