I don’t normally gloat over the deaths of political enemies but I’ll make an exception in this case. I also intend to put £100 behind the bar of the Approach the day Thatcher dies.

David Ervine was the most prominent spokesperson for the UVF. He died from a heart attack, a stroke and a brain haemorrhage. They couldn’t have happened to a more deserving individual.

Ervine was jailed in 1974 after being arrested driving a car bomb to its presumed target of a pub frequented by Catholic civilians. Him and his UVF mates spent the 1970s and 80 roaming Belfast randomly killing Catholics, often with the active support of the British Army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary. One of my father’s friends was slashed to death by the UVF while suspended from piano wire. That’s the sort of organisation Ervine joined, an outfit dedicated to random murder of Catholics. The eulogies from Adams, Reynolds and Blair are bollocks. He changed his tactics but died committed to the murderous sectarian ideology that is unionism.

http://www.socialistdemocracy.org/RecentArticles/RecentStDavidOfTheDeathSquads.html

9 responses to “Perhaps God exists”

  1. a very public sociologist Avatar
    a very public sociologist

    That was a nice way to go. I hope it was painless for him. Really.

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  2. I don’t think £100 behind the bar is enough to celebrate the death of thatcher.Surely it wold be more fitting to dig her up, cut her head off and parade it round on a pole.

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  3. uch the same comments could be made about Gerry Adams and many membrs of the PIRA; the point about Ervine is that he appears to have *genuinely* renounced violence and sectarianism, and espouced left-reformism. I don’t understand your bitter, sectarian hostility to him. Certainly, the PIRA didn’t hate him; he and Billy Hutchinson wouldn’t have been able to hold meetings on the Falls Road without their support. I think your bitter, sectarian comments are the result of residual tribal hostility, that even Adams and his people have now got over.

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  4. splinteredsunrise Avatar
    splinteredsunrise

    Jim, the point about Ervine is, and I went into this in my own post, is that his espoused politics may or may not have been genuine. That isn’t the issue. The PUP has a programme, sure, but its main function is to be a mouthpiece for the UVF. Hence the political limitations of any leftward development of the PUP.Now, you say, couldn’t the same be said about republicans? Maybe in a formal sense, but you have to understand that the Provos represent a revolutionary movement albeit a massively degenerated one, while the loyalist groups were organised for the express purpose of defending sectarian privilege.Mind, this may not make much sense if you start from the through-the-looking-glass ideological framework of Matgamnism. Which I assume is the root of your dig about sectarianism and tribalism. In the context of Ervine… it’s nearly as funny as the time the Socialist Party called me an anti-Protestant bigot. Au contraire, I come from the Protestant working class, which is why I don’t romanticise it.

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  5. Jim I’m reluctant to say anything positive about Superintendent Gerry Adams but you oblige me to. He has struck a deal with British imperialism. That’s what Republican militarist eventually do. The essential difference between the Republicans and the Loyalists was that the Loyalists’ only reason for existence was to terrorise the Catholic population of the northern state. It had no ideology apart from this. Gangsterism and drug dealing don’t count and Splintered Sunrise can probably give you a lot more detail on that.The Republicans started as a defensive organisation and moved to an offensive struggle against British imperialism. That’s a good thing. It was limited by a militarist, petit bourgeois ideology but it was not sectarian movement. Ervine gave the UVF the same sort of makeover that the BNP has been receiving. Its core ideas are the same and it will return to the same methods when the situation requires. I’d write more but I’m heading out to beat up a Protestant and watch a Celtic match.

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  6. Andy I deleted your comment because I thought it was too personally abusive. I enjoy robust exchanges of opinions and don’t mind how much people insult ideas but I’ll draw an editorial line at remarks about other people. Unless of course they are dead UVF men.

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  7. blimey – i can’t remember what i wrote now

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  8. Does “socialist imperialist” jog your memory?

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  9. malachy higgins Avatar
    malachy higgins

    Hi Liam.

    This is Malachy Higgins from Belfast but now living in Galway. I have a wax candle of thatcher which you can have to burn whenever she kicks the bucket.

    Regards

    malachy

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