ALEX KANE,
LCC’S letter has hint of a threat, but there appears willingness to amend protocol, not dump it, writes Alex Kane
IT is understandable that a letter to the Prime Minister from a group representing three loyalist paramilitary organisations — which security assessments suggest are still recruiting and involved in criminality — might raise concerns.
Particularly when the purpose of the letter was to inform the British Government that those organisations were withdrawing their support for the Belfast Agreement.
And it is similarly understandable that concerns would also be raised about whether the withdrawal of support should be read as a threat to the peace process, particularly the line ‘the protocol... undermines the basis on which the Combined Loyalist Military Command (CLMC) agreed their 1994 ceasefire and subsequent support for the Belfast Agreement’.
Lines like that are not just thrown into a letter to fill space. They are thought about, drafted, redrafted and then agreed.
The authors knew that was the line which would grab the attention not only of the Prime Minister, but of everyone else who read the letter when it entered the public domain.
My own instinct is that it does not represent a threat to abandon the 1994 ceasefire.
There is no appetite in the unionist/loyalist community for such a strategy, not least because the protocol and the consequent unsettling of unionism is, primarily, the responsibility of the British Government.
But nor should the letter be dismissed as mere sabre-rattling.
In an ideal world, the views of terrorist groups who should have disappeared as soon as the Belfast Agreement was signed should count for nothing.
But this is not an ideal world and, regrettably, the input of those with paramilitary backgrounds is an everyday fact of life in local politics.
That said, one part of the letter struck me as particularly significant.
Having expressed a willingness to help find a solution to the ongoing crisis, the letter argues that ‘the starting point has to be that a hard border on the island of Ireland, or between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom, has no cross-community support here and is therefore untenable’.
And that strikes me as significant, because it does not simply go down a path some unionists have taken, that is to replace the sea border with a hard land border — which would only shift the crisis from one political community to the other.
It seems to suggest the members of the Loyalist Communities Council (and having talked to them over the years, it is worth noting that many of them had reservations about a victory for the Leave campaign in 2016’s EU referendum) might be prepared to look at a different kind of protocol.
Indeed, it is also noteworthy that the second paragraph of the letter uses ‘replacement’ in reference to the protocol, yet towards the end it says their renewed support for the Belfast Agreement would depend on ‘our rights under the Agreement (being) restored and the protocol amended’.
It is actually fairly typical of the sort of letter you write when you are interested in negotiation.
Prior to 1994 a group like the LCC would simply have issued a ‘reject everything’ statement and then returned to the shadows.
This isn’t that kind of letter. Maybe that is something to do with the fact that LCC chairman David Campbell, a former chief-of-staff to David Trimble, is well-versed in complex negotiations.
And it may also have something to do with the fact that the key players in the LCC have enough experience to realise that take-it-or-leave-it ultimatums to a Prime Minister will deliver nothing for them.
The other thing both Campbell and LCC members understand is that threatening a Prime Minister at the same time as he is being criticised by the EU and Irish Government — Simon Coveney has been especially angry — is pointless.
If they want the UK and EU to revisit the protocol and examine alternatives, then they need to demonstrate to both that there is flexibility in their own position.
Yet, when all is said and done, there is still the problem that this is a letter written by people with no electoral mandate, representing organisations whose activities and proclivities represent a headache for security forces.
That is a problem, too, for all the political/government actors whose support will be required if the protocol is to be altered.
Which is why I think the letter shouldn’t, at this stage of the game, have included the immediate withdrawing of support for the Belfast Agreement, for all that did was ensure most attention would focus on the hint of threat.
What that does is force unionist political parties into the awkward position of having to say whether they agree with the withdrawal of support statement.
If they say yes: “Then why are you still in the Assembly?” If they say no: “Then does this represent a split in the supposedly united unionist response?”
Maybe the best thing that could come out of this is for all of unionism to take the space granted by extension of the grace periods and talk to anyone and everyone about a protocol that addresses the genuine problems — for both political communities — of either a hard land border or a sea border.
‘In ideal world, the views of terrorist groups... should count for nothing’