“Ulster unionists, fearful of being isolated on the island, built a solid house, but it was a cold house for Catholics. And nationalists, although they had a roof over their heads, seemed to us as if they meant to burn the house down,” said David Trimble as he “sang for his supper,” before the Nobel Prize committee in 1998. To a certain constituency of the ‘unionist family’ this speech was a most devastating of blows, made all the worst by the fact it was self-inflicted. 

Steve Aiken, Trimble’s short-lived successor as leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, attempted to reclaim the term by describing Queen’s University as “cool place for Protestants.” For a certain variety of unionist, the notion that unionism might in any way of been culpable for the conflict is an abhorrent thought. This is seen in the fears of a “rewriting” of history, meaning a diversion from the narrative of the Troubles as a fight of republican terrorists against the democratic state. Reporter Rob O’Hanrahan, in response to The Telegraph reporting government plans for an “official history” of the Troubles, pointed out that it was “worth noting that the Widgery Report would have been the “official history” of Bloody Sunday.”

Jim Allister is standard bearer of this strand of unionist thinking. In many ways he is the last man standing of the DUP: the party has “left him.” For years this has been seen in his incessant droning rails against Irish language legislation as a “victory for Sinn Féin,” and part of the “radical republican agenda to de-Britishise Northern Ireland.” No thought beyond the old and echoing war cry of “not an inch, no surrender,” is evidenced in Allister’s position.  

Allister’s latest spin has been calling for unionists everywhere to unite around the issue of preventing a Sinn Féin First Minister, along with the threat of pulling out of the devolved institutions over the red herring issue of the Protocol. The TUV leader comes from a tradition of unionism which has always seen the Good Friday Agreement as an abomination. The Agreement is obviously not dead, as he claimed in 2018, but he most certainly wishes that it was. The idea of “terrorists in government,” remains a mound of ashes that Allister will not spit out of his mouth. If he were to do so, he would be lost. 

Sinn Féin today is very different party than that of twenty years ago. In 2009, Martin McGuinness referred to the dissident perpetrators of attacks on British soldiers as “traitors to the island of Ireland,” which was a remark Hugh Orde rightfully deemed “extraordinary,” for a former Chief of Staff. The leadership of the republican party has been handed to a new generation, and the agenda is more varied and colourful than the singular issue of reunification, with rights and equality issues often at the forefront. It should be remembered, however, the party’s two-faced outlook on the issue of abortion, as it attempts to balance its younger, sensible membership with its older, more conservative supporters. 

But the shadow of the gunman continues to define republicanism, for men like Jim Allister. “The eructations of Orange drums, allergic equally to Pearse and Pope,” as Heaney wrote. Despite the fact that the IRA, as we understand the organisation, has long since accepted the republican move back to constitutionalism, decommissioned, and cannot seriously be said to exist. 

A 2012 report had the Real IRA, since renamed the ‘New IRA’, to have around 300 members. That seems like quite a lot, but historians will be aware that the Provisional IRA, at its height, had around 10,000 members; the old IRA, around 100,000, but as Peter Hart wrote the actual fighting was always done by “a small band of rebels,” in the larger republican enclaves such Newry, South Armagh, West Belfast, Dublin, and West Cork. 

When reading a report of paramilitary membership one has to consider that this includes any unskilled latchyco who takes an oath one night, during a lock-in, followed by a few half-remembered verses of the Broad Black Brimmer, to the tune of Sean South. Just as twitter.com is not a reliable focus group, the world on paper, is not the world in which we live. 

It ought to be pointed out that Jim Allister is a one-man-band and while the next Assembly election may gift him a little friend, it is quite unlikely that the TUV will grow beyond that measure in the immediate future. However, it is also true that this was the case for the DUP not too long ago, before it eclipsed the former Official Unionist Party and came to dominate that designation. While self-styled moderate unionists such as UUP leader Doug Beattie take a largely benevolent, or at least ambiguous, attitude to the ravings from the fringes of their tent, they run the risk of Allister following Paisley’s path and further entrenching the extreme view. Unionism ought to learn from contemporary Republicans – of the US variety. 

While (Irish) republicans have diversified their interests, in order to reach a new generation of voters, adapting their politic to peace, unionism remains stuck on the platform of conflict. This is a dangerous game, as buses burn in Belfast; Jeffrey Donaldson accused Jim Allister of being happier to “hurl grenades at fellow unionists” than finding solutions to the ‘Irish sea border’. 

But if grenades are launched, it will not be Allister throwing them, though his words will be the starting pistol. Just as his forebear, Ian Paisley, never dirtied his own hands to sacrifice his political career, there was much blood on his gloves as he sent generations of working class loyalists to the front line, from the safety of his pulpit. It is worth noting that Paisley’s talk of using violence “if it is used against us,” began while the ‘IRA’ was as moribund a force as it is today. The result was Catholic homes on fire, and refugee camps on the southern side of the border. 

Jim Allister’s politic is a headless chicken in peacetime. Other unionists, must do more to see that it remains on the margins, far away from the mainstream of contemporary politics. In particular, if Doug Beattie is serious about promoting a new kind of unionism, he must make an unequivocal break with the old kind championed by Jim Allister.