January 26, 2004 Boycotting Belongs in the Past
by Jude Collins, Irish News

Clifford Smyth, well known Orange commentator, wrote in 1996: "The use of the strategy of boycotting against vulnerable and isolated Protestant communities in Ulster opens up a new front for pan-nationalism, which it will seek to exploit to the full."

He goes on to quote a letter to a newspaper by a Protestant from Pomeroy, who claimed to have been a boycotting victim:

"For years they (Provisional IRA) have tried with the bullet and the bomb to get rid of the Protestant people of Pomeroy, now they have a different method - the boycott. Close down our businesses and push us from the area! They have even smashed up a memorial to our murdered community members. It all adds up to 'no Prods (Protestants) here'."

Mr Smyth goes on to give other instances of boycotting employed against Protestants in Ireland over the years, and quotes Rev Ian Paisley as saying that even Protestants were afraid to be seen shopping or giving their trade to fellow-Protestants. Mr Smyth concludes by denouncing boycotting as a tactic at variance with human rights.

Since such principles, if sincerely held, don't change with time or circumstances, Smyth and Paisley have very probably denounced the picketing of Catholic mourners in Carnmoney Cemetery last year and the destruction of headstones in Milltown Cemetery this year. And I'm sure both men have elbowed their way onto UTV Live and Newsline 6.30 this week, to voice their indignation at last week's statement from the Ulster Political Research Group (UPRG). They're the cadre of social scientists who've replaced the UDP as the voice of the UDA, and who last week urged all Protestants in North Antrim to boycott the businesses of their Catholic neighbours.

In some ways it's surprising that the UPRG felt a need to make that call. For a lot of people living in this corner of the island, boycotting is less considered policy and more instinctive reaction.

My father used to tell how, in the late 1930s, he arranged for a Protestant friend to make his bid for the farm on which we were eventually raised. Had the Protestant owners known a Catholic wanted to buy the land, they almost certainly would have rebuffed the offer.

In some respects exclusiveness still rules. A few years back, Protestants living near the border were being urged to co-operate so that Catholics did not 'come in' and acquire 'Protestant' land. Three days ago a Catholic man told me how last year he had tried my father's land-buying strategy but without success - the Protestant owner got wind of the true bidder's identity and the sale was refused. A few months later the land went to a fellow-Protestant.

But 'commercial apartheid' isn't the sole preserve of Protestants. In towns and villages throughout the north, Catholics too support 'their own,' in the sale of property and in deciding who to patronise with their custom. Sometimes this can lead to difficulty. If as a Protestant you're asked to foreswear drink because the local pub is owned by a Catholic, you may decide such a sacrifice is too hard to swallow. Similarly, not many Catholic pub-owners turn away trade on the Twelfth.

But things are changing. Over the past 10 years many Catholics are developing a more open-minded attitude to their Protestant fellow-countrymen, more Protestant businessmen have begun to put business interests before bigoted instincts, and the arrival of British high street stores has begun to make commercial apartheid increasingly irrelevant.

But not for those forward-thinking social scientists in the UPRG. Like Ian Paisley, they look for a traditional unionist way of doing things. The reason they give for boycotting Catholic businesses in north Antrim is dazzlingly simple:

"The next time you shop or drink, think who you are supporting, because more than 6,000 people voted for a party linked to people who have bombed, shot, killed and maimed people."

This is the kind of curly-brained logic that says 'All mice like cheese, Sean likes cheese, therefore Sean is a mouse.'

The tendency to give commercial support to those you identify with is understandable. Even deliberately bigoted patterns of business, while reprehensible, can be forgiven as springing from insecurity. What stinks to heaven and is unforgivable is an organisation which urges Protestants to see their Catholic neighbours as advocates of violence because they dislike their voting pattern. That's not just bigotry - that's intimidation that scarcely bothers to hide its face.

Which is why Rev Ian Paisley and Mr Clifford Smyth have shouted themselves hoarse over the past week denouncing the UPRG and its tactics - Haven't they?