What a wondrous sight it is to behold, unionists responding to violence by loyalist, or, as Sinn Féin call them with some justification, unionist paramilitaries. Have you heard an official spokesman from the UUP or DUP condemn the murders of John Gregg and Robert Carson?
Urgent meeting with the Chief Constable? Demand the PSNI go into the lower Shankill and shut down Adair's gang? Revoke the licences of the top half dozen UDA killers? Nothing.
Instead, on Sunday Sir Reg Empey and Chris McGimpsey independently gave the same reaction along these lines: Oh well, there's likely to be more of it. Let's hope there isn't, but going on past experience, well there's probably going to be more of it. Ho hum. Neither of these guys is MP for the area Gregg and Carson came from, or the constituency in which they were killed. Empey just happened to be on a new television programme and was invited to comment, otherwise he wouldn't have said anything.
Now, just imagine it had been republicans involved in a shooting at the weekend or even alleged to have been involved. There'd have been statements from three or four unionist MPs, maybe even a press conference. David Trimble's reaction to newspaper allegations of IRA surveillance of ministers in the Dail, allegations rubbished by the gardai, was more vociferous than his reaction to two murders by loyalists: his reaction was zero. Indeed the UUP's Michael McGimpsey could comment to a Sunday newspaper about a speech by Sinn Féin's Louth TD Arthur Morgan regarding the potential for republican violence in 10 to 15 years time, yet had nothing to say about current loyalist violence on the streets of Belfast.
What is it with these guys? Why do they think loyalist terrorism and gangsterism are not issues for them?
They simply sit back and say it's a matter for the police. Yet even a hint of republican violence assumes major political dimensions for them. They're all faxing statements to the media, whereas, if it's loyalists involved the media has to winkle them out of their burrows. The main reason is that loyalist terrorists mostly kill Catholics or drive them out of their homes. That's what they're for. They don't threaten the state. Unionist politicians never took a stand against that sort of activity either 80 years ago or during the last 35 years.
In recent years, as loyalists have turned on each other, unionist politicians don't seem to be able to shake themselves out of the ambivalent attitude they have always adopted to loyalist violence. What unionist politicians don't seem to realise is that, as elected representatives, they have a duty to the majority of their constituents, decent people who have a right to expect to live in safety and security. Their lack of response to loyalist violence makes it clear that unionist politicians haven't got their heads round the fact that the greatest threat to the safety and prosperity of their own constituents comes from the paramilitaries that those same politicians played footsie with for more than a generation.
The result of this dereliction of duty on the part of unionist politicians is that the large swathes of urban districts they allegedly represent have become wildernesses, controlled by individual barons who dominate local factions of loyalism. Despite the wastelands that paramilitaries have created in parts of Belfast, Larne, Carrickfergus, Bangor, Ballymena and Antrim, you never hear a word about it from unionist MPs, DUP or UUP. Instead, if you log the speeches they make, you'd think the north was still in the midst of an IRA campaign for they talk about nothing other than the dangers of republicanism. You'd think there was no unemployment, poverty, racketeering or drug-taking, never mind drug-dealing going on in the areas they represent.
Perhaps unionist public figures have a view of the role of a politician different from that in any other part of the world. Perhaps it's because it's so easy for them to get elected. Once you've got the nomination you just wrap yourself in the biggest union jack you can find and intone the traditional ritual incantations against Fenians. It's certainly a lot easier than working for jobs and houses. Since they've spent generations traipsing that traditional route and conniving with loyalist terrorists along the way, it seems that it's too difficult now to stand out and say that it's no longer republican violence that presents the biggest threat to the wellbeing of unionist people, but those very loyalist terrorists that unionist politicians conspired with in the past and who accompanied them into the Stormont talks in 1997.
Just watch as the current feud intensifies while unionist politicians adopt the role of disinterested commentators as their constituencies are pulled apart.
"Nothing to do with me mate, I'm only the MP for the area."
