Ulster Catholics Are Now More Unionist Than The English

Connla Young writes:

There are some questions that just won’t go away.

But a major survey this week seemed to suggest that the age-old debate over a united Ireland could finally be running out of steam.

As reported in yesterday’s Belfast Telegraph, a major survey has found that the majority of Catholics polled now do not want reunification.

The Life and Times survey claimed 52% of Catholic respondents wanted to remain in the United Kingdom, with just 33% admitting to wanting a united Ireland.

In contrast, just 19% of Catholics questioned by the same survey team in 1998 favoured the UK connection, while 49% claimed they wanted a united Ireland.

The survey, which was carried out by Ark, a joint project by Queen’s University and the University of Ulster, also found that 90% of Protestants questioned said they wanted Northern Ireland to remain in the United Kingdom. The poll was carried out between October and December last year and over 1,205 adults were questioned.

Reaction to the survey has been mixed with politicians and commentators suggesting a series of reasons for the dramatic drop in support for reunification.

Most point to the turbulent economic climate in the Republic coupled with continued political stability in Northern Ireland as the main reasons for the shift in attitudes.

But the border question clearly still stirs emotions with hundreds of readers posting their comments on the poll results on the Belfast Telegraph website.

One angry reader posted: “Polls are useless — all stats can be twisted to show anything you want them to. I could get a poll done that would show the opposite. As a Catholic and a nationalist none of my similar friends or family are reflective of this poll. This poll might be believable if there were a few who wanted union with the UK but none do. All are in favour of a united Ireland.”

Another said: “Here is a clear message to the unionist parties to become more attractive to Catholic voters, to encourage them to vote unionist. I for one would welcome with open arms more people of the Catholic community into the unionist family.”

Another Catholic reader posted: “This confirms what most of us already suspected for some time. As a Catholic, I have considered myself a unionist (small ‘u') for years, having absolutely no interest in a united Ireland unless the Republic chose to rejoin the UK. For many of us the Republic became an irrelevance long ago.”

They are only catching up with the Republic, which as long ago as 1999 renounced any claim to Northern Ireland by an enormous majority in a referendum.

The only way to maintain the Catholic school system in Northern Ireland is to keep Northern Ireland within the Union. For each of this Kingdom’s parts contains a Catholic intelligentsia, whereas the Irish Republic’s is the most tribally anti-Catholic in the world. The Republic’s Catholic schools, among much else, are doomed.

As would be Northern Ireland’s, if Sinn Féin had its way. Under the pretext that they teach through the medium of Irish, wholly and militantly secular Sinn Féin schools are being set up at public expense, in direct opposition to the Catholic system, by that party’s Education Minister. Her exclusion of Anglican, Presbyterian and Methodist clergy from their historic role in the government of schools is the dry run for her party’s openly desired exclusion of the Catholic Church from schools throughout Ireland.

Furthermore, there is no desire in the Republic, either for the much higher taxes necessary to maintain British levels of public spending in “the Six Counties”, or for the incorporation of a large minority into a country which has developed on the presupposition of a near-monoculture.

If anything, the Republic would find it even harder to assimilate Northern Nationalists, who would be rather like hopelessly unrealistic third, fourth or fifth generation colonial returnees to Britain from Africa or India.

As much as anything else, theirs is not the heritage of the greater number of people from the officially neutral Free State than from Northern Ireland, where there was no conscription, who joined the British Armed Forces during the Second World War. Nor of the continuing Irish Regiments of the British Army, such as the Irish Guards who carried the Queen Mother’s coffin despite, most unfortunately and probably not for much longer, not being Commonwealth citizens. Nor of the very active Royal British Legion throughout Ireland.

Northern Nationalists are no more typically or normally Irish than it is typically or normally British to march through the streets behind a Union Flag while wearing a bowler hat.