Paisley doesn’t play the race card as subtly as politicians in Dublin and London

TOM COOPER (Irish Examiner, July 6) is correct in his observation that Ian Paisley encourages racism and racial hatred in Northern Ireland — recently described as one of the race hate capitals of northern Europe.

However, this is not for the reasons that Tom Cooper, with the usual social republican perspective on events, would like to think.

Paisley does not, for example, encourage racism and racial hatred by appearing to defend Northern Ireland’s position in Britain. For all that, in fact, the kind of redneck ‘traditional’ unionism that Paisley represents poses a far greater threat to the union than does republicanism.

Nor does Paisley incite racism by pointing to the moribund nature of the Good Friday Agreement (in its present form) or by arguing that armed IRA terrorists can have no place in government, no matter how many votes they get. All unionists, including myself, hold to that position.

Fortunately, Paisley’s apparent (but ultimately superficial) defence of the union and his hardline stance against the appeasement of terrorists is the only reason that most people who vote DUP do so. They are not in the main voting for the DUP’s deranged, right-wing and self-serving programme; for its free market polices, opposition to abortion, gay marriages and comprehensive schools, nor for its cheap equation of any social radicalism with a hidden republican agenda.

They are not voting to render the working class impotent and atomised, as passive consumers of politics, rather than proactively involving them in the rebuilding of their own communities — something the DUP would never stand for.

That said, the fact that many people I know who have never voted DUP are now doing so is an alarming trend. It shows what happens when British citizens feel their position in Britain is continually threatened, when they are angered by the continual appeasement of terrorism both in London and Dublin — and when working class and democratic socialist politics are weak. In this context, Paisley does nurture race hatred when (as an example) he refers to “social security tourism” and “foreign scroungers” in his election propaganda, in the same week that violent race attacks were carried out by loyalist paramilitaries (who really are fascists) in Sandy Row.

Sadly, for all of Paisley’s uncultured tub-thumping, his God-ridden parochialism and redneck backwardness, he isn’t the only bourgeoisie politician in Britain and Ireland to do this.

New Labour do it all the time, as does the Fianna Fáil/PD coalition in the Republic; all stir up racism by representing asylum seekers as a problem category and ethnic minorities as a demonised other.

The only difference with Paisley and Northern Ireland is that he lacks the sophistication of politicians in Britain and Ireland and that part of his constituency audience has been involved in paramilitary violence for years.

No wonder British fascists have always wanted to attach themselves to loyalist paramilitary groups. But there is also racial violence carried out by former paramilitaries in nationalist areas while, in the Republic, dissident republicans (and anti-abortion fanatics) form the main constituency of recruitment to the fascist Irish People’s Party(IPP).

Even now, post 9/11, I would advocate minimal controls to keep out terrorists and criminals, countered by robust anti-racist legislation that would see groups such as the BNP and IPP banned.

Brendan Cafferty (Irish Examiner letters, July 7) pointed out that it isn’t just elements within loyalism that have resorted to fascist methods in the past. In building a new socialist future on this island, isn’t it time to put the politics of illusion, the nationalist siege of Northern Ireland and all the Orange and Green nonsense behind us?

Roger Cottrell

School of English

Queens University

Belfast