(Note: This article was written before the leader of the DUP Sir Jeffrey Donaldson was arrested on sex offence charges.)

It seems that the DUP may be back to “feeding the crocodiles” again.

According to the Belfast Telegraph (1.3.24):

“Addressing his party members in Newry and Armagh on Wednesday night, Sir Jeffrey said that Northern Ireland’s future did not lie with “a court or Parliament, it rests in the hands of our children and grandchildren: they will determine the Union’s longevity”. Sir Jeffrey said that while some in unionism focussed on “seeking out heretics”, he was “in the business of winning converts and growing support” for the Union.”

The DUP Leader went on:

“To be Northern Irish and British is not at all a mutually exclusive thing.  The Northern Ireland of 2024 is made up of people who are British, Irish, Northern Irish and some emerging identities who don’t sit within any of the above. As unionists, our vision for a Northern Ireland that works for everyone is one that embraces all of these identities. These people live, work and raise their families here because it’s their home. They must be able to feel at home whether in their Britishness, their Irishness or something in between.”

In short, there be people other than Prods in Northern Ireland and they need to be sated. The crocodiles need to be fed!

It would be pertinent to remind readers at this point that it was Sir Jeffrey’s predecessor (if we ignore the short-lived Mr. Poots) as Leader of the DUP, Arlene Foster, who infamously advised “Don’t feed the crocodiles!”. By this she meant: do not make concessions to the Fenians as it will only make them hungry for more. Ms. Foster’s policy brought an end to the short-lived attempt by her predecessor, Peter Robinson, to encourage the feeding of the crocodiles in the interests of Union maintenance.

Robinson gave an indication of his understanding behind this policy in a speech to Castlereagh Council back in October 2013, as everything begun to deteriorate after the revealing of the 2011 Census result and the flag dispute. According to the Belfast Telegraph:

“Insisting that the Union was stronger than ever, he cautioned unionists not to ‘turn the clock back to a bygone era’ and urged them to have more self confidence. ‘Unionism has historically had a siege mentality,’ he said. ‘When we were being besieged it was the right response. But when we are in a constitutionally safe and stable position it poses as a threat to our future development. Demographic changes and social change mean that we need to build bigger and broader coalitions and not to retreat into an ever-diminishing core.’

“He said unionism should not be defined simply by the issues of ‘flags and parades’ but by what he described as the benefits of living in the UK. ‘Unionism needs to think and act strategically… because if unionists are not seen to make Northern Ireland work within the Union then no one will. Unionism will only succeed if it is a broad coalition of interests. I accept that not every person who wishes to remain part of the United Kingdom will share my affection for the national flag or even my cultural heritage. My responsibility as leader of the largest unionist party is to seek to hold that broad coalition together for it is only the capacity to bring together those with differing views under a common banner that gives unionism its strength.’

“Mr Robinson… challenged the view that unionist culture was being eroded. ‘Unionists are the purveyors of unionist culture. Nobody can take our culture away from us. It’s within us… Outsiders might try – and from time to time succeed – in limiting our cultural expression in a specific place or manner but they have no power to stop us increasing our expression in other ways. Such a nationalist strategy doesn’t make me feel culturally diminished. It just makes me angry. Angry that people cannot respect and tolerate diversity. But that anger should be channelled into overcoming such intolerance…’ The First Minister said unionists and nationalists had to work together to secure progress.

“Mr Robinson said it was foolish to think that the collapse of the Assembly would not result in further conflict. ‘Happily, it’s only an academic argument but I have absolutely no doubt that if the Assembly were to fall it would leave a void which every malign force would seek to exploit and profit from,’ he said. ‘Paramilitary organisations which are presently contained would be reinforced and bracing themselves for an opening to wage terror’.” (Belfast Telegraph 19.10.13)

Two years later Robinson resigned as First Minister, prompting the Fresh Start agreement which did not prove a fresh start. Robinson gave way to Foster soon after.

Of course, in 2017 the Assembly did fall, after the SDLP went into Opposition with the other parties against the functional DUP/SF coalition and rank-and-file discontent grew in the DUP making it so obstructionist that Martin McGuinness was forced to pull the plug to save his party. McGuinness knew that Sinn Fein was the instrument of his community and they had nothing else if it went down. Since the Good Friday Agreement elections are the only game in town and the Opposition SDLP’s criticism of Sinn Fein in defending the indefensible was biting.

There was much sense in Robinson’s argument to Unionism. The former days are over where the ‘minority’ could be presided over as a second-class community. They are no longer a ‘minority’ and soon may be a majority and as a result of the Republican War they are no longer second-class. So Unionism has to take account of them and even court them, or a section of them, to survive.

Robinson was also aware of the antagonising effects of ‘Protestant culture’ on Catholics. Whilst many aspects of the British State are attractive to Northern Catholics the Ulsterish nature of Britishness repels them.  How can they be effectively courted when their noses are rubbed in it by Loyalist bandsmen thundering Anti-Papist tunes outside Catholic chapels and flags being hung outside their schools and waved in their faces at every opportunity? 

The problem for Robinson’s policy is that in 1920 when the Six Counties was placed in semi-detachment from the UK by Westminster what the British left Unionism with was the symbols of Britishness. And there has been an ever-increasing desire to flaunt these ragged left-overs in the faces of the Fenians to reassure themselves of their ‘Britishness’.

It was not those who have the Union flag waived at them who took away the Union. The Northern Catholics led by Joe Devlin were very British and enthusiastically Imperial before ‘Northern Ireland’ came along. Devlin’s AOH was helping to integrate Ireland into the developing British Liberal welfare state and West Belfast was one of the great recruiting centres for Britain’s Great War. It boasted on the recruiting platforms of being more loyal to England’s cause than the loyalists, who had run guns from Germany.

But they don’t make Northern Catholics like that any more – or not many. ‘Northern Ireland’ saw to that. In fact, the major political effect of ‘Northern Ireland’ has been to make its inhabitants less and less British as the years have rolled by – something Carson feared so much that he never returned, except in a coffin.

And perhaps that was the devious point of it all along.  

Peter Robison, First Minister, was aware that the flag dispute of 2011-12 set off a chain of events that resulted in many in the DUP, who were never confident in the potential of the Paisley/Robinson strategy to blunt Republicanism, losing their nerve. After the Special Advisers victory over SF, facilitated by the SDLP, they started mutinying and Robinson had to ditch the Maze Peace Centre to steady the ship.

The success of the Robinson project depended on Unionism being amenable to Six County Catholics and making ‘Northern Ireland’ possible for them to live in contentedly. And that means holding a tight control over all the instinctive reflexes of Ulsterish Unionism.

That is a difficult project to see through. The nature of ‘Northern Ireland’ and its communal blocs makes it all but impossible to sustain. And it is possible that it might still be all in vain: Catholics might just become a majority and then pursue their national dream regardless. 

But paradoxically, Sinn Fein power within ‘Northern Ireland’ has the potential to make Northern Catholics more content within it.  Opinion polls continue to show that around 20 per cent of Catholics are quite content with life in the UK and may even prefer it to life within an all-Ireland state. The Irish Republic, despite its flamboyant GDP and all its anti-Catholic social progressivism continues to fail to attract. Once the agravation of Ulsterish British power is diminished the default position is perhaps bearable. and these people are likely to become more content and be joined by other waverers the less cold a house for Catholics ‘Northern Ireland’ becomes.

That really is the Union’s greatest chance of survival.

The atmosphere created by any announcement of a forthcoming Border Poll will certainly polarise and Opinion Polls will be no guide to the position in that eventuality. However, Sinn Fein surely realise that a Border Poll will not be successful until there is a 10 per cent Catholic majority within ‘Northern Ireland’ and that is likely to be the best part of a generation away.

The present writer has always maintained that this is a transitional period and the transition will involve Catholic/Nationalist power within ‘Northern Ireland’ over a generation, at least. That will be nothing like Protestant/Unionist power. It will be tempered by the structures of the 1998 Agreement and by the desire to win over at least a section of the Protestant community to an all-Ireland state. While that will mean a holding operation in the North, Sinn Fein will aim to take power in the South to maintain momentum in the all-Ireland project.

That may or may not be successful. And it is not only events that are internal to the island that will determine the success but external forces and events and how Sinn Fein and Nationalist Ireland is able to handle them. It will surely be put to the test as DeValera was in the 1930s/40s. Will it be found wanting? Recent progressive policy decisions that pit the party against traditional Ireland suggest this is a possibility.

Sinn Fein tries to adapt to the prevailing orthodoxy but in this case the orthodoxy is in flux due to popular discontent against the Republic’s establishment, to which SF has attempted to ingratiate itself in order to gain power. But Ireland looks close to a Trump or Brexit moment and is Sinn Fein capable of responding? The problem is that Sinn Fein thought they were to be the alternative, but what if the people see them instead as a Hilary Clinton? 

Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, having seen off his Die Hard “Irish Sea Border” opponents within the DUP, at least for now, seems to be returning to the Robinson strategy announced at Castlereagh in 2013. It will be interesting to see if he is more successful.

The re-emergence of “Stakeknife” this month shows how Sir Jeffrey has changed his tune. Twenty years ago he was prominent in a party that was very much a cheerleader for “Stakeknife” and his nefarious activities.

In October 2000 Donaldson was putting pressure on his leader, David Trimble, to bring down Stormont, in order to exclude Republicans from powersharing. He had been doing this for 2 years through meetings of the Ulster Unionist Council. These consisted of a kind of double-act or sham fight between Donaldson and Trimble, designed to get the British Government of the time to sanction Sinn Fein. Failing that the production of a civil war among Republicans was desired to prevent an orderly Republican retreat from the battlefield.

There was another meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council set for the end of the month in which Donaldson and his leader would shadow-box to encourage Trimble to withdraw from the executive.

With Republicans keen to move the Peace Process on and work the institutions whilst proceeding toward decommissioning, Trimble joined the dissidents. Not as part of the Donaldson opposition to within his own party, but in the leader of Unionism taking up the arguments of the Republican dissidents against his own dissidents, bizarrely in favour of his continued participation in government with Sinn Fein.

Trimble’s speech to his party conference in October 2000 was a series of taunts and jibes at Sinn Fein for having abandoned the armed struggle and “administering British rule in a partitionist Stormont”. 

One would think that if a Unionist leader really believed he had secured the defeat of Republicanism he would have let it have its fig-leaf and not tried to goad and provoke it back to war.  But Trimble seems to have believed that the IRA had been fatally compromised and would be only capable of a half-hearted effort, and a war at half-cock that would be good for Unionism in its difficulties after the Agreement.

Here is the gist of the speech Trimble gave to the Unionist faithful/unfaithful at the Waterfront Hall on October 14^th 2000:

“Unionism is on the inside now.  Some think being inside is outweighed by having Martin McGuinness as a Minister.  Let’s be honest—Martin McGuinness has had influence over Government policy since he met Willie Whitelaw in 1972.  That influence was hidden.  Now it is in the open where he is accountable for his actions. The man who tried to destroy partition is helping to administer Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom, on behalf of Her Majesty and on the basis of British law.  This is a real seismic shift…

“We are in a new situation. The Provos’ armed struggle is over.  After the thousands of needless deaths, the armed struggle failed.  There is no united Ireland, but the guns are now being used as bargaining chips for more concessions.  Until the Government stands up to this blackmail it will rightly be accused of a craven approach. But we have forced Republicanism to face up to the reality of Northern Ireland’s place within the United Kingdom.  All they have left is rhetoric about the inevitability of Irish unity.  And it is rhetoric.  The consent principle in the agreement drove a stakeknife through that.  The rhetoric only disguises their ideological defeat.”

Why did David Trimble use the phrase “Stakeknife” in his speech?  He did not have to use this phrase. A clue was in a statement Trimble made at the end of his speech:

“It has been said that war is a continuation of politics by other means.  In Northern Ireland today that is reversed.  Politics are the continuation of the so-called war by other means. We cannot run away from the political struggle.”

Trimble was not characterising anyone else here.  He was not saying that this was the thinking of the Provos.  The statement was made in the context of what he felt the Unionist Party must do to safeguard the Union.

From the start Trimble’s main interest in the Peace Process was not a positive one. It seemed to involve trying to do in ordinary politics what his mentor Bill Craig and Vanguard failed to do in fascist activity —”to liquidate the enemy.” Craig’s Vanguard, in which Trimble was active, was the closest thing Ulster ever came to fascism with its mass marches and rallies. The UUP that signed the Agreement was more or less the rejectionist split-off from Brian Faulkner’s Official Unionist Party, many of whom had flirted with Craig’s fascist Vanguard.

Trimble’s political manoeuvrings around the Agreement were all geared toward continuing the war in the political sphere and attempting to deliver a fatal blow to the Republican leadership which signed the 1998 Agreement. It was strange to hear it from the horse’s mouth and it elicited no comment from the media at the time. But that is really all that could be taken from Trimble when he chose to equate politics with war in the context of military intrigue.

Whatever the explanation of Trimble’s reference to “Stakeknife”, it cannot be denied that he approved of such intrigue on the part of the security forces. And since that was very much the sort of activity that was conducted in the “so-called war” and which supposedly brought the Provos to the conference table, and Martin McGuinness’s influence into the open, it could not be said to be untrue to say that it was the type of thing Trimble approved of in the “political struggle”, which was, after all, “a continuation of the so-called war by other means”?

What could have been better for Trimble at this point, with his party difficulties, than if a Republican feud could be manufactured?  Obviously, Republican shooting Republican would give Unionists great pleasure and give Trimble leverage with the British Government in obstructing and watering down the much feared Patton Report on policing that was feared to pose great difficulty to Trimble’s hard line Unionism amongst his constituency. 

It would also have had the benefit of making things very difficult for the Republican leadership.  If the Republican Army found itself attacked, and its arms dumps threatened by those who wanted to start a new war, how could it respond without losing out politically and militarily?  It must have surely crossed the minds of those given to that kind of intrigue that a Republican bust-up would have done very nicely indeed. 

About a month before Trimble’s speech the story of ‘stakeknife’ was first implanted in the media.  “Stakeknife” was supposed to be the code name of a highly placed informer in the ranks of IRA, who supported the Peace Process.  The story was that a few years before the UFF had targeted this important British source, so one of the British Special Forces got their double agent in the UFF, Brian Nelson, to sow a false trail and convince the UFF that another man, Francisco Notorantonio, a former internee, was this “Italian” senior IRA leader.  The other man was killed by the UFF, who claimed he was an IRA leader, and the British source was protected. Or so the story that was “leaked” went.

Then there was an extraordinary series of events whereby a newspaper was banned from running the story that had already appeared.  And the paper was banned from even saying that it had been banned.  Then the ban of talking about the ban was lifted, and then the ban itself was lifted.  This unprecedented charade all created the impression that there must have been a lot of substance in the leak, if the State wanted it covered up so badly.

In Ballymurphy, the story that British intelligence had set up the murder of a local did not cause any great surprise.  How could it?  The main concern centred on who was this “stakeknife” and, if he existed and had not fled, surely he was still there in the Republican movement?  Tension began rising as speculation grew about the tout. Rumours were rife about his identity, and senior Republicans in the area fell under suspicion. Gerry Adams was mentioned as the possible “stake knife”.  All this coincided nicely with the dissident Republican characterisation of the Provo leadership as a moulded product of British manipulation.  Ah ha! British agents all along!

The missing piece of the jigsaw was the fact that the alleged leader of the new “Real IRA” in Ballymurphy, just happened to be a member of the Notorantonio family, grandson to the man who had been killed by the UFF.  (The British were, of course, well aware of the individual’s position in the “Real IRA”, and were not slow to publicise their knowledge of this after his killing.)  What conclusion could the dissident, draw from all this, but that the same Provo traitors who were up in Stormont were British agents all along who had set up his grandfather for assassination?  After his death, his mother, in fact, said that.

Whether the killing was sanctioned by the Provos, or it was done by individual Republicans, who had a difference of opinion with him over something, was impossible to say. One thing could be said with certainty, however—it took place in the charged atmosphere of the “stakeknife” intrigue referenced by the First Minister at the Unionist Party Conference.

Trimble’s advisor, Steven King, writing about the killing in Ballymurphy, in an article entitled: “The Pain Is Shifting On To Republicans. Isn’t it Time for UUC Delegates to Put up Their Feet and Enjoy the Spectacle?” wrote in the Belfast Telegraph (24.10.00): “Isn’t the real lesson of O’Connor’s murder not that the Provos are only semi-house-trained but that the logic of the Agreement is sinking in, even in deepest Ballymurphy?” 

He quoted from Marion Price’s oration at the Real IRA man’s graveside: “the Provos… are now reduced to an armed militia of the British State,” commenting:

“As Ulster Unionists embark on an unarmed feud this week, they could do worse than bear in mind Ms. Price’s words.  Unionists have suffered great pain over the last couple of years…  Now the pain is shifting on to republicans, is it time to pull the plug on a partitionist settlement and Stormont rule?  Isn’t it time, instead, for UUC delegates to put up their feet and enjoy the spectacle?”

At the time, King was a guest writer for Anthony McIntyre’s anti-Sinn Fein magazine, Forthwrite.

What was the Trimble leadership of Ulster Unionism reduced to when it gloated over, and had to rely on, the death of a dissident anti-Agreement Republican, whose arguments it had adopted, to carry forward its policy within its own party against Jeffrey Donaldson?

Donaldson subsequently left the UUP, of course, joining Ian Paisley’s DUP, who brought him back into the Assembly, this time in government with Martin McGuinness and Sinn Fein!

The present writer had left Ballymurphy a decade and a half before these events in 2000. During the early 1980s it was known to everyone and the dogs that the IRA had been heavily penetrated. I remember talking to a close-friend at the time of the shooting of 2 alleged informers in the area about touts and touting (informing in Belfast speak). He told me he would shoot me if he ever suspected me of being a tout. I replied that I would expect him to do so and would have no problem with that. He replied: “Good answer!”

Shortly after this I got into a dispute with one of the “main men” in the area. He accused me of drinking his pint at a local social club. Not wishing to make an enemy of this man I happily bought him another. However, he obviously had developed an antagonism toward me, presumably because of my closeness to others, and started to put it about that I was “probably a tout”. I was given a friendly warning by his comrades that this was the case. I knew the personality and character of this man and the thought even crossed my mind that he might be a British agent himself, sowing seeds of conflict among people. The tout hunters were often the touts themselves. I decided to leave the area and move down the Falls.

I frequented social clubs around Beechmount with two friends, after moving down the Falls. That is where I ran into “Stakeknife” for the first time.

One night (around 1985) we were in the usual local club in Beechmount. I remember chatting about the plight of a fella we used to pass at the security-doors, who was always alone, playing the fruit machines and often the worse for wear. He was instantly recognisable to me as one of the first blanketmen but he was sadly on the way down due to alcohol (He later died alone of his affliction).

I noticed another man in the club and asked my friends who he was. “That’s Scap” one of them told me, “stay away from him”. My friends obviously knew more than I about this short, dark haired man and were clearly discomforted by his presence. Only years later did I put 2 and 2 together and realise that “Scap” was the infamous Freddie Scapattici, or “Stakeknife” to his British friends.

I relate this story to help people understand what West Belfast was during this period and how far we have come – so to speak.

The Kernova Report was one of those British devices that is not what it seems. The media reacted in just the way whatever part of the British State that initiated it expected them to. Relatives of victims were agitated, crocodile tears were shed and there was another chorus of “where are the touts?” It was emphasized that they hadn’t all gone away, y’know, with Freddie.

Finally, it should be noted that the British State has never formally acknowledged that Freddie Scapattici is the person known as “Stakeknife.” They have simply fed the media crocodiles with their meat and let them work away to create havoc, as they do. Meanwhile those pulling the strings in high places can “put up their feet and enjoy the spectacle.”