Unionism no longer sure what it is selling
Posted by Jim on March 4, 2018
The civil rights movement threw Unionism into confusion and the Anglo-Irish Agreement propelled it into chaos.
Stormont’s collapse last year placed it firmly in crisis and just when it thought things could not get worse, the EU this week suggested re-locating The North’s post-Brexit customs border to the Irish Sea.
In 50 years, Unionism has declined from having a monopoly in northern politics to being unsure of what it is selling, uninformed about its customer base and apparently devoid of a future business plan.
For almost a century, it has had an in-built majority, in a state specifically designed to protect that majority. If Unionism took the wrong turn when Terence O’Neill said in 1968, “Ulster stands at the cross roads”, it has taken every possible wrong road since then. Another wrong turning and it risks political insolvency.
So what exactly does modern Unionism stand for? How did it get into such a weakened position and where, if anywhere, does it go from here?
Although it is conservative in nature, Unionism is not quite a political philosophy. It tends to be more a state of mind. For centuries Ireland has been subject to various overseas influences, invasions and plantations, but in most cases the new arrivals gradually merged into the Irish way of life.
The Anglo-Normans blended seamlessly into Irish society. The Tudor plantation of Munster effectively failed and more recent arrivals from Africa will soon be among our finest GAA sportsmen and women.
The one exception was the Ulster plantation, which reflected religious rivalry from the start. Although radical Presbyterianism in the 18th century offset some of that division, it later converted to Unionism, mainly through the influence of the Orange Order.
Unionism opposed Home Rule, even to the extent of taking up arms, but it later settled for exactly that when Irish partition gave Unionists their own state. However, the Stormont government opted for political repression and anti-Catholic discrimination.
In response, the Nationalist Party sat silent in Stormont while the IRA, in Peadar O’Donnell’s words, formed fours in dark corners in fields. When the civil rights movement demanded basic democratic rights for all (including unionists) unionism came under pressure for the first time. Repression ultimately destabilized the state.
Terence O’Neill’s response was to have tea with reverend mothers in convent school parlours. Arlene Foster used the same tactic last year (although there are fewer reverend mothers these days) to show how Irish language-friendly she was. (Unionism is not good at coming up with fresh ideas.)
Its present weakened state dates from the misuse of Stormont’s one-party rule and the failure of successive Unionist leaders to move away from its overriding adherence to political dominance since then. Although it had absolute power, it combined religious elitism with a political siege mentality, encapsulated in that self-imprisoning phrase, ‘Not an inch’.
O’Neill failed to respond to the civil rights demands, because he allowed himself to become a prisoner of Paisley’s crude anti-Catholicism. Paisley was not a mainstream unionist, just a religious bigot who, because he was never faced down by a single unionist leader, distorted unionism into something resembling a quasi-religious cult, with him as leader.
When he gave an inch in his thirst for power, he was soon dumped by the party and the Church he founded – a man devoured by his own rhetoric.
In some ways the current criticism of Arlene Foster is pointless, because no previous Unionist leader has done anything differently and survived. She is a prisoner of the Unionist mind set, which states that the leader can never go faster than the slowest party member.
Already she is being outflanked by those outside her party. In a letter to the press, a ‘civic unionism’ group with more than 100 people has challenged what it says is a Nationalist assumption that qualities such as rights, truth and equality are not inherent within Unionism. They have a good point, but it is difficult to say if they can progress beyond letter-writing.
So whither Unionism from here? Home Rule in Stormont seems remote as the DUP settles for political influence at Westminster, a short-term arrangement while Theresa May is in power. That has transformed them from Ulster unionists into English conservatives.
This hardly represents the best interests of their working class Protestant support, but a bit of flag waving will soon take care of that. Unlike Scottish and Welsh unionism, the rump of Irish unionism has abandoned devolved government, settling instead for the Tory benches at Westminster.
As long as they stay there and not in Stormont, it looks like a continuing case of withering Unionism.
