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The Ulster Unionist and Afrikaner Nationalist Coalitions in Growth, Maturity and Decay Alexander PDF

530 Pages·2012·6.65 MB·English
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Preview The Ulster Unionist and Afrikaner Nationalist Coalitions in Growth, Maturity and Decay Alexander

COVENANTED PEOPLES: The Ulster Unionist and Afrikaner Nationalist Coalitions in Growth, Maturity and Decay Alexander Johnston Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Ph.D degree, in the Department of Politics, University of Natal, Durban, 1991 DECLARATION I declare that except where acknowledged by appropriate forms of scholarly reference, the research and writing of this thesis have been entirely my own original work. ALEXANDER JOHNSTON 24.11.93 ACKNOWLEpGMENTS The staff of the Linen Hall Library, .Belfast, were most helpful in providing professional assistance and a pleasant atmosphere in which to work during two research visits (1987 and 1991). These trips were made possible by the granting of sabbatical leave and financial assistance by the University of Natal. The staff of Queen's University library (Belfast) and of the British Library (newspaper division), Colindale, were also helpful. Two early drafts of chapters were presented as papers at meetings of the South African Political Science Association. I am grateful for critical comments by colleagues on these papers, notably by Alf stadler and Herman Giliomee. My colleagues in the Department of politics, University of Natal, Durban have been very supportive. The good grace with which they have tolerated a certain amount of flexibility over routine administrative work, is only one indication among many of how academic productivity is not a matter of individual labours alone. Since becoming head of department, Professor Mervyn Frost has made it his highest priority to encourage an atmosphere conducive to research and writing. I shall be very glad if he regards this thesis as evidence of his success, especially since as its supervisor, he has unfailingly shown confidence in me and the subject. My wife, Anthea, has always been able to find extra reserves of confidence and energy when my own were temporarily exhausted. Her support, especially during the last difficult months of writing and editing this thesis, has been essential to its completion. CONTENTS PAGE Acknowledgements PART ONE: THE GROWTH OF THE ULSTER UNIONIST AND AFRIKANER NATIONALIST COALITIONS Chapter One: Introduction 1 Chapter Two: Class and the formation of the Ulster unionist and Afrikaner nationalist coalitions 21 Chapter Three: The Political Mythology of Ulster Unionism and Afrikaner Nationalism 91 PART TWO: THE MATURITY OF THE ULSTER UNIONIST AND AFRIKANER NATIONALIST COALITIONS Chapter Four: State, Society and Party in Northern Ireland under unionist rule and South Africa under nationalist rule 13,4; Chapter Five: The Crises of Ulster Unionism and Afrikaner Nationalism 177 Chapter Six: Crisis and Reform in Northern Ireland and South Africa 245 PART THREE: THE DECAY OF THE ULSTER UNIONIST AND AFRIKANER NATIONALIST COALITIONS Chapter Seven: The Break Up of the Afrikaner nationalist coalition 294 Chapter Eight: The Break Up of the Ulster unionist coalition 358 Chapter Nine: Comparative Perspectives on the Break Up of the Ulster Unionist and Afrikaner nationalist coalitions 434 Chapter Ten Conclusions 480 Bibliography PART ONE THE GROWTH OF THE ULSTER UNIONIST AND AFRIKANER NATIONALIST COALITIONS 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Comparing societies in Conflict The comparison of societies is one of the staples of social science, yet it is one of the most problematic practices in the profession. The attractions of comparative studies are not hard to find. The most basic is probably no more than this; to compare is an inescapably human preoccupation - an intellectual reflex. Added to this, the morphology of societies in the last hundred years or so has displayed an exciting and intriguing dissonance between integration and the reassertion of diversity. Shaped by imperialism and the various transformations for which 'modernisation' is a convenient shorthand term, the world has shown signs of developing into a single political system, a global society and a world economy. At the same time, and often in deliberate reaction to these developments, the consciousness of national, ethnic, racial, religious and other forms of diversity has mocked too hasty presumptions of confidence in their ineluctable progress. This dissonance between the development of uniformity and the re-statement of singularity helps to fuel several of the most durable conflicts of our time, which appear to share pathological visible with depressing regularity to the most ~ymptoms casual television viewer. These conflicts co-exist clumsily 2 with a common global discourse of democracy, self determination and human rights, a common political structure in the territorial (nominally 'nation') state, and an increasingly common experience of global patterns of production and consumption. The competitive juxtaposition of shared and singular elements in conflict situations is a powerful stimulus to comparative studies It is against such a background that opportunities for comparative study of Northern Ireland and South Africa present themselves. Both these societies are marked by their histories as colonies of settlement. The consequences of conquest and dispossession have made themselves felt in discrimination and exclusion, material and status inequalities and subjective identities of settler and native. These in turn are codified in rival claims to self determination which are pursued through similar discourses of partition, accommodation and assimilation. Endemic political violence in both societies has displayed dimensions of armed struggle, counter-insurgency and communal hostility. Not surprisingly, each similarity is diluted by differences of nuance or degree. Among these are the respective distances from and nature of the relationship to the metropole and metropolitan influence. The demographic make up and nature of economic resources available for exploitation are quite different in each case. There is sharp divergence in the degree to which each has been an 'international issue'. Forms of identity and claims to self determination contradict as well as complement each other. Such differences prompt understandable fears that in comparative studies each national component may receive less than its due. Naturally enough, those who have established a degree of mastery over single cases (and perhaps who have 3 considerable intellectual and even emotional capital tied up in them) are sceptical of what they see as glib and self interested comparisons by those who probably know less at 1 primary level and first hand. Similarity and singularity co-exist confusingly, emphasising seductive comparative possibilities at one moment and sizable obstructions at the next. The issue is clouded further by the fact that comparison is not always a disinterested activity. A useful strategy for an isolated and unpopular regime is to put itself 'in perspective' by comparison with other conflicts involving similar (or allegedly similar) elements ethnicity and rival l~ke nationalisms. South Africa is a case in point. Something of this sort was certainly going on in the rash of comparative concern about 'plural societies', in conferences, projects and publications funded by Department of Information front organisations in the mid-1970s, before such practices were revealed in the 'Muldergate' scandal. In direct lineage from these dubious enterprises, the South African government's attempts to market consociationalism in the 1980s as a panacea for the ills of 'divided societies' are worthy of mention. As a result, South African opposition movements have tended to be suspicious of any comparative dimension to the study of South African conflicts, no matter how disinterested or potentially fruitful. Anything which undermined the view of apartheid as sui generis and uniquely evil put at risk the gains of hard-fought political struggle. This has not prevented others claiming honorific affinity with South African liberation movements themselves. Identifying Northern Ireland Protestants as a 'labour aristocracy'; 4 .. allowed the Adams axis to provide an internationally appealing version of their struggle. Just as the IRA and Sinn Fein were presented as the equivalents of the ANC and the PLO, the very substantial obstacle to a united Ireland represented by the Protestant community was identified with 'privileged colon' reaction from Algeria to Israel and 2 South Africa. Indeed the South African comparison is one that Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams is fond of deploying,3 although such unfavourable juxtapositions of Ulster Protestants and Afrikaners have also come from other, less predictable sources. For instance, a first secretary at the British embassy in Washington caused a furore by comparing Ulster Protestants to Afrikaners at a meeting of representatives of investment organisations in Boston: He said of the Ulster Protestants: "They have a lot in common with the - it sounds unfair to say this but it's true - with the Afrikaners in South Africa or the Zionists in the kibbutzes in Israel •• and they have embarrassed successive British governments by proclaiming their loyalty to the Crown and to the Union. n4 In fact, such argument by analogy is a staple in ~he discourse of conflict in and around societies like Northern Ireland and South Africa. Participants in such conflicts habitually try to gain moral purchase by investing their own cause with reflected legitimacy, or an opponent's with 5 second-hand opprobrium. In a sense, this phenomenon is one of the best arguments for comparative studies of societies in conflict, and one of the best counter-arguments to the custodians of singularity. Comparison is a fact of life in societies like Northern Ireland and South Africa; politicians do it,6 journalists do it, the person in the 7 street does it. As a result, there is all the more reason 5 for academic social scientists to do .it systematically and well. Perspectives in the Literature Despite the intellectual challenges which are clearly signalled in surface similarities between the two societies and the imperative of evaluating widely held popular assumptions about parallels between them, with notable n •• exceptions, scholars have been curiously reluctant to embark on systematic comparisons which aim at drawing conclusions by viewing South Africa, Northern Ireland and Israel 8 togethern The literature is indeed quite sparse. Self • consciously comparative writing on South Africa and Northern 9 Ireland embraces journalistic accounts and articles by lO academic writers in journalistic format as well as longer l1 more systematic treatments. The latter include overviews l2 and those with more specific focus. Even without explicit comparison, the juxtaposition of case studies from Northern Ireland and South Africa in thematically-organised collections suggests affinity and comparison.13 The collection edited by Giliomee and Gagiano includes some directly comparative chapters and others which focus individually on Northern Ireland, South Africa and Israel. The comparative dimension has two principal thrusts. The first is the conceptual framework of 'divided societies' which permeates many of the chapters. Indeed its influence extends to those contributions which express scepticism about its applicability across the board, giving the collection a useful dimension of internal debate. The second is provided by the notion of 'settler societies' which strongly influences several of the chapters.l4

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political mobilisation of both groups or communities along ethnic lines. See O'Meara, D. "The Afrikaner Broederbond 1927-1948 •• " in Journal of
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