Loyalist community will gain most from clampdown on criminality,writes Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor
There were strong words yesterday from the leadership of the Ulster Defence Association and from its south Belfast "brigadier" Jackie McDonald about the UDA's future peaceful and non-criminal intentions.
Earlier this week in north Belfast the funeral took place of 16-year-old Dean Clarke who hanged himself after the UDA in Tigers Bay allegedly sold him drugs - horse tranquillisers, according to local people. His mother Alison blamed the UDA for his death.
McDonald's strong words therefore must translate into strong action if they are to have any real currency for the likes of Mrs Clarke and working-class loyalist communities that are so often exploited by the UDA. And there's the rub: has the UDA leadership the will or the structure to clamp down on the criminals within its ranks?
If something positive truly flows from yesterday it will be mainly to the benefit of ordinary, hard-pressed Protestants and loyalists because these days the UDA is more of a threat to its own community than it is to Catholics or nationalists - although that threat has not totally diminished either by any means.
Jackie McDonald plays golf with President Mary McAleese's husband Martin and has the ear of officials in Dublin, London and Washington. He led a thousand UDA members through the back streets of south Belfast to the UDA "war" memorial in Sandy Row for the 11am Remembrance Day commemoration yesterday morning.
He's a fairly straight talker. "The drug dealers must go," he told the crowd at the memorial. "If you can't shoot them, shop them. I am telling you: don't think anybody's an informer for telling the PSNI where the drugs are or where the drug dealers are, because it's our kids that are suffering."
The UDA, in statements read out in south Belfast and at other Remembrance Day ceremonies, said it believes that "the war is over". It set out a four-point plan for its members to ensure that all future challenges were faced "within the law and through non-violent means".
Firstly, a new umbrella organisation will be established, the Ulster Defence Union, to cater for members who are retiring from active service, so to speak. The UDA will "remain the parent organisation".
Reporters and camera crews had good access to the ceremony in south Belfast, but the instruction was emphatic that there must be no filming when the order was called, "Resign UFF standard".
"We want no sleekit filming," as one UDA man advised.
The standard was ceremonially furled, thus marking the second part of the four-point plan, the standing down of the Ulster Freedom Fighters from midnight last night, and the putting "beyond use" of all UFF weaponry.
Now this will trigger a certain degree of cynicism. The UDA was established in 1971 with its other murderous component part, the UFF, emerging two years later.
But to many people - particularly the hundreds of victims of the UDA - the UFF was merely a cover name, a flag of convenience, for the UDA.
Standing down the UFF and putting its guns beyond use therefore only actually means something if the statement also means that the UDA as a paramilitary force has also gone away.
But the UDA, as McDonald said, is "not going away". The UDA leadership, however, also says that the UFF was standing down in the context of the "military war" being over.
It's the inaction of the UDA that will in the final analysis establish how important yesterday was.
Action three was that all Ulster Young Militants will be redirected "towards education, personal development and community development". Action four was a "general order to all members not to be involved in crime or criminality". Will they listen? In the meantime the UDA is continuing its contact with General John de Chastelain's decommissioning body, although as the UDA and McDonald made clear there are no plans at present to disarm.
Implicit in all that was said was that the UDA expects substantial carrots - as in financial support for loyalism - before that could happen.
When SDLP Minister Margaret Ritchie was recently strong-arming the UDA to decommission or else see £1.2 million (€1,709,000) earmarked for a loyalist conflict transformation initiative lost the British and Irish governments and the US administration were surprisingly muted. There were no clarion calls of support for Ms Ritchie from these quarters even though the majority of unionists and nationalists supported her action.
That seems to be because Dublin, London and Washington have considerable faith that McDonald and other like-minded members of the UDA leadership will steer the organisation away from violence and criminality, and that the organisation will finally decommission just as the IRA did two years ago.
But they seem to believe that this can only happen at a measured pace.
Yesterday appeared to be a significant step along that route, but again actions not words will be the ultimate test of the UDA's bona fides.