Guardian
Loyalist terrorist turned Stormont politician who saw opportunity and danger for unionists in the Good Friday agreement
Henry McDonald
Monday January 8, 2007
With his ubiquitous dark suits, bushy moustache and pipe puffing from the side of his mouth, David Ervine resembled an old-style trade union leader or British Labour working class leftwinger rather than a leading figure of an Ulster loyalist terror group.
David Ervine pictured in 1998. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA.
The classic image of the Ulster loyalist was also a negative stereotype: muscle bound, shaven-headed, covered in tattoos, chunky jewellery and chav-style clothing.
When Johnny “Mad Dog” Adair made his play for the leadership of loyalism in the late 1990s, Ervine expressed his bitter frustration at what he saw as an attempt to drag the loyalist cause back into the bar, bookies and brawling culture of the Ulster Protestant underclass.
The problem for the late leader of the Progressive Unionist party was that it was not just Adair’s underlings in the Ulster Defence Association who were all tattooed, testosterone fuelled terrorists, there were still legions of young men in the ranks of the organisation Ervine joined in 1972, the Ulster Volunteer Force, who wanted to strut around basking in that same hard man image.
Ervine wanted to project an entirely different image of Ulster loyalists to the planet, one that was thoughtful, unmenacing and eager to compromise even with their IRA enemies once the peace process began.
For a brief period, roughly between the 1994 IRA and loyalist ceasefires and the end of the 20th century, he almost succeeded.
Ervine, and party colleagues like Billy Hutchinson and Gary McMichael, who represented the UDA’s political wing, were guests at Downing Street, Government Buildings in Dublin and even in the White House.
And even among Catholics in Northern Ireland there was grudging, sometimes deep, respect for the man who helped steer the UVF away from three decades of terrorism towards a political settlement with Irish nationalists and republicans.
For without him there may not have been a UVF ceasefire in October 1994.
Born in East Belfast in 1954, Ervine was deeply marked by the eruption of the Troubles.
He puts down his involvement in loyalist terrorism to Bloody Friday, the day the IRA placed bombs around various arterial routes in Belfast in July 1972 resulting in nine deaths.
Ervine said he watched the bombs exploding all over the city from the vantage point of the top floor of a pub in the east of the city.
The already renascent UVF was recruiting hundreds of angry Protestants into its ranks.
In his own words, Ervine joined the UVF to “return the serve”.
Less than two years later he was in Long Kesh (later the Maze prison) after being caught red-handed with a bomb while driving a stolen car.
Having been stopped by a joint army-police patrol, Ervine was ordered at gunpoint to defuse the bomb himself.
“The army technical officers were summoned and they very quickly tied a rope around my waist and around the army technical officer’s ankle.
“I was sent off into the night with a pistol trained on me to defuse the bomb.”
He did successfully defuse the device and ended up sentenced to eleven years in prison.
Defusing armed loyalism proved a lot more difficult for someone who regarded himself as a reluctant terrorist.
Inside Long Kesh, the founding father of the modern UVF, Gusty Spence, became a mentor.
It was Spence who suggested Ervine get an education.
After gaining O and A levels Ervine went on to graduate from the Open University, which up until the Maze/Long Kesh closed ran courses up to PhD level for inmates.
Ervine again defied the stereotype. Peter Taylor, the BBC television journalist, noted on a visit to the Maze in the 1980s that while republicans fed their minds with education most loyalists used their time inside to pump up their muscles.
On his release, Ervine joined the Progressive Unionist party, the UVF’s political wing.
Meanwhile he was also promoted by Spence through the UVF’s ranks and by the early 1990s was a member of its so-called “Brigade Staff” based at the Eagle, a former chip shop turned loyalist souvenir store that also served as the organisation’s main HQ in Northern Ireland.
As Gerry Adams edged Sinn Féin and the IRA towards the peace process, Ervine recognised both a danger and an opportunity for loyalism.
If the UVF and UDA did not respond to overtures for ceasefires and lasting peace in Northern Ireland then loyalism would be portrayed around the world as the only stumbling block to progress.
Conversely, declaring an end to UVF violence and launching into politics would give loyalists the chance finally to sell their message to the world at large and take the Protestant community - particularly in its urban working class redoubts - out of isolation and insularity.
Ervine also established contacts with the Irish government in 1993.
A chance meeting with a Dublin peace activist and trade unionist, Chris Hudson, in a pub in the Irish capital established a secret link between the Irish government and the UVF leadership.
It also founded a lasting and warm friendship between Hudson and Ervine.
The two men from contrasting backgrounds (Hudson came from a south Dublin republican family) became close friends.
When Hudson converted to Presbyterianism and became a minister in that church, Ervine was one of the first to be invited to his inauguration.
Among loyalist leaders, Ervine was unique in having friends across the border.
He was a life long supporter of Glentoran, the Irish League side based in his native East Belfast.
Among his favourite players was former Glentoran centre-half Harry McCue, from Dublin.
Like Hudson, McCue and his extended family became friends of the former loyalist prisoner.
Ervine’s last public appearance came last Saturday watching his beloved Glentoran win 8-0.
At the time of his death he was an assembly member for East Belfast as well as serving on Belfast city council.
Across the assembly floor and inside the opulent surroundings of Belfast City Hall, Ervine maintained cordial relations with other parties, including Sinn Féin representatives, many of whom the UVF had targeted for assassination during the Troubles.
The PUP leader was convinced that the IRA’s campaign of terror was over but expressed frustration that many in the loyalist community failed to grasp this.
He was equally disappointed that over the last few years the unionist-loyalist electorate haf voted in record numbers for the one party he despised more than any others: the Rev Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionists.
David Ervine leaves behind a wife and two sons.
· David Ervine, politician, born July 21 1953, died January 8 2007
· Henry McDonald is the Observer’s Ireland editor and the co-author of UVF
