"Who will speak for the voiceless Protestant working class in Northern Ireland?"
This was the question posed by an article in the Labour magazine Tribune last month. It was the theme too in a series of articles ran by the Belfast Telegraph, concluding with its columnists Lindy McDowell's assertion that Protestant workers have no political voice. These pieces all come in the aftermath of the sectarian commotion in East Belfast last June, disturbing as it did the notion that Northern Ireland was moving gradually towards a more peaceful society and baffling those in the state and media who promoted such views.
The crisis of political representation in Protestant working class areas and the alienation from the political process felt by many is a very real problem. Unemployment is steadily rising, educational underachievement is at shocking levels and the combined impact of recession and cuts is creating a groundswell of disillusionment. As the article in the Tribune pointed out, only 30% of working class Protestants have voted, complicated and exacerbated by the fact that the political parties that purport to represent them, namely the DUP, are extremely unpopular in working class districts.
The DUP rose to the top of Unionism on the backs of Protestant working class people. They played on sectarian fears and exploited the feeling in working class areas that Protestants were getting nothing out of the peace process. But the property developers and speculators at the top of the party had other interests too. At the height of the property boom there was a real feeling amongst the business class in the North that there was money to be made, talk was heard of a "long boom", if only political stability could be created through power sharing. Under these pressures the DUP changed its stance and entered into coalition with Sinn Fein, pleasing its more affluent supporters but delivering nothing for the base that put it into power.
The abandonment of the Protestant working class by the DUP has raised the question of the need for an alternative to the main parties of Unionism. Some are suggesting that there needs to party which represents Protestant workers. It was thought at one time that the PUP would play this role. It was an organisation which claimed to be both Unionist and Socialist, contained within its programme the old Labour clause IV and did for a time gain some limited support.
The PUP have however failed miserably to represent working class interests. Its links with the UVF and devotion to Loyalism led it for the most part into a sectarian quagmire and because it was a "Unionist party", it saw its role in pan-class Protestantism as more important than its role in promoting working politics. In 2006, its only MLA David Ervine joined the UUP Assembly group, with the sole purpose of getting another Protestant onto the executive, that this person was not likely to be pursuing a "socialist" agenda did not matter so long as they were Protestant.
The PUP was not the first attempt to create a working class Unionism. As far back as the 1860's William Johnston stood in Belfast against the Conservative party as a candidate for the Protestant Working Men's Association. Meetings were held in working class areas and red banners were raised reading "Johnston, the working man's candidate". Johnston won the election but was soon to abandon his position as an independent champion of the Protestant worker, by the next election he was the official Conservative party candidate.
In 1903, the Independent Orange Order was formed. This grouping sought to capitalise on working class discontent at the social exclusivity at the top of Orangeism. It contained quite a few trade Unionists and some its members involved themselves in the 1907 Dockers strike. This 'independence' from Unionism was not to last as the IOO gravitated towards mainstream Orangeism, dissociating itself from militant Trade Unionism and expelling Lindsay Crawford, one of the main advocates of the Dockers in the IOO.
There were others too. During the 1940's Harry Midgley's Commonwealth Labour Party sought to combine an unreserved loyalty to empire with an advocacy of social reforms, but Midgley quickly opted for loyalty over reforms when offered the position of minister in a very un-reforming Unionist government.
None of these formations lasted very long. They were either pulled into line behind the Protestant elites or were dragged into sectarian confrontations against Catholics. The problem is that Protestant working class interests cannot be separated from working class interests more generally. Unemployment is rising in Protestant areas, but so too is it rising in Catholic areas. Cuts to services are affecting Protestants, but so too are they affecting Catholics. Only a united fightback, that includes both Protestants and Catholics can effectively raise the issues that are so deeply effecting these communities.
It’s not true that Protestant workers have no voice, its just that when we are busy shouting at each other this voice gets drowned out in the process. If we were to combine the screams of anger from both Protestant and Catholic workers, a voice would emerge that would be a very difficult to ignore.