February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
“Ulster stands at the crossroads,” he said somberly. “Our conduct over the coming days will decide our future.” O’Neill, a liberal, reforming Unionist, was aware of the polarization taking place between nationalists and unionists, as well as the tensions within unionism itself which were threatening to split the party. There was a danger that as a result Northern Ireland would fall victim to agitators, especially on the extreme unionist side, where Paisley already had a growing following of angry, paranoid loyalists. Nationalist demonstrators ignored his appeal and resumed marching in January. Three months later, after Paisley came close to unseating O’Neill in his own constituency and loyalist bombers struck at energy installations across Northern Ireland, O’Neill resigned.
Thirty-five years later, some say that Northern Ireland has reached another crossroads. This time, however, it seems that it is not “Ulster” but Unionism that is standing at the crossroads.
The political parties are heading into an election for a new Assembly. It will be the most important Northern Ireland election in many years. David Trimble is leading his fragmented Ulster Unionist Party into an election overshadowed by his failure to reach a deal with Irish republicans that was supposed to finally get rid of the menace of the IRA. Trimble, Unionism’s latest liberal reformer, is fighting on two fronts — against his own internal opponents of the agreement and against the threat from Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party, which is the political embodiment of Paisley’s history of opposition to reform, proclaiming that it will never negotiate with republicans until the IRA “repents” and disappears forever.
In 1968, having reached the crossroads, large numbers of unionists chose the path of political extremism. Moderate unionism was undermined. Will Trimble’s efforts face the same fate? Will unionists once again follow Paisley down the path of confrontation and rejectionism, abandoning that of reform?
In an important sense, if unionism has reached another crossroads, with the election of 2003, that means so has Northern Ireland, since the unionist ideology is still that of the majority of its population. No one is suggesting that the situation in 2003 is as grave as it was in 1968. Then, Northern Ireland was at the beginning of a crisis the profundity of which few understood. Now, Northern Ireland is at the end of that crisis. But the problem is that many unionists are unhappy with the terms that have been reached that have brought the crisis to an end. Like O’Neill, and like Brian Faulkner, who succeeded O’Neill in carrying the torch of liberalism within the Unionist Party, Trimble risked moving too far ahead of many Unionist supporters, who were unhappy with aspects of the Good Friday agreement and were alarmed at Trimble’s engagement with republicans. They suspected that it would always be at their expense. The collapse of the deal between Adams and Trimble last month to them is proof that they were right to be distrustful.
This election will show how much damage this has done to Trimble and determine whether he has a future as leader of the UUP. If he holds his own against the onslaught from Paisley, he will survive. But if the UUP becomes a minority party within unionism, then his fate is sealed. Unionism sprang from the British Conservative Party, where no party leader who has lost an election is permitted to continue in that post.
Would liberal unionism survive Trimble’s fall?
In 1969, it survived the fall of O’Neill to reemerge in the unlikely form of Brian Faulkner. When Faulkner fell, partly thanks, ironically enough, to a movement of which Trimble was then a member, it went dormant for almost two decades. Only with the maturing of the peace process was it possible for liberal unionists to the lead the party again in seeking a settlement with Northern nationalists. That is why liberal unionism will continue: the cost of keeping the peace process going is engagement with Northern nationalists. Now that dialogue has temporarily ended. But after the election, whoever emerges as the leader of Northern Ireland’s unionists knows that inevitably, at some future date, it will have to recommence. However, as the crossroads election of 2003 approaches, that inevitability may not prevent unionists from deciding to take another detour under Paisley’s leadership.