Shinners on the Shankill

Charm offensive:'Brigadier' McDonald 
meets foreign head of state...

The sense of abandonment within working class Loyalism is now apparently so acute that voters, even  in staunch heartlands such as the Shankill Road, are opting for Sinn Féin at the ballot box, according to the analysis of a UDA ‘Brigadier’ and his ‘brigade staff’.

In an interview with the Belfast Newsletter, Jackie McDonald, the South Belfast ‘Brigadier’ attacked the abject failure of the mainstream Unionist parties to address the concerns of their working class constituents.

"It's a terrible indictment on the DUP and the voters from West Belfast, on the loyalist side, that five MLAs are Sinn Fein and the other one's SDLP. There's not a unionist/loyalist representative," said McDonald.

The interview, ostensibly given with the intention of underlining the UDA’s commitment to eradicating the organisation of its overactive criminal element, was also used by ‘Brigade staff’ as an opportunity for the UDA to set out its political stall under the Ulster Political Research Group (UPRG) banner. Using the tried and tested ‘paramilitarism to politics’ formula, it was revealed that several UPRG candidates would stand in May's council elections.

Former UDA prisoner turned community worker Colin Halliday warned that “the days of putting a rosette on a donkey and parading it through unionist areas" are over.

"In certain areas like South Down, unionists voting for nationalist candidates is tactical. In West Belfast, it wasn't. Now it wasn't a big percentage and it wasn't big numbers but there were votes from loyalist areas went into the box for Sinn Fein," Halliday told The Newsletter.

Community worker Paul Clissold is standing in Banbridge as a UPRG candidate; hoping to capitalise on this growing trend of working class disaffection.  "The alarm bells should be ringing for the UUP and the DUP,” he says. “It's an indictment of their inverted snobbery that in working class areas some, a minority, feel the need to vote for other candidates not necessarily from their political ideology. That should worry them."

Also notable in this interview was the UDA’s singling out of Lagan Valley MP Jeffrey Donaldson and David Trimble for their hard work and courage respectively. Doubtless there was some strategic (or perhaps just tactical) intent behind these honourable mentions in ‘Brigade’ dispatches.

Woof woof.... 

Maybe they’re just hoping to make some more friends in high places. Jackie McDonald has certainly shown himself adept at raising the profile of Loyalism and more crucially, through photo-ops such as his meeting with the Irish President Mary McAleese, he has given the organisation some (albeit dubious) credibility. But unless Loyalism can muster more than the current average voting turnout of 20%, it’s all perhaps a bit academic.

The cynics out there might say that we’ve been here before. There’s something rather depressing about looking back on that footage of Johnny Adair coming out prison and turning up at press conferences talking peace and diplomacy in an expensive suit and oversized footballers tie knot.

It is something of a matter of Troubles folklore at this stage that there has long been contact and even common ground between the leaderships of the various working class paramilitary movements, whether it was to carve up turf or to deal with their respective rogue operatives. And even if UPRG are defining themselves in opposition to Sinn Féin, it is the Shinners blueprint they are working to.

Of course, the disillusionment of Loyalists reflects a wider disaffection across the white working class of these two islands. In many ways it’s probably not that surprising that some Loyalists might be inclined towards a radical solution to their problems that didn’t involve ludicrous gangsters (‘Doris Day’, ‘The Bacardi Brigadier’, ‘Mad Dog’ and his son ‘Daft Pup'...I could go on...) or worse, dealing with the ‘haves’ and the ‘have yachts’ of the Unionist top table.

Halliday’s analysis of the emerging trend of Shankill Shinners is not without merit: "What we're taking from that is that (those voters believe) 'These people are doing the work for us. We're being neglected by our own politicians." What politicians should now be discussing, Halliday contends, is "housing, education, health, employment".