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

530 Pages·2012·6.65 MB·English

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