Irish Author and Journalist - Danny Morrison

Papishers

On Friday afternoon I went to the rally outside Belfast City Hall organised by the trade unions after the UDA killing of Danny McColgan, a postal worker who was shot dead because he was a Catholic. I don't know whether I agreed with any of the guest speakers because the amplification equipment was so poor that I doubt if anyone but a small number in the immediate vicinity could hear them.

I probably would not have agreed with everything that they said. The Trade Union record in the North over the past thirty years has never been one of un-ambivalent rejection of all violence - that is, state violence and the rest. It has been selective. It has been qualified, for reasons that are understandable, but not acceptable. Its protest activity has never been consistent. It has been restrained when it came to criticising the state and torture and shoot-to-kill (and their origin in partition and the existence of the state itself). The trade unions, often under the disproportionate influence of the disastrous policies of the former Workers Party, spent many good years ridiculing and demonising those in the nationalist community who raised such issues.

Its talk of workers unity was largely waffle.

The setting up of the Northern Committee of ICTU was a concession to the unionism of the majority of the workforce. But even at that, when official trade unionism attempted to oppose the Ulster Workers Party strike in 1974 it got a bloody nose. Catholic schoolchildren for over six months have been assaulted on their way to school, yet it wasn't until the UDA/RHD threatened schoolteachers that the teachers union decided to plan some action. This all might appear a bit churlish, but it is the truth and if we start with the truth then we start off on the right footing.

I was glad to be part of the huge demonstration, to be standing with people of all persuasions and none. On my way through the crowd a Protestant clergyman stopped me, said hello and we shook hands. That doesn't happen everyday.

I wasn't there because on this occasion it was a loyalist paramilitary organisation which was on the spit. Some trade unionist during the week had said that the protest would also be to honour all workers killed during the Troubles, 'including members of the RUC.' He repeated it, when reminded by Mike Nesbitt, on UTV after the protest. In angrier days that might have been divisive and selective enough a comment to put me off, but not anymore. If people were there remembering their loved ones in the RUC, killed by the IRA, that is fine, although I'm sure they didn't want to be near me when they were so doing.

I was there to show support for the peace process and the political process. To pay my respects to Danny McColgan. It is not that often that both communities in the North can come together in the city centre and rub shoulders, apart from when shopping. It left one feeling good and I hope it left the killers feeling isolated, or reflective - though I think that's asking a bit much from people whose brains have never been taken out of the wrappers, have never been used.

The only party, as far as I know, which ridiculed the protest beforehand and said it was a bad idea was Ian Paisley's DUP. Billy Hutchinson and I were interviewed by Eamonn Dunphy on Today FM on Monday about the current situation and I was asked near the end what I thought could be done to improve things. I said that until the DUP, which opposed the Belfast Agreement, changed its language and challenged the culture of loyalism things would not change. It was an instinctive answer and seemed poor and I was not entirely happy with my answer.

Yet, later, the more I thought about it, the truer it is. All violence - especially that of the state, which is the most repugnant, because the most self-righteous - takes place within a culture. It is the same with that carried out by the UDA. Although the DUP does not advocate sectarian killings, but responds desultorily to such killings, thus broadcasting a certain ambivalence, what its spokespersons say, by and large, demonises and dehumanises republicans.

Furthermore, the DUP's 'spiritual advisor', the Free Presbyterian Church, ridicules Catholics, calls their souls into question.

Commenting on the killing of Danny McColgan the Catholic Bishop of Down and Connor, Dr Patrick Walsh said: 'The men who murdered Daniel had been reared on a diet of such hatred. Those who feed young and impressionable minds with such poisonous food, so that they are ready to murder a fellow human being, stand equally guilty with the gunmen of this crime.'

The DUP has often flirted with the UDA - in the Ulster Clubs in 1985, the strike in 1977 and the UWC strike in 1974. Even before then, Paisley was stoking the flames of sectarianism. In June 1959, at the corner of Percy Street and the lower Shankill, he said:

'You people of the Shankill Road, what's wrong with you? Number 425 Shankill Road - do you know who lives there? Pope's men, that's who! 'Fortes ice-cream shop, Italian Papists on the Shankill Road! How about 56 Aden Street? For 97 years a Protestant lived in that house and now there's a Papisher in it. Crimea Street, number 38! Twenty five years that house has been up, 24 years a Protestant lived there but there's a Papisher there now.'

What is the difference between saying that and saying: You people of Rathcoole, what's wrong with you? For years a Protestant worked in the post office, but there's a Papisher there now.

Well?

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