Nearly all news coverage of loyalists or loyalism in Northern Ireland is concerned with criminality and the continuing actions of paramilitary organisations more than a quarter of a century after the Belfast Agreement.
‘Loyalist killer warned by UVF’, ‘Loyalist feud in North Down’, ‘East Belfast UVF snubs Shankill’, ‘UDA shotgun seized at home of Coleraine loyalist’, ‘Man ordered out of home by UDA’ are recent examples.
The impression offered by such coverage and its effects are stark: anything loyalist or to do with loyalism must be either supportive of or indifferent to criminality and so deserves to be seen in a despairing or condemnatory light.
In all of this, loyalist communities appear to be depicted as providing some kind of enabling role for this. Of course, paramilitary organisations are unacceptable and should have ended with the completion of decommissioning in 2009.
The headlines also frame a dominant narrative of loyalist resistance to the benefits of peace, or that such communities are bigots. So entrenched has this become that loyalist and loyalism are irredeemable as positive identity markers.
For that reason, loyalists would be well advised to drop the label. Instead, they should refer to being unionist or pro-Union seeking a better future for all, one that demands a transformation across unionism to make the case for Northern Ireland itself.
Many of the loyalist leaders involved in the Belfast Agreement knew that loyalist and loyalism were terms adopted by middle-class political unionists during the Troubles to put distance between themselves and those who carried out acts of violence, who came largely from working-class communities.
If so, then the labels of loyalist and loyalism were both imposed and used as a separation to suggest that unionism proper was not as blameworthy for the infliction of suffering as others were.
Though many within loyalist communities have long accepted the terms as markers of identification they are perhaps less aware of how interchangeable and convergent unionist/loyalist and unionism/loyalism were before the Troubles.
Given this porous historical connection perhaps it is time now to rethink the value of this afresh rather than keep negative divisions in place. And for loyalists, this requires taking responsibility for redefining what unionism means too.
There is value in doing so. First, this helps address a damaging fracture across unionism. Second, it makes loyalism a proactive force for change that is not so easily dismissed by the media.
Third, it provides a much-needed impetus for renewal from working-class communities who have traditionally been treated poorly by much of political unionism. And fourth, it rejects impositions that hold loyalist communities back from shaping a better Northern Ireland.
The idea of refraining from being seen or wanting to be seen as a loyalist by many will not go down well. Yet if loyalism is more working-class unionism that anything else, why should it be weakened by using unionist/unionism categorisations? There is another important factor to be considered here and that is how to make loyalism a stronger presence for shaping the political landscape of Northern Ireland looking into the future.
To shift in this way loyalism must stop being a reactive presence and become a proactive one. This also requires rethinking fears about advancing republicanism. For Sinn Féin, it is politically expedient to annoy loyalists when their own political project is coming up against criticism or when the “inevitable” united Ireland is starting to look less inevitable than hoped.
To confront loyalist culture and send a message that if it is bad for unionism and loyalism then it must be good for republicanism works only if unionists and loyalists predictably play the role of being victims of republican politics. Here, the rational and practical aims of Sinn Féin come up against emotional reaction within unionism and loyalism that is not able to effectively counter what is happening, largely because a compelling alternative is absent.
So, while republicans continue to come across as reasonable advocates for change unionists and loyalists remain backward-looking, hindering positive change, locked into a past and without hope for what is ahead.
It is time for loyalists, in particular, to engage with debates about the future and to shape them in ways which contradict the image of resistance and intransigence that has come to define loyalism itself. Political unionism lacks the necessary courage to take the big steps needed so the motivation for change needs to come from outside and, more specifically, from working-class activism.
Loyalist political leaders at the time of the Belfast Agreement were progressive and eager to push for change driven from the ground up. However, that moment of opportunity soon closed with the death of David Ervine and the loss of Gary McMichael and David Adams from politics.
Much as Dawn Purvis and Billy Hutchinson tried to maintain momentum and bring a loyalist perspective to political decision-making, they too left the political stage and with them the possibility of a coherent and articulate loyalist political platform evaporated.
Yet perhaps the political stage is not the best way to try to directly exercise influence and especially when so many in loyalist communities do not vote for loyalist parties. A more sensible strategy would be to build a coalition of voices and community representations outside of the political system that exists as a challenge to the narrow zero-sum emphasis that does little to encourage or propose exciting ideas.
Take the issue of reconciliation. Rather than avoiding the debate about what that might mean and how it might apply to a better future, loyalists and unionists are deterred from engaging with Sinn Féin and others because alternative issues of concern such as Irish language schools become a focus for anger and resistance.
Hostile to what is seen as another loss or incursion into unionist and loyalist terrain the possibility of deciding what a better future looks like elicits little attention for the long term, compared with yet another loss and how that impacts for the short term.
This tendency to protest and object further increases anxiety and fear and in such circumstances the more resistant the voice the greater the appeal. In this instance, the more extreme voice provides a defence that, no matter how worthless in the long run, appears to meet a need for immediate resistance and certainty.
Getting some influence or control over the uncertainties of change requires gaining influence and control over the constancy of fear and anxiety that stifles how that change is conceived and influenced. Until this happens fear and a sense of loss will grow and confidence in the future will further erode as long as security is believed to come from reliable backward-looking impulses such as defence, intransigence and stasis.
The starting point for thinking about reconciliation is a question: what is needed for the benefit of Northern Ireland as a whole? This requires thinking inclusively and for that diversity is needed. With regard to reconciliation itself there are philosophical and emotional ways of imagining that prioritise creativity, fairness and diversity.
In relation, there are practical and material consequences to reconciliation that, for example, find meaningful focus by addressing educational achievement, economic investment and national and international co-operation. Locking these areas together constructs a wider narrative of change that benefits all rather than us or them.
And for loyalists and unionists such a narrative must present a Northern Ireland that is constructive and progressive. This can serve to strengthen the Union and help create a social environment of possibilities available to all.
Republicans have attached the theme of reconciliation to a united Ireland and because of that unionists and loyalists see no value in engaging. It is time for unionists and loyalists to now provide an alternative basis for exploring and thinking about reconciliation in ways that contradict the expected negativity and that advance a positive future.
But to do this means loyalists taking responsibility for driving transformation and ending the dominant narrative that those from loyalist communities offer little other than crime and antisocial behaviour. And, because unionists will not do this, a new form of working-class activism from within loyalist communities offers the best way forward. Whether the value of change is acknowledged and the need for transformation embraced remains another question, however.
Graham Spencer is Emeritus Professor of Social and Political Conflict at the University of Portsmouth and a member of the Northern Ireland Development Group whose work can be found at nidg.co.uk
