[Kilsally]

Failings, yes, but a fascinating individual history

Gusty Spence
by Roy Garland
2001


Reviewed by T L Thousand

Alternately captivating and infuriating, Gusty Spence by Roy Garland, is ultimately a must-read, riveting look inside the mind of the man most people blame for starting the modern-day Troubles.

News of an authorized biography of Gusty (a one-name, loyalist cult celebrity), the one man who knows (if anyone does) who was or wasn't involved in anything that ever happened, likely sent shivers down more than a few spines.

On that level of expectation, Garland clearly disappoints. The events most people want to know about -- 1966, the CLMC ceasefire, the Good Friday Agreement or the loyalist feud of last summer - barely receive mention.

We are feted with the incredible details of Gusty's impoverished upbringing on the loyalist Shankill Road, as well as the behind-the-wire experiences and political evolution of this driving force behind the UVF of the late-'60s, early-'70s. It's a feast of information gleaned from intimate diaries, personal papers and private correspondence. But one still comes away feeling cheated.

Gusty Spence is, however, a fascinating individual history.

Soon after his life-sentence conviction for the political murder of Peter Ward in 1966, Gusty began to question not only the historical and political circumstances that led to his imprisonment, but also the need for a physical-force strategy to win the war.

Humbled by his own ignorance of history and what he saw as his political acquiescence, Gusty spent the next 35 years educating himself and others. At a time when people were murdered for less, Gusty reached across the political divide, opened doors, challenged minds and shattered taboos.

He went on hunger strike for political status, built coalitions with republicans to deal with issues of mutual concern, educated his men, and not only met, but developed friendships with "rabid" nationalists, including Cathal Goulding and Cardinal Tomas O Fiaich.

In fact, Gusty probably did more good for the Northern peace process than anyone else. And Garland is not hesitant to let Gusty make his own case.

Unfortunately, that is precisely where Garland fails Gusty. The book is too interview-reliant. At no point does Garland really step back from his transcriber role to offer an analysis or provide the historical context within which to judge the loyalist legend.

The storytelling is all Gusty's. Garland quotes extensively and often from published material to back up Gusty's telling of a tale, but after 100 pages, the selectivity begins to smack of a whitewash. One feels compelled to question Gusty's version of the truth simply because the author never does.

Where Garland does assert himself as author, his care not to offend loyalists offends common sense. He attempts to downplay UVF killings of 1972 - the most violent year of the conflict on record -- as being "relatively low". He also tries to pass off many UVF murders as mainly "the work of notorious gangs like the Shankill Butchers, who were out of control" -- that "the progressive leadership of the UVF" opposed sectarian killing.

But, the military strategy of the UVF in 1972 was to kill Catholics. Its '73-'74 southern bombing campaign was meant to attack ordinary Irish men and women. In fact, every time the UVF's Brigade Staff turned "right of centre", the military strategy was "target Catholics".

These historical trip-ups, especially for a book so bound to be oft-quoted, are major. (I won't even touch the debate about how one man's "coup" can be another man's "misunderstanding".)

Garland says Gusty retired from his command as the UVF's Long Kesh CO in 1978. Gusty has always maintained he retired on Armistice Day, November 11, 1977.

Garland yields to the popular notion that until September 1985, the Progressive Unionist Party had no policy. Not true. The PUP's first policy paper, Proposals for a New Initiative to Achieve Peace and Democracy in Northern Ireland, was published in May 1977 and hand-delivered to then-Secretary of State, Roy Mason, all the major Northern political parties, and to members of the British House of Commons and the House of Lords.

A New Initiative (later renamed Sharing Responsibility) called for a cessation of violence, amnesty for prisoners, inclusive negotiations with representatives of all paramilitary organizations attending, a devolved government with 10 executive committees and withdrawal of British troops to barracks - a virtual blue-print for the Good Friday Agreement. It has been the backbone of the PUP's platform ever since.

With respect to the '90s peace process, loyalist contact with the Irish Government began in 1991 at a conference in Amsterdam, not in 1993 in Dublin or in Belfast. The first PUP delegation to meet with American officials arrived in Washington in late 1979, 15 years ahead of Garland's timeline.

Gusty's contribution to the development of progressive unionist politics and his role in the Northern peace process is undeniably crucial. But Garland's vanilla-cream approach to chronicling Gusty's vision and courage doesn't do him justice. Gusty's name and visage has always inspired controversy. In a once-in-a-lifetime biography, it would have been refreshing to understand why.

November 8, 2001