Is Loyalism lost without David Ervine? – by Brian Rowan

It’s hard to believe it was five years ago on this date January 8^th – that grim moment at the hospital bedside not long after David Ervine had passed away.

I couldn’t believe it then, and, these five years later, I still struggle with the suddenness of what happened.

It was January 2007, and our last conversation gave no hint of what was just around the corner.

We had chatted on the Saturday night, when he was in great form.

He had been to the football – to a match in which Glentoran had scored eight times, and then to his east Belfast local, The Raven, for a few pints.

And, later, in the conversation we had, he was talking politics; about an article he had written urging Paisley to do the political deal with Adams and McGuinness.

He was tidying the piece up and wanted it published in the Belfast Telegraph, and, after a bit of banter and an exchange of joking insults, we agreed to speak the next day.

And, yet, we would never chat again.

The following day, Sunday, his son Mark called me to tell me his father was in hospital, and the next day – Monday January 8^th 2007 – he died.

It all happened in a rush, without warning, without time and without any chance to say goodbye.

With Jeanette’s permission, the Telegraph published his article, and its wise words.

Ervine was always ahead of the unionist/loyalist pack.

The headline on the article read: Let’s Finish The Job.

And in it, he was pushing Paisley into government with republicans, cheering him on and encouraging the next steps along the peace and political paths that people have had to walk – however reluctantly.

His funeral – a celebration of the fifty-three years he lived – was something I’ll never forget; its biggest moment when Gerry Adams stepped across enemy lines and into the church on the Newtownards Road, the republican there to pay his respects to a loyalist political leader.

It was a gesture that needed no words; a hugely significant act that spoke for itself.

And you just had to be there to feel its importance.

Ervine and I had become very good friends – good enough to say to each other as politician and journalist whatever needed to be said, however difficult.

And, at the time of his death, I wrote: “I’ll cry a tear for him. I’ll miss him, and so will this place and this process.”

On nearly every day since, I’ve remembered him in a prayer; remembered a man whose story spans our wars and peace, a man caught transporting a bomb, a man who went to jail and who was part of the UVF, but whose name you will also find in the chapters of ceasefire and peace.

In the way we talk here, we kicked with different feet, but none of that mattered.

And, five years later, there is something to be said about loyalism.

Without David Ervine it has struggled – and it has stained the peace process with acts of violence and criminality that contradict the words written and spoken in supposed endgame statements of ceasefire and decommissioning.

And, now, the UVF is involved in another process of “civilianisation” called ACT – Area Conflict Transformation.

This time it has to work, and the many within loyalism who want to be part of the peace have to leave behind the crooks, the criminals and the ceasefire soldiers, whose only loyalty is to themselves.

Ervine, I think, would have confronted them and exposed their hypocrisy.

And that is what is missing.

There are those who still pander to the very worst elements of loyalism – and to those who joined the war long after it was over, and who use the military titles of conflict to try to disguise activities that are only for self-gain and interest.

So, five years after the death of Ervine, some in the loyalist leadership need to take a long look into a mirror; and ask the simple questions:

What would David have said – what would he have done?