“Meet the unelected, outspoken loyalist who even the DUP fears,” trumpets the headline in the Irish Times, introducing the paper of record’s profile on loyalist agitator Jamie Bryson.
Finally, I hear you say, a piece looking at the notorious flag protestor who recently warned the British government that “[Edward] Carson raised an army!” and once said that he’d “rather choke on [his] own blood in NI than live on streets paved with gold in a United Ireland”. At last, we have an article investigating how a man who spends an inordinate amount of time on social media railing against Lundies and “the latte-drinking liberal elite” (not to be confused with the shady “nationalist elite network”) wields such influence over political unionism.
In reality, the Irish Times profile does little to interrogate the corrosive impact of Bryson’s regurgitated fundamentalist never-never rhetoric on Irish politics and is even mildly complimentary, portraying him as some sort of bookish strategist and talking up his “clout” without really examining its provenance.
We are told that the teenager Bryson “was precocious, reading books on theology, the Anglo-Irish Agreement, the Belfast Agreement and constitutional law, although he also had time for football and some ‘laddish’ interests.” We even hear how he supposedly takes his lead from Napoleon Bonaparte: “There is a card on his mantelpiece in Bangor with a quote from Napoleon: ‘Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action comes stop thinking and go in.’ It’s a maxim Bryson has diligently followed.”
Stop thinking, indeed.
“I’m a unionist before I’m a democrat… it’s the union at all costs”
Jamie Bryson
In October 2021, broadcaster Stephen Nolan told an exasperated viewer that one of the reasons he persists with platforming Bryson on his BBC radio and television programmes is because Bryson is a participant in “the democratic process”. Mr Nolan may be surprised, then, to learn that Bryson breezily admits to the Irish Times that he would “never” accept the democratic outcome of a border poll in the event that the majority voted for Irish unity. Even DUP stalwart Sammy Wilson has said he’d accept the will of the people in a border poll. We can reasonably ask, which other democratic votes won’t Bryson accept? Why stop at Irish unity?
Bryson’s extreme position in this regard is hardly a revelation, but it’s an important detail that is perhaps not emphasised enough. Last year, when asked on BBC Radio Ulster if he was a democrat, Bryson laughed off the question and said, “of course I’m a democrat, but I’m a unionist before I’m a democrat… it’s the union at all costs.” Can one seriously claim to be a democrat if they freely declare that they would not accept a democratic vote that did not go their way?
Nothing is written 