Loyalists trying to avoid history’s traditional route
THE Detail’s Steven McCaffery attended two debates on Northern Ireland’s future this week – one involving politicians at Stormont, the other featuring loyalists at a resource centre for the unemployed.
You probably already know how one of these meetings went.
When the First Minister Peter Robinson addressed the Assembly on his plans for a shared future, it soon deteriorated into a bitter row replete with biblical-sounding insults.
The second event was held behind closed doors but saw a discussion on loyalism that was not afraid to be warts and all. Whatever about Stormont, there were no “whited sepulchres” in the function room of the Belfast Unemployed Resource Centre.
The problem with the two debates, however, was that while the Assembly quarrel ended with the publication of a blueprint on the way forward, the arguably more constructive discussion on loyalism ended with uncertainty about where to go from here.
