Statement by the Communist Party of Ireland
on the death of David Ervine
The National Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Ireland wishes to add its voice to those who have expressed regret and sadness at the death of David Ervine, leader of the Progressive Unionist Party, on Monday 8 January. David was a man who had spent time in prison for his paramilitary activities and who deeply regretted the violence of this past. He played a positive and courageous role in the peace process, condemning paramilitary action as well as those ranters and ragers who encouraged such actions whilst at the same time distancing themselves from the consequences.
It was David who said, “We can fight all day and all night, but in the end of the day all that does is create victims and greater bitterness and greater anger, and we have a hamster-wheel cycle of continuum of violence and hatred and bitterness.” At the time of the ceasefires in 1994 he, along with other ex-prisoners, said that they wanted something different for their children and grandchildren from the endless round of sectarianism and violence. This was re-emphasised when the IRA broke its ceasefire and the Canary Wharf bombing took place but the loyalist ceasefires held.
David, along with Billy Hutchinson, was elected to the peace talks and later to the Northern Ireland Assembly, of which he was still a member; he was also elected to the Belfast City Council in 1997 after playing a leading role in the Progressive Unionist Party for a number of years. During the peace talks the Communist Party of Ireland welcomed the role that the PUP were playing and their subsequent support for the Belfast Agreement.
David Ervine was from the Protestant section of the working class in east Belfast. He knew the conditions that workers lived and struggled under, and he had a commitment to another kind of society, one that would give everyone a better life—to socialism. He began a university degree in the Maze Prison and completed this when he came out; however, he always recognised Gusty Spence for the part that he played, encouraging David to see the road to real political work, class politics, to challenge sectarianism, and to work for peace. He condemned those people who “come from places where drawing-room sectarianism is at its worst . . . They have luxuriated and benefited as society, divided more and more, crashes on the rocks.”
Davie was a personal friend of some CPI members, and in the late 1990s he was welcomed into the Communist Party premises to speak at the Betty Sinclair Education Forum. At that meeting he expressed his admiration for Betty and the politics that she stood for.
Undoubtedly David Ervine will be missed in the political life of the North and, more importantly, by his family and friends, to whom we send our sincere condolences. |