ABSTRACT
The inclusion of Jackie McDonald in the programme of the Political Studies Association 62nd Annual International Conference, held in Belfast in April 2012, may have raised some eyebrows. Introduced as a former Ulster Defence Association prisoner, McDonald shared a platform at the Future of Loyalism event alongside academics Peter Shirlow and Graham Spencer, and Rev. Chris Hudson, a Presbyterian minister and mediator between the Irish government and the Ulster Volunteer Force. McDonald’s address to the conference was disarmingly presented as a personal journey, a narrative of the history of the UDA and wider loyalist attitudes to the peace process in Northern Ireland seen resolutely through his own experiences. Personal yet impersonal, McDonald’s address was a carefully framed narrative and an explicit act of ownership and territoriality: his story was analogous to that of the UDA and, implicitly, he was the future of loyalism. McDonald’s appearance at the conference was part of a burgeoning public profile: he was well-known on both sides of the Irish border for having developed a friendship with Irish President Mary McAleese and her husband Martin; in a carefully choreographed press conference he was one of two senior UDA figures who read the organisation’s statement announcing that its armed wing, the Ulster Freedom Fighters, would end all paramilitary activity in 2007; and in May 2011 he was at the head of ‘a delegation of UDA chiefs’ present at Islandbridge War Memorial in Dublin when Queen Elizabeth II laid a wreath as part of her historic visit to the Republic of Ireland.2 McDonald’s move to the forefront of the UDA was not without its tensions. In a series of bloody struggles over territory, control and reputations, which convulsed paramilitary loyalism in the decade following the Belfast Agreement of 1998, the faction associated with McDonald has seen off various challengers. Yet, resentments clearly linger, and bubble to the surface from time to time: in the summer of 2012 McDonald was forced to backtrack from comments perceived to be critical of the Orange Order after condemnation from other leading groupings within his own organisation.3 Despite sporadic disputes of this sort, McDonald remains the most high profile ‘brigadier’ within the UDA, continues to represent the organisation publicly and
in the media, and was recently a prominent voice distancing the UDA from violence sparked by protests surrounding the flying of the Union flag outside Belfast City Hall. Clearly still carrying some weight within his organisation, McDonald offers an illuminating lens through which to examine the development of paramilitary loyalism during the Northern Ireland conflict and its peace process. As a member of the UDA for almost 40 years his experiences in some ways mirror the wider narrative of the organisation, from its roots in defenderism and community structures, through increasing involvement in offensive political violence, to increasing criminality and the challenges of a post-conflict yet still communally divided society.
