#NorthernIreland2016 Interview Series - John Kyle

John Kyle is A Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) councillor at Belfast City Council. He is contesting the Stormont Assembly Elections 2016.

Sir James Craig was Irish

Sir James Craig, Viscount Craigavon, by society painter Sir John Lavery

William O'Brien wrote a description of Sir James Craig, the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland and utterly loyal adjutant to Sir Edward Carson, in ‘The Irish Revolution and how it came about’ (1923):

"Sir James Craig… The Ulster leader was never an incorrigible enemy of a modus vivendi with his Southern countrymen. Like so many of the higher Orange type, if he was an irresponsible being for half a dozen mad “ anniversary ” days, he was for all the rest of the year a kindly neighbour, a fast friend, more honest of heart than complex in the convolutions of his brain matter, but in all things, flattering or otherwise, as irredeemably Irish as the granite ribs of Cave Hill."

TIME Magazine featured Sir James Craig on the May 26 1924 cover of the magazine. Inside it produced a short feature on the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland:

Being Loyalist and Irish

Gusty Spence said:

"It’s sad today whenever you see a kind of an anti-Irishness. I suppose maybe it’s understandable because of the Provisionals campaign. Whatever little bit of Irishness people felt or some people felt - I feel greatly Irish - it was kind of driven out of them by these people who purported to be absolute Irish, and dogmatic, by bombing and shooting them."

Jamie Bryson - Latex Loyalist

Being born middle class but believing you're loyalist. 

Jamie Bryson is a middle class imposter. Just as Hitler wasn't German, Jamie Bryson isn't Working Class protestant. (I invoke Godwin's Law as a point of irony because Bryson does it so regularly.) This has been the grand sham of Northern Ireland since December 3 2012: The self-appointed loyalist big mouth isn't even working class.

Grayson Perry - If loyalists want to remain loyal to Britain they’ve got to move on too

A banner by Grayson Perry, in the mould of an Orange Lodge standard, following a visit to British loyalists in Belfast 

The cross-dressing potter and artist Grayson Perry said during a 2014 trip to Northern Ireland:

"[Loyalism is] rooted in a vision of Britain that perhaps doesn’t completely gel with the modern 21st century idea of Britain we have nowadays."

And continued:

"If they want to remain loyal to it they’ve got to move on too and it’s all about embracing what Britain stands for today as much as what Britain stood for in the 1950s."

My previous posts on loyalism can be read here. Previous Tumblr notes on loyalism here. 

Philip Larkin in and on Belfast

Philip Larkin by Ralph Steadman

Philip Larkin was appointed sub-librarian at Queen's University Belfast in June 1950, starting in September of that year. He spent five years in Belfast. Leaving in 1955 Larkin for the University of Hull. He said of the context surrounding his move to Belfast in an interview with the Paris Review:

"After finishing my first books, say by 1945, I thought I had come to an end. I couldn’t write another novel, I published nothing. My personal life was rather harassing. Then in 1950 I went to Belfast, and things reawoke somehow. I wrote some poems, and thought, These aren’t bad, and had that little pamphlet XX Poems printed privately. I felt for the first time I was speaking for myself. Thoughts, feelings, language cohered and jumped. They have to do that. Of course they are always lying around in you, but they have to get together."

He also said to the Paris Review:

"The best writing conditions I ever had were in Belfast, when I was working at the University there."

In his 1950 letter to Monica Jones, Larkin described the city and its people 8 weeks after his arrival there:

"A wide and cobble-streeted town, lined with frowning buildings in the late Victorian manner & some indifferent shops. I’m already fed up with anything called Ulster, Northern, Victoria, etc., also with the Irish male face (craggy, drink-flushed, with greasy black curls and a too-tight collar & the Irish female face (plump, bad-teethed, pinkly powdered, with a diamante lizard on the lapel)."

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.

Odd bedfellows - Anti-agreement republicans and unionists

Danny McBrearty, former commanding officer of the IRA’s Derry Brigade and former comrade of McGuinness said:

"Nothing surprises me any more about Martin McGuinness, so if he does give the Queen of England a guided a tour around the jail where republicans fought and died for their principles, I would not be shocked… Authentic republicans should take no part in or welcome this visit to the Crumlin Road jail. Instead they should be outside protesting against the presence of a British Queen in a prison where their comrades suffered so much. As for McGuinness - he is only shaking hands and guiding around his true boss."

Linda Nash on Martin McGuinness said:

"Does Martin [McGuinness] forget that the Queen decorated the Parachute Regiment and that they remain decorated? Can you sleep at night having given orders to young Irish men and women to attack the Queen´s forces when many of these men, women and teenagers were then murdered? I hope you are happy with your new found friends Martin. For they are the employers of the men who murdered our loved ones. Your actions, in my opinion, are traitorous."

Plus loyaliste que la loi

[UPDATE - High Court judges says PSNI 'wrongly facilitated' loyalist marches. I.e. the marches were illegal and were done illegally and unchallenged - read here.]

Brigid Brophy wrote in the Spectator Magazine in June 1981 here:

"The Northern Irish “loyalists” soon found themselves plus loyaliste que la loi and, indeed, in positive conflict with overall British law."

S. Nelson wrote in 1984 a book 'Ulster's Uncertain Defenders: Protestant Paramilitary and

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."

When it's cool to be dumb, Ctd Gary Mitchell

Gary Mitchell, the Rathcoole-born playwright, said in an interview with Culture Northern Ireland:

"We have this thing where we think middle class people and upper class people are better than us. They [the middle class] can write things, we [the working class] can’t. We can work in factories. And if someone proves that it is possible to go to Rathcoole Secondary – the school you got expelled into - and become a famous writer then they have to pull him down. Because they said, “you’re from Rathcoole, you can’t” and stopped their kids from becoming a writer or wanting to be famous."

Gary Mitchell then spoke of the pervasive inferiority complex of the Protestant working class. A culture that says you have to keep up appearances without thinking too much of yourself. Under this culture he was just a wee lad from Rathcoole. He wasn't allowed to be a writer.

Ian Knox cartoons and political correctness as censorship, Ctd

[DISCLAIMER: When I speak of loyalists I do not speak of all loyalists. I speak of a small violent minority]*

[DISCLAIMER: I am an equal opportunities adversary and I hold violent republicans in equal contempt to violent loyalists]*

It's well documented that Ian Knox draws loyalists and loyalist paramilitaries as knuckle-dragging empty-heads. It nothing new. He's been doing it for decades. By doing this he adheres to two codes. 

Firstly, he is adhering to the unwritten convention of the political cartoonist. It is their job to be cutting and incisive and even to offend. 

Secondly, he is adhering to speaking plain English. To calling a stone-throwing thug a stone-throwing-thug. And the beauty of political cartoons is that they're super-distilled plain English. As John Gilroy, creator of the Guinness posters, said:

"The man in the street has no time for contemplation. My posters are therefore, a kind of aesthetic meal-in-a-minute."

Loyalism's phantom fears, Ctd

Raymond Lavery is a veteran loyalist and activist. He has said that loyalists desperately needed a political education programme to convince younger loyalists that their fears are unfounded. He said:

"What is important here is that this generation not only get a better formal education but they get a political education too, which there is a serious lack of. Sinn Féin are putting into people’s heads that because a flag comes down there is a march towards a united Ireland. 

And here's the really important bit:

"Young and old believe that, even though it is not true."

In full here. Previous post on loyalism's "phantom fears" here. I previously looked at Raymond Lavery's comments here.

VIDEO - Plato's [Loyalist] cave

Plato's Cave is an allegory written by the Ancient Greek philosopher Plato in his book The Republic. Its purpose is to compare "the effect of education and the lack of it on our nature". Irish historian FSL Lyons used the image of Plato's cave to describe the isolated state of Irish culture during WWII, in what has become an enduring metaphor for mid-twentieth century Ireland: 

"It was as of an entire people had been Condemned to live in Plato's cave, with their backs to the fire of life and deriving their only knowledge of what went on outside from the flickering shadows thrown on the wall before their eyes by the men and women who passed to and fro behind them."

Kelly Matthews, author of a book on the Bell Magazine wrote: "Most have concurred that the mid-20th century was marked by a high degree of cultural isolation and stagnation." FSL Lyons also said that "Ireland had already intellectually isolated herself in large measure since independence."

What about "my people" and "my community"?

What is all this nonsence about loyalist exceptionalism? That they are experiencing special difficulties and therefore require special treatment. That they are "unheard", "unrepresented" and "left behind". This is all rampant make-believe babble. This may sound harsh, but I will explain later. Before that let's look at Henry McDonald and Alex Kane who recently spoke about Northern Ireland's self-appointed mouthpieces.

The Guardian's Ireland correspondent Henry McDonald (@henrymcdonald) wrote a piece in the Belfast Telegraph (@beltel), 'Why are 'spokesmen' with no mandate like Winston Irvine and Jamie Bryson allowed on the BBC as if they were elected representatives?' Of the self-appointed mouthpieces he said:

"The first question that came to mind listening to this was: in what way was the "community" opinion Irvine proposed to represent gauged, tested, or analysed over this controversy?

Loyalists are traitors to Northern Ireland

Just as dissident republicans are "traitors to the island of Ireland", so dissident loyalists are self-destructive traitors who debase and deface their own cause. As Am Ghobsmacht said:

"If Sinn Fein went to the Bahamas or Cancun for the next 15 years and put their feet up they could easily find a United Ireland here when they get back. Loyalists are doing a grand job of demonising Unionism and encouraging educated Protestants, sorry, I mean ‘liberal naive Lundy types’ to leave Northern Ireland."