In any organisation you get your idealists and some individuals who just want to use the

In any organisation, you get your idealists and some individuals who just want to use the organisation. Take the American army in the Second World War, do you mean to say no soldier ever got involved in the black market? Or even consider the spiv in Dad’s Army.’I caught myself smiling as I tried to imagine Private Walker in Dad’s Army wearing a balaclava, and carrying an automatic weapon But the smile didn’t last long The challenge for the loyalist paramilitaries is formidable. The world waits to see if they will respond in kind to the IRA ceasefire. However, to do so requires a degree of co-ordination and consensus that so far has not been much in evidence.

The perceived pan-nationalist front poses a challenge of potentially gigantic proportions to the loyalist community. Now, the big question is, could they match politically this emergent force. Could they, in fact, get their act together?I left David Ervine to take some soundings myself of grassroots opinion from the loyalist paramilitary hinterland of the Shankill. Here I found the same deeply held concerns about the ceasefire. This seemed to be connected to a general feeling of anxiety about the future, which in turn often boiled down to the ultimate question of loyalist unity and strength.I TALKED to Robert first. He said that he himself was not a member of any organisation, but that most of his friends were. He had survived an Irish National Liberation Army attack, when he says he was mistaken for a UVF member.

‘They thought because all my mates were in the organisation, that I must be. That’s the way their minds seems to work.’I asked first about his personal reaction to the ceasefire ‘It’s dead on It’s a step in the right direction I know a lot of people are very worried about it though. They’re saying that some deal has been done between the Government and Sinn Fein Our so-called politicians are divided on it. I know that Major says that nothing’s going on, but he might not know nothing. I wouldn’t trust that Mayhew (Sir Patrick, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland) as far as I could throw him Our ones are just getting fed up with it. They’re sick of the IRA getting their own way all the time, but in the end our ones will just say ‘Go to hell’.