Experts agree that the two principal aims of terrorists are to magnify their own insignificance and to destabilise the political process. In both respects, therefore, according to that definition, the PUP/UVF have gone back to what they do best.
Let's look at the first aim: magnifying their own insignificance. The whole PUP/UVF assembly team turned up for their press conference last Friday – both of them. One, bullet-headed Billy Hutchinson, represents a bit of north Belfast and the other, Davy Ervine, that man with an RUC reservist's moustache – whose is it? – represents a bit of east Belfast. From this vast geographical spread of the known unionist universe they proceeded to pontificate – and who can do it better that the aforesaid Ervine – about the fate of the 'pro-union people'.
In the assembly elections of 1998 when the PUP/UVF were regarded by the great and the good as a breath of fresh air, they got a gigantic 2.5 per cent share of the vote in the north. Of course they didn't have enough candidates to spread across the north, so perhaps that 2.5 per cent under-represents the great swell of public support for the UVF's political wing?
Turn then to the European elections of 1999 when Davy Ervine presented his reservist's moustache to the whole of the north's electorate for approval. His percentage share of the vote shot up to a mighty 3.3 per cent. In the British general election of 2001 the PUP/UVF got, wait for it, 0.6 per cent. True, they might have got more if they hadn't withdrawn from some contests to maximise the sectarian vote.
So, get out your magnifying glass and try to find how many 'pro-union' people they represent. The fact is the PUP/UVF are bit players on the unionist side. Their press conference last week was a sign of weakness, a confession of political failure by Ervine and Hutchinson, the admission that they have no strategy, no idea how to get themselves, either of them, re-elected. Ervine has a chance because his moustache is so well known, but Hutchinson is a goner.
Having failed to magnify their importance, their only hope, they think, is to hark back to the second strand of traditional UVF terrorism, namely to destabilise the political process. It was the UVF in 1913 which brought the gun into Irish politics in the last century to avoid living on equal terms with the rest of the people on the island and it was the UVF in 1966 who brought the gun back to block even grudging reform.
This time if they try it the wilderness beckons. There is no British party or unionist regime sympathetic to terrorism. Ervine knows, if he knows anything, that going back means the end of his political career. What he hasn't managed to persuade his thicker brethren of is that if voters think you're into murder and mayhem, they won't vote for you.
Over the last decade republicans have discovered that their vote has risen in direct proportion to their distance from violence. This truth hasn't penetrated the tiny particle of political brain deployed by unionist terrorists or 'pro-union terrorists' as the PUP/UVF leader would call them.
The result of last week's ill-advised threat to return to the past is that the PUP/UVF is left in limbo. All you had to do was listen to poor Billy Hutchinson tying himself in knots on Talkback to realise that for the moment, political loyalism has run into the sand. Both Ervine and Hutchinson came across as a pair of eejits because it's obvious they both know they're spouting rubbish which runs counter to their behaviour over the past 10 years.
Their most absurd line was that they won't speak to Sinn Féin because of IRA targeting of the 'pro-union' people. Yet sadly their UVF friends don't just target the 'pro-union' people. They murder them, and have murdered more of them since Ervine signed the agreement than the IRA have in the last 10 years, as well as innocent Catholics the UVF have murdered in the same period. Anyway, everyone knows they'll continue to speak to SF in Belfast City Hall.
The most stupid political position for the PUP/UVF is to attack the agreement as a one-way street: that's a position the DUP has already copyrighted. Sounding like the DUP will simply hand the dwindling band of PUP/UVF voters to the DUP, which has stayed consistent over the last five years. It allows the DUP to say: "Told you so."
There's only one option for the PUP/UVF. That's to become the PUP, accept they only speak for a tiny splinter of unionism and get on with building political support for their particular niche in unionism. It will take years, but last week's performance gives no indication that anyone in the PUP/UVF has the inclination or ability to follow that road.
