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ireland, irish, ulster, ireland, irish, ulster, Sinn Féin, Irish America

Robinson heave-ho would be disaster

(John Coulter, Irish Daily Star)

Sack Emperor Robbo and the Stormont peace process will burn!

But that's the nuclear option no one wants – not even the Shinners who must be dancing round their shamrocks at the misfortune which working class loyalism has found itself in.

Social networking has been buzzing in recent days with Guy Fawkes-style plots to replace the liberal Unionist DUP boss Peter Robinson with a traditional, hardline tub-thumper.

Names being mooted are the so-called fundamentalist Gang of Three – MPs Nigel Dodds, Gregory Campbell and Willie McCrea.

The one-time rival Ulster Unionist Party is no alternative as it is quickly dying as a relevant and influential political force as daily defections and resignations seem the order of the day.

Ironically, Robbo now finds himself slipping into the same pitfall as the UUP's Davy Trimble after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

Trimble and his Yes camp clique roared through the peace process like a bull in a china shop, leaving many of its core middle class Unionist supporters behind.

That policy sowed the seeds of electoral failure as the Protestant middle class either defected to the DUP or abandoned voting.

Now Robbo's DUP finds itself in the same boat. Rumours of side deals from the 2006 St Andrews Agreement have sparked a huge distrust in the DUP among working class loyalists for the first time since the party was founded by Paisley senior in 1971.

Robbo has roared ahead with partnership government with Shinners at such a speed that a new loyalist underclass has been created.

Allegations are rife the DUP is going 'soft on Britishness' to allow the Shinners to go 'soft on the Commonwealth'.

But Sinn Féin has not made the same DUP/UUP blunder. The Shinners gobbled up the Stoops' middle class Catholic vote while holding firmly onto their traditional republican working class heartlands.

What is really bugging loyalists is not their loss of identity, but that nationalists no longer fear them. For republicans, the jibe 'croppies lie down' has been dumped in history's dustbin.

But the real danger for nationalists is what will emerge in the vacuum which has been created in loyalism from the violent flag protests.

The slabbering, baby-faced frontmen of the Ulster Protestant Voice and Ulster People's Forum are mere cannon fodder for the new generation of men in suits in the background who are attempting to re-brand – but failing – loyalism.

For Unionism, expect to see a rebirth of the hardline, Right-wing Vanguard-style movement when the real suits de-stabilising the DUP will finally step forward.

Loyalism's huge problem is that while it knows what it is against, it has no idea what being a loyalist is. Even loyalist terror group bosses have lost control.

Loyalism does not need another Carson or Paisley. It needs a group of pro-Union academics to give it a new set of beliefs and a positive direction.

Like it or lump it, this will be a long-term solution. In the meantime, how do you get the protesters off the streets?

Top cop Matt Baggott must ask Stormont Justice boss David Ford to get the Brits back on Northern streets using Army snatch squads to help hard-pressed riot peelers.

A new Right-wing loyalist party is needed otherwise the racist BNP and National Front will fill the current void.

But if the loyalists don't watch themselves, all their protests will achieve is to breed a new generation of the Provisional IRA.

January 22, 2013
________________

This article appeared in the January 21, 2013 edition of the Irish Daily Star.

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