People whose business it is to analyse political events might like to look at a number of aspects of the continuing struggle between the two wings of British government supporters, the UVF and the LVF.
For example, the UVF could claim to be the organisation with the biggest traditional support among unionists. It harks back to the days of their early gun-running – when gun-running was respectable and engaged in by some of the highest in the British land. Guns were paid for by the rich and powerful and stored in premises as varied as farm sheds and bishops' palaces.
So what is the relationship between the present UVF and the old UVF? Are the landed gentry still involved, is big respectable business still involved? Are clergy still involved? If commentators do not ask and answer these questions they are not analysing the situation at all.
Then again, in whose interest is the present inter-unionist struggle between the different wings of unionism? It is often in London's interest to split political groups in Ireland, sometimes it is in their interest to unite them. One time their interest lies in uniting the unionist family, by force of arms if necessary. Another time it is to split them, by creating feuds, through agents who stir things up within the ranks.
That tactic was tried many times with republicans, with unionists, with Catholics, with Protestants, so much so that when any event occurred which tended to split any organisation the first question asked was, "Are there London agents involved?" The fancy name for them is agents provocateurs, the ordinary name stirrers, and they are to be found in every situation where government interests are at stake. The miners' strikes and the demonstrations about the closure of the English coal mines were such. Civil rights movements are looked upon by governments as dangerous, so in civil rights movements there will also be agents whose job it is to stir up trouble, to make sure peaceful demonstrations turn violent.
One very respectable and gentle American used to start his speech to civil rights gatherings with the words, "Ladies and Gentlemen and whatever government agents are present..." He had a vivid sense of reality.
So does it serve London's purpose to have the unionists split further – split and fighting and helping eliminate each other or at least to discredit each other? Or is it in London's interest to have the loyalists gathered and controllable under one banner rather than ten, allowing this one free rein, eliminating that one and frightening the rest into inactivity? These are matters which commentators who have watched the British political situation for decades must surely know something about, especially if they have studied the aims and methods of various special branches and other secret stirrers. One must be disappointed to hear them talk so much about turf wars, about hatred, about personal jealousies, about revenge about drugs, about goodness knows what, as if this were all that is in question.
Doubtless all this comes into it, but no analysis worth a ha'penny fiddle stops there.
What is happening now among the unionists is a series of political events, most of them arranged, some of them happening by chance or through mismanagement.
It has happened before. Paisley's political campaign was allowed to flourish for sound governmental reasons – it would frighten Catholics and keep British government supporters motivated. Paisley's campaign was London's greatest splitter, splitting everything it touched.
If, however, there comes a time when Paisley's frightening and splitting becomes less useful to government, then government will curb his influence. For example, if London finds its carefully orchestrated campaign of physical, psychological and verbal terror is not really intimidating nationalists and republicans it will listen to Paisley's enemies after all and even do something to accommodate them. Paisley, like every other element in the game which London plays with our lives, is disposable. And when anything disposable has done its work it is either destroyed or hung out to dry.
So who benefits from the present armed struggle among British supporters? Not the Catholics, republicans or nationalists because when unionists fall out among themselves they almost always unite by turning on the Catholics. Not the poor loyalists either, who have been manipulated and exploited so much that they don't recognise it when it happens. The rich and influential unionists then? Maybe. It makes them seem respectable and gives them an excuse to keep the lower orders in their place. There's nothing like the lower orders committing sin to enable the better quality to condemn them and show them their sinfulness.
So the UVF benefits? Or the UDA? The other unofficially armed unionists? The police or the religious Orders? Maybe, except that when governments are finished with the pawns they always shove them off the board too, perhaps even using one of them to help eliminate the others.
London benefits certainly and so does the government in Dublin because both can say they are engaged in the war against terrorism, not just in theory but in absolutely on-the-streets, in-your-face reality – not doing London's supporters too much damage while they are at it, of course. But we will not understand this or any other British violence situation unless we have commentators who can analyse such situations with quiet, ruthless efficiency.
What a pity there are so few of them.
And the few we have are all on the one side.
