Dublin Report In throes of change, divided Unionist face the future

By John Kelly

The astounding possibility is that Northern Ireland may become the last bastion of Britishness. With power devolved to Scotland and Wales, the UK is becoming more of a federal State within the greater federation of Europe.

While there will always be an England, its people are less insistent on the imposition of "Britishness" over the whole of the UK. Westminster is now fully prepared to recognize the uniqueness of Scotland and Wales.

So, where does this leave Northern Ireland, a tiny statelet in which an increasingly slimmer majority adamantly insists it will remain British?

Subliminally, the conundrum is at the heart of the issue that is tearing unionism apart.

The leadership challenge posed by the Rev. Martin Smyth to David Trimble reveals not alone the real differences within the Ulster Unionist Party but also the wider nature of the splits within the loyalist population as a whole.

Quite simply, unionism, as a political philosophy, is blundering around like a dinosaur in a corner shop. It has not yet devised a role in a new Europe and rapidly changing UK. The pace of change has left it all the blinder and more bewildered.

With some real political courage and astuteness, Trimble is trying to steer the crippled vessel to a safe haven. He is rowing with the tide.

The mutineers within his crew wish to ignore the reality of the force of the elements. They also fail to appreciate that they have to change their identity and their philosophy if they wish to survive in any fashion at all.

There is no future in vain attempts to remain "British" at a historical juncture when the British themselves are changing their own concept of themselves.

It is even more useless to refuse to recognize the necessity to cooperate with nationalists in the governing of the statelet, still more futile to pretend that the increasingly numerous minority have no right to their aspiration for unity within the island.

The unionists, no less than any other people, have to roll with the tide of history. Otherwise, they will end up beached and forlorn.

The most recent challenge to Trimble had about it the air of the "Sons of Ulster" marching to the Somme.

In fact, the more one thinks about it, the more one wonders if the unionists are really intent on being British at all.

Generally speaking, the British, especially the English, have proved themselves to be the most tolerant of people. They have absorbed huge racial and religious changes in the last four decades. The entire racial pattern of the island has changed, as the UK has had to accommodate the consequences of its colonial past.

With some minor blips, like the growth of the dangerously right-wing Nazi-style National Front, it has succeeded in transferring itself into a multiracial society. It now accommodates multiple religions and races as the result of which London is now one of the world’s most cosmopolitan cities.

Few other peoples in the world would have shown such a degree of tolerance.

Not all like it, of course. You will hear the odd growl when the subject comes up in conversation with English people. But, irrespective of their private views, they have come to accept the situation as it is.

If that tolerance is so quintessentially British, what is one to make of unionists who seem incapable of reaching a genuine working relationship with the minority who share their tiny statelet, a minority that is part of the overall majority on a small, changing island?

At the heart of the unionist philosophy, as distinct from Britishness, is intolerance. And, at the core of that intolerance, is insecurity, the insecurity of the planter stock from which it sprang, a people who historically regarded themselves as a threatened minority within an alien, hostile land.

The Good Friday agreement has removed many of the reasons for this traditional insecurity, especially the deeply resented Constitutional claim by the Republic to the ownership of the entire island.

Unionists are now guaranteed that there will be no change in their status without the consent of the majority in Northern Ireland.

These are real gains. Too many unionists seem incapable of comprehending them, blinded their historic intolerance.

Leading party members have to sell the agreement more effectively to their own people. It has to be impressed on them that they live in the real world. They have to drag them, roaring or not, into the second millennium.

What do they have to fear, except the necessity of sharing power with a substantial minority within their own statelet?

If the continued call for decommissioning is really a mask to hide a reluctance to share power, it has to be weeded out for all of the people, especially the British people, to see it for what it is, no less than a deliberate attempt to shun democratic tolerance.

On the other hand, if unionists continue to push for decommissioning because they regard it as an essential display of surrender by the IRA, then they are not living in the real world at all.

Continued demands for decommissioning on such a basis will prevent or postpone it indefinitely. While the guns remain silent, it is nothing but a big, red herring.

The majority of people in the Republic of Ireland have to display the sort of tolerance levels that the unionists seem to lack.

By this token, the decision of Dublin’s Lady Mayoress to invite the Orange Order to hold its first march in Dublin since 1937 has to be greatly welcomed.

About 300 members of the Orange Order will parade down Dawson Street in the heart of the city, close to Leinster House, to mark the Order’s bicentenary.

The mayoress, a member of the Labor Party, will also unveil a plaque on behalf of Dublin Corporation outside the building where the Orange Order first met in 1798.

Sinn Fein members will hold a token demonstration. One wonders if this is really necessary.

It is tolerance like that displayed by the Dublin Corporation that best gives the lie to the more bigoted members of the Orange Order.

It is the right way to proceed.