Northern Ireland's Lost Opportunity: The Frustrated Promise of Political Loyalism by Tony Novosel

Author:Tony Novosel [Novosel, Tony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Ireland, Europe, Political Science, History, General
ISBN: 9780745333090
Google: nNRfLwEACAAJ
Goodreads: 15795275
Publisher: Pluto Press
Published: 2013-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

Although these are just a small sample of the retrograde thinking within the UVF and the RHC, these examples clearly illustrate that the mass of these organisations had not moved as far as the thinkers in Long Kesh who were writing manifestos and proposals at a sophisticated level. This meant that the ordinary volunteers did not always understand or support their own leaders and in the case of the VPP did not even vote for it.

When asked why many in the UVF would have voted for the DUP instead of the VPP, Hugh Smyth replied, ‘The UVF’s a big, big organisation. It’s a big church. I daresay that you’ve people in it who agreed with what Paisley was saying “Not a Taig [Catholic] about the place.”’82 One senior UVF official agreed with Smyth’s analysis, arguing that the VPP ‘was a coalition of sorts – fascists, socialists, liberals etc., all under one umbrella.’83 Regarding the problem of leading the UVF to progressive politics, Billy Mitchell noted that,

in many ways we were too far ahead of our time. The volunteers just wouldn’t have been ready for it. The problem was if you try to lead too far from the front the people are that far behind you that you are not really leading at all, you’re out on your own.84

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