UDA Plans for Ulster Independence

A UDA committee headed by Glenn Barr has drawn up plans for an independent Ulster incorporating a new constitution, a Bill of Rights and a phased British withdrawal.

Ten years ago the thought that a significant and innfluential body of Northern Protestant opinion would not only be contemplating breakking the link with Britain but also planning for the day when Ulster would become a sovereign, independent state would have struck most people as absurd. After all, gallons of blood have been spilt throughout this century and most of the last resisting attempts to break the British link. Ulster Protestants repeatedly, assured the world that they were as British as any Y orkshireman. It is a measure of the changes that have been wrought, over the last decade, not least in the Protestant psyche, that many now regard independence and the slicing of the British umbilical cord as the only remaining practicable solution to the "troubles". Some of these proponents are plainly eccentric and are destined to remain forever, as curios, on the fringes of any political developments. But the most articulate members of the independence lobby represent the real, and some would argue progressive, changes that have occurred in the Protestant community since the Civil Rights movement exxposed and fomented ever widening class divisions in the Unionist monolith.

Ulster nationalism first beecame a potent political force when the British abolished Stormont in March 1972. The resulting reaction of ,most Protestants emanated essentiially from the-gut: They felt that their politicians had let them down and the British had betrayed them. With Storrnojit went all their priveeleges and their control over jobs and over the horizon loomed the not too distant prospect of a united Ireland. At a massive protest rally under the shadow of the now defunct parliament building, it was the flag of Ulster, not the Union Jack, that flew from a thousand held poles. The ultimate contradiction in the average Protestant's poliitical make-up was displayed for all to see. It was the halffcrown, not the Crown, that commanded his true loyalty.

Up to the Ulster Workers' Council strike in May 1974, which toppled the powerrsharing government, indepenndence was seen by many loyalist politicians as a device to return to the old commfortable days before 1968. There was even talk of UD!. The first politician to throw his hat into the independence ring was former Stormont Minister of Home Affairs John Taylor. At a meeting of disillusioned party faithful in July 1972, he declared himmself to be in favour of inndependence if the British reefused to re-establish a majorrity controlled parliament. At a meeting in February 1973, supported by Belfast Orange leader Martin Smyth, another former Minister of Home Affairs and founder of Ulster Vanguard, William Craig argued for Dominion status in rhe absence of pre-I 968 poliitical structures. Also in 1973 Billv Hull, then leader of the

Loyalist Association of Workkers, claimed that the Russians would provide financial assisstance if the North declared unilateral independence. In the build up to the UWC strike, Harry West, now leader of the Official Unionnists came out in favour of independence in the event of a British withdrawal. During the strike Glenn Barr, the UWC spokesman, threatened to "declare a provisional government to save the proovince from republicanism". The option of independence was clearly seen by its prooponents and the Catholic community as a way of reestoring the past.

Since 1974 the most siggnificant development in the independence movement has been the establishment by the Ulster Defence Association of a committee to research and eventually provide the UDA with a political programme based on independence. The brainchild of UDA commannder Andy, Tyrie, the New Ulster Political Research Group was set up in January Of this year under the full time chairmanship of Glenn Barr. Although Barr had reesigned from the UDA in midd1976 over a disagreement on voluntary coalition between the UUC and the SDLP, on Tyrie 's invitation he quiettly and unannounced rejoined the organisation to head its new think tank.

Judging by the memberrship of Barr's committee it is clear that the UDA attaches great importance to their new strategy. The secretary 'of the committee is John Mac Michael, commander of the Lisburn UDA and principal actor in the UDA's film of innterrogation techniques shown to the Amnesty International inquiry into RUC brutality. The political co-ordinator is Harry Chicken, who has been for several years the UDA's major political guru. The committee's PRO is Tommy Lyttle, one of the organisaation's founder members and a formidable influence on the Shankill Road. In November 1974 Lyttle and Chicken accompanied Glenn Barr on a bizarre trip to Libya where they had negotiations with the Libyans on Ulster indeependence. Barr's delegation is reported to have offered the Libyans oil drilling rights off the Northern coast in reeturn for Arab money to finance their plans. That, financial help is understood to have taken the form of bailing out the Belfast Newssletter, then undergoing a period of financial hardship, and providing Harland and Wolff with oil tanker orders. Although the negotiations came to nought they did have the effect of drying up the generous supply of Libyan arms to the Provisional IRA.

If Barr is to be believed the UDA is a very different organisation than that which indiscriminately assassinated Catholics a few years ago. In an interview for Magill, breakking the committee's selfposed embargo on talking to the press, Barr claimed that the UDA "is no longer a Prootestant army at the beck and call of loyalist politicians". Barr dates this fundamental shift in UDA attitudes to the failure of the Paisley/Baird strike of May 1977. "It was clear to us that as with the UWC strike of 1974, we were being used by politicians for their own narrow, sectarian ends. The UDA determined that this would never happen again and realised as well that if there was going to be a political solution it would I have to be based on someething diff'erent than an appeal to old flag waving loyalties."

He cited the dramatic fall in sectarian murders over the last year and the lack of reesponse to the La Mon disaster as evidence of the UDA's change of heart.

Barr's committee has completed work on what he terms "a new constitution, a new political structure and a Bill of Rights" which if introduced, following a phased, negootiated withdrawal of British troops, would pave the way for consensus, class based" politics. The new state would not be a stepping stone to a united Ireland but a sovereign parliamentary democracy with membership in the EEC.

It is clear that Barr has been heavily influenced by his month-long study trip to the United States last year, funded by the Washington State Department. His new constiitution would borrow heavily from the American Presiidential model. An elected President, nominated from outside Jhe party system, would cfibose an executive from the province's academic and intellectual elite. The executive would be answerrable to US Congress-style committees drawn from an elected legislature. A Presiidential veto would be further augumented by a Bill of Rights. Dublin would have to drop its claims to the North by altering the 1937 constiitution. External defence would be guaranteed by an outside power - probably the United States. The £300 million subvention from Briitain WOUld continue for twenty five Years since, accorrding to Barr, "they owe us that at least". Internal security is one knotty problem Barr and the UDA have not as yet resolved, but it is not innconceivable that they have some form of short term neuutral peace keeping force in mind.

The other major lobby for independence comes from a committee founded in November 1976 by exman of the Community Relaations Commission, David Rowlands. Like the UDA, Rowlands' Committee for the study of Negotiated Indepenndence sees independence as sensus politics into the North. It is also, according to Rowwlands, "the only possible compromise between a Catholic community which wants to break ithe British link and a Protestant commmunity that will have no truck with Dublin". His committee consists of a sprinkling of middle class academics, ex-loyalist paramilitants and Catholic community workers. Prominent among the exxparamilitants are Andy McCann, an ex-UYF leader interned by the British and John McKeague, founder of the notorious sectarian Red Hand Commandoes and author of several VICIOUS anti-Catholic songs and poems. McKeague was unnsuccessfully prosecuted under the Incitement to Hatred Act in 1971 and interned shortly thereafter.

The Rowlands' committee is really nothing more than a talking shop and an umbrella for groups as obscure as the Ulster Independence Party (membership of three) and the Ulster Independence Association (membership of two). Nevertheless, the reecognition of the difficulties involved in selling the indeependence idea to Catholics led in June this year to Andy McCann addressing a gatherring of largely middle-class Andersontonians in the Glennowen Inn.

Ultimately, though, it is the UDA's committee that has the political muscle. As yet they have chosen not to exercise ·that muscle. Accordding to Barr, they are going to wait until after the "next flag waving General Election" beefore they do any serious pro-· paganda work. In the meanntime they will continue to sound out influential acaademics and groups north and south of the border and on both sides of the community divide. Barr has addressed meetin gs of the Irish Asssociation in Dublin and in the figure of Paddy Devlin he has already won an influential northern convert. Devlin also sees independence as the only way of creating normal, class politics in the North. He accepted the UDA's change of heart as genuine. So much so that as far as he is conncerned "the UDA is presently the most progressive political organisation in the North".

Despite Devlin's enthussiasm for their plans, the Catholic population views Barr's committee with underrstandable distrust. Many of those associated with indeependence are on record as notorious bigots, even if they now privately disavow their past beliefs. There are many in the Catholic population who feel that that kind of leopard can never change its spots. There is also the susspicion that the whole thing is a ploy to return to Prootestant ascendancy, that the UDA, realising that it cannot defeat the Provos, and that the British will never reduce Stormont, has merely become cunning in old age.

Barr's committee also reefuses point blank to have any contact with the Provos and still regards them as "the real enemies of Ulster". As long as the Provos are ignored it is difficult to see independence becoming a viable proposiition. The Provos, after all, do represent a legitimate tradiition in the North. In an interrview with the Provisional IRA in August's Magill, the repubblican movement made clear its implacable opposition to any form of six county inndependence. After its Ard I Fheis decision in October to talk to loyalists, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams again made it clear that the organiisation would only be interessted in discussing nine county independence within the framework of Eire Nua.

With the British showing no signs of conceding to the various calls for withdrawal, and the established political parties opposing it, there seems no real chance of inndependence becoming a live issue. The fact that the UDA has been particularly reticent about its new policy suggests that it is not even sure it could command support from its own ranks. Nevertheless their realisation that "Britain looks upon us and treats us very differently than Yorkshire" does represent a potenntially progressive shift in some Protestant attitudes. It remains to be seen whether that potential will be realised.