Profile David Ervine -While his party's connections with the UVF were in the spotlight this week, David Ervine's focus is firmly on parliamentary democracy, writes Dan Keenan, Northern News Editor
David Ervine is a man anxious to leave the past behind, but it's a difficult task. The most progressive of unionist leaders, he finds himself this week newly shackled to the loyalist paramilitarism he strives to end. And it frustrates him.
The former UVF man, now 52, signed up as a member of the UUP Northern Assembly group on Monday while retaining his leadership of the tiny UVF-linked Progressive Unionist Party, provoking DUP wrath and accusations of hypocrisy from nationalists.
The move would entitle unionists to an additional ministerial nomination at Sinn Féin's expense in any new Northern Ireland executive at Stormont under the complex d'Hondt formula for sharing out the seats around the government table.
To his detractors the move appears almost Jesuitical in its complexity, but for Ervine the truth is much simpler than the critics would have it.
Explaining himself on Tuesday, as Assembly members, minus Sinn Féin, gathered for their first debate in three-and-a-half years, he said he had done the right thing "legally, morally; and from the point of view of my own community, anything that takes a [ ministerial] seat off Sinn Féin is pretty good news where I come from.
"I'm very confident about the decision I have made and the popularity of it in my community. I'm sick to my back teeth of being called a terrorist, an apologist - that's people's point of view and they're entitled to that. The fact is that I am an elected representative and I'm entitled to do exactly what I've done. Frankly from my own point of view - good political move," he says with a wink.
He speaks defiantly, almost pugnaciously, as if working-class loyalist socialists cut deals with what he calls "big house" unionists led by Sir Reg Empey, a knight of the realm, every day of the week.
His unapologetic voice echoes impressively around the gilt and marble of Stormont's Great Hall outside the Assembly chamber. He seems naturally and simply eloquent - a born actor made for the political theatre on such a grand stage.
It was not always so, however. It has been a long, complex and often dangerous journey from teenage vigilante on his native Chamberlain Street in the shadows of Harland and Wolff cranes, via the UVF and prison, to the negotiation table around which the Belfast Agreement was concluded was .
He was once high on the IRA's death list and probably still faces some danger from the loyalist paramilitaries who are not on ceasefire and have yet to make the ideological leaps made by republicans.
He is the youngest son in a family of five, with a Paisley-supporting mother and a socialist father (figure that one out), both non-attending Presbyterians.
His safe, secure and warm upbringing was shattered by the Troubles, he says. The few Catholic families on his street moved out and the young Ervine formulated his politics.
Always a fighter, he took on other boys and the system at Orangefield school. The response was not to punish him with discipline, but to enrol him as an enforcer of it. Ervine became a class monitor and his behaviour problem dissolved. He flourished on the sports field.
HE BEARS THE imprint of his left-leaning father, Walter - an iron turner with an impressive British army record - much more than his politically fundamentalist mother, Dolly.
His dad, a lover of both cricket and hurling, thought nothing of crossing the Lagan to Casement Park in republican west Belfast or to take part in political talk-in seminars at Clonard Monastery on the Falls.
The young David, like his father, spurned the Orange Order, but won't tolerate all Protestants being dismissed as bigoted automatons. He admits there is a Protestant siege mentality, but the best way to deal with that is to "lift the siege", he often repeats.
He resisted the paramilitary lure throughout the early years of the Troubles until his 19th birthday in July 1972 when the IRA exploded more than 20 bombs across Belfast in the course of an hour, killing nine and injuring some 130.
Young Ervine approached a UVF figure known to him in a pub and simply said "I'm ready". He was a covert volunteer: neither those on Chamberlain Street nor his wife Jeanette knew of his involvement until he was arrested transporting a bomb along the loyalist Newtownards Road two years later.
He was held in the gruesome Victorian damp of Crumlin Road jail before being sentenced to 11 years at Long Kesh.
The paramilitary compounds at the old "Kesh" penned in prisoners, but allowed them more or less unfettered control over their own affairs. The experience in Compound 18 transformed Ervine, due in no small measure to the guidance of another loyalist leader Gusty Spence. Prisoners had time, space and what Ervine calls "oxygen".
He argued politics, sat O Levels and went on to study humanities, arts and social sciences.
ON RELEASE IN 1980, he was offered a meagre grant (£48 a week) to study at university, but turned it down. He says it was payback time for his beleaguered family and he looked for work.
He became a milkman and soon got his own round before opening a small shop on east Belfast's My Lady's Road. Throughout, his pursuit of politics remained, as Spence, the father-figure, forecast it would. He joined the tiny fledgling Progressive Unionist Party and stood for Belfast City Council in 1985, defying IRA death threats in doing so.
That year saw the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement by Garret FitzGerald and Margeret Thatcher, which made official a consultative role for the Irish Government in the direct rule of Northern Ireland by the British.
Mainstream unionism became hysterical and Ervine says he learned a lot from the antics of the unionist leaders whom he accuses of using loyalist paramilitaries as sabres to rattle when it suited. He saw the shifting political grounds and denounced the big unionist parties for what he saw as a failure to lead. Then, as now, he viewed them as hypocrites.
His political foundations withstood the shock of the Shankill bombing of 1993 and he is quietly proud of his role in helping to bring about the - now broken - loyalist ceasefire in October 1994, just a year later.
AFTER EIGHT YEARS of tortuous and tedious politicking since the Belfast Agreement, Ervine has little doubt as to what needs to be done now as the clock ticks towards the two governments' imposed deadline of November 24th for the agreement to establish an executive including Sinn Féin and the DUP at Stormont.
"It's about time we moved on," he says. "All of the things we desire [ under the Belfast Agreement] have not yet been put in place. Some of them have. The next phase of the process is parliamentary democracy. Now let's get on with the parliamentary democracy."
His clear, wide-angle view of the political situation is not spoiled by what he sees as the nit-picking criticism of the past week. Nor does he allude to forthcoming reports by ceasefire watchdog, the Independent Monitoring Commission, and Nuala O'Loan's Police Ombudsman's office into UVF activity which will buffet his single-minded approach.
"The work must go on. We're in a deep political crisis - but it's almost pleasurable to have the deep political crisis because it's the first in my lifetime that wasn't accompanied by structured violence. Good work has been done by republican leaderships and now by loyalist leaderships. Let's hope that we can bring that to a conclusion, not for the sake of David Ervine, not so that the media won't chastise me for being an ex-bomber or an ex-terrorist - but because this community needs it."
Who is he? David Ervine, leader and sole Assembly member for the UVF-linked Progressive Unionist Party. He's probably still the Republic's favourite unionist.
Why is he in the news? This week he signed up with the Ulster Unionist Assembly group in the Assemblyin order to boost their numbers and be in a position to claim an additional ministerial seat in a future power-sharing Executive. He views it as a "good move" for unionism. Nationalists believe Ervine has been too clever by far and that the UUP is being two-faced about doing business with those with paramilitary associations.
The ErvineFile
Most appealing characteristic? Straight talking. What you see is pretty much what you get.
Least appealing characteristic? Straight talking - right between the eyes.
Most likely to say? "I'm sick of being called a terrorist. Let's get on with the politics."
Least likely to say? "Not an inch"