The long road to peace

ROY Garland grew up on the Shankhill Road in Belfast with parents who were Evangelical Christens. While he admits his upbringing was normal, it was a very strict one that revolved around religion.
“Growing up, my life was centred on the church. We went up to five times on a Sunday, Monday night was a fellowship meeting, Tuesday night was a prayer meeting, Wednesday night was a boys’ auxiliary meeting, Thursday night was sometimes another meeting, Friday night was the boys’ brigade. Saturday night was the only night we had free and not always then, so my world was centred around that. I actually spent two years at a bible college in England studying the bible full-time. I was brought up in a different world. I can remember going to a Baptist Sunday School, a Brethern Sunday school, a Methodist Sunday School, a Presbyterian Sunday School and the church my father was involved in which was the Church of God, a holiness church,” he explained.
However, while religion was something that was an intricate part of life for Roy, politics did not factor until later years.
“Really I hadn’t much interest in politics, my father frowned upon politics. I did have uncles who would have been pretty radical in their politics, one was a communist, that was on my mother’s side, another was a socialist. My father’s family was very Orange and that was the other side of it but he left the Orange Order in the 1950s when I was a young teenager. I did go to Orange meetings once or twice as a child. I didn’t like them. I didn’t understand them, I actually thought they were childish,” he revealed.
Roy’s interest in politics and in particular, unionist politics “was really motivated by fear that we were being taken over by the IRA”.
“That was central in the 1950s. My parents told me stories of the siege of Derry and also of the stories of persecution from the Bible with which we identified so there was a very strong sense of us being the victims. In the middle of all this, I became quite right wing in my politics. I joined the Orange Order and I went to Ian Paisley’s church. I joined the UUP all because I was told we were under threat. I became a latent figure in the young Unionist side, I was out there pleading the cause and in the middle of all that, I began to question what we were doing and the point of it,” he said.
While there was a turning point, there was no one action or speech that made his mind up to turn away. It was when he heard some very extreme views that he began to question what was going on around him.
“I had got into this without knowing anything about politics, just knowing that we were threatened and that the IRA was out to destroy us. There was one particular thing that got me into all that and it was when an evangelical preacher had said that the Protestant faith was dying out in Ireland and that the IRA had gone communist. That was the old IRA, that wasn’t quite true but there was an element of truth in that. There was a number of things that led me to questioning, for instance some of the attitudes of the people who I was associated with who believed in a Protestant ascendancy. When I heard that word and thought about it I thought I believed in democracy. Then another time when they referred to loyalists as canon fodder, I really started to question everything. But what saved my bacon, because it was quite dicey for me, was talking to Loyalists, to UVF, who were also going through a similar process of rethinking and questioning. So when I told them what I was thinking, I walked out of there and I left the UUP and the Orange Order, the whole lot. But I found support from Loyalists,” Roy continued.
He explained it was a dangerous time for such views to be expressed openly and having left the UUP and Orange Order in 1971, he did have to keep quiet, at least for a while.
“I was actually under threat. I kept most of my views to myself. I was warned to keep my head down by people who were in the UVF but who supported me, because what I had said supported what they were thinking. That sort of thing encouraged me. I did a lot of things quietly and also writing anonymously to the local papers and attacking some of the extremists,” he recounted.
In 1991, he was asked to rejoin the UUP, which he said he was a bit affronted by, as he had such a bad experience. He thought about it for about a year before deciding to rejoin the party.
“I could have kept my mouth shut, I could have become a politician when I went back, the door was wide open but as an officer in the branch, I went to the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation in Dublin. I went to represent unionist policy, with the support of Loyalists and I was well received but I was disciplined by the UUP for doing so,” he said.
In the late 1990s, Roy went on to share a platform with Martin McGuinness but he explained a photograph that appeared where he was pictured with Gerry Adams and the former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds caused particular consternation within the UUP.
“I visited the opening of a Sinn Féin office, which was an odd thing for a unionist to do but I wanted peace and reconciliation and I believed that the time had come for it so I did, but somebody snapped a photograph of it. So in the second page of the newsletter, which is the most virulent hard -line unionist newspaper, my picture with Gerry Adams appeared. So I was brought before another disciplinary hearing. I was smiling at Gerry Adams, I was supposed to scowl at him you see. They were really annoyed with me, one of them said to me ‘a relative of mine was killed by the IRA and you were standing there smiling with Gerry Adams’. They just said you mustn’t do this again and I said nothing and I just continued as I was. I was treated like a pariah, one man actually growled at me at a Unionist Association meeting,” Roy recalled.
He explained he was determined and support of loyalists and people like David Ervine gave him encouragement to continue. Having worked on peace and reconciliation over a 10-year period, Roy was instrumental in forming a cross-community group where he and other activists brought Orangemen, loyalists, unionists, republicans and dissidents together.
He was also the only person to be present in Stormont when the Good Friday Agreement was reached who wasn’t a participant, getting in with the help of a few central political figures.
“I was able to wander around and I went into the unionist room, I was nearly thrown out of the unionist room. I thought ‘oh this is my party, I’ll go in and sit down’. I was sitting there and someone said ‘what’s he doing here’ and I said ‘it’s alright I’ll go’. While I was there, I think it was the very first time I spoke to David Trimble. I was walking along the corridor after I was more or less thrown out and I hear this voice, ‘there’s that guy that writes the articles’,” he recalled.
Earlier this year, Roy resigned from the Unionist Party ahead of further disciplinary proceedings. “The reason I left was the party formed a link with the Conservative Party and I opposed that very strongly because I felt they did that as a means of avoiding what they have to do and that is to make peace with Catholics. They felt I was an odd unionist that I would want that sort of thing but they wouldn’t admit to that. I believe in people working together. It is a new world and if we want peace then we have to work together for everybody. I write in The Irish News every week and I attacked them on this and one of them wrote a letter to the paper. Then eventually I got a letter to say there was to be discipline and so I wrote a reply and they didn’t acknowledge the letter for four weeks. At the end of the four weeks, I said I’d had enough. They were going to let this drop and I’m still going to be in so I resigned. I decided that was the thing to do. It was just a few months ago,” he added.
Despite being asked to return by some Unionist Party members, he has dismissed this as a possibility.
“The party is nowhere, they have no MPs elected and they’re a mess. There is a whole struggle going on in the party as to what way they want to go and I want them to take a really strong line and go in the direction of reconciliation and I don’t think that is going to happen. So I’m going to take a step back. There are things I want to say that I haven’t said yet. I’m writing in The Irish News and I’m saying things there but there are other things I need to say,” he revealed.
While the path has been long and arduous, Roy Garland said the future does look bright, “We want a better society and we are moving that way and I’m very happy with what we’ve got.”