A Proper Split

Sinn Féin has never been in government in the 26 Counties, and all the stops have already been pulled out once to ensure that it would not be. That will always be the case, probably successfully. In the Six Counties, by contrast, Sinn Féin has been in government for 27 years and counting, already nearly a quarter of the entire existence of the two states in Ireland, and it always will be, probably always providing the First Minister now that it had assumed the office. Seen from either side, there may eventually come to be a United Ireland, and even a 32-County Republic, but the excuse of how long ago Partition had been will be used to prevent a unitary state both for the sake of the dominant force in Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin, and for the sake of its implacable enemies who dominated the present Republic.

Meanwhile, Enoch Powell, Jim Molyneaux, David Trimble and Ian Paisley were all more than familiar with highly ambitious young men who were utterly convinced of themselves. Each of them had been one. Yet each of them in turn saw something particular in Jeffrey Donaldson. Whatever might that have been? Northern Irish politicians are surveilled up to their eyeballs both at home and in London, so the suggestion that “nobody knew” is unworthy of serious attention. Was Donaldson blackmailed first to take over the DUP and then to lead it into full compromise with Sinn Féin, itself riddled with touts? The full story will be more complicated than that. But it is quite clearly along those lines, as Patrick Murphy writes:

Brendan Behan was only half right. He said that the first item on a republican agenda was a split. The other half of his observation might have been that a split is also high up unionism’s agenda, as evidenced by the three unionist parties currently tearing strips off each other. n fairness, Behan died in 1964, a few years before the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association created the deep divisions in unionism by saying, “If we are British, give us British rights.” That demand exposed unionists’ confusion as to what exactly unionism was. Unionists were British, but not so British as to accept British laws and values. It was as if unionists had looked across the Irish Sea and said, “You think you’re British? We’ll show you Britishness”, as the RUC batoned civil rights marchers off the streets. 

Had it not been for Rev Ian Paisley, unionist confusion might not have been so acute. He wrote a new agenda for unionism by creating the concept of a politico-religious heaven, where intransigent unionism and hardline Protestantism would fuse seamlessly to form a promised land which he called Ulster. Paisley’s ghost still haunts unionism today. Its culture of competitive sanctity reflects the split between the UUP, the DUP and the TUV. Each party regards itself as more unionist than the other two, based on what might be termed the Paisley scale of unionist purity.

That makes unionism a bit like gravity – we all know how it operates, but it is hard to find anyone who can explain what it is. Despite its political nature, unionism lacks a political theory which might define an agreed ideology. Its loyalty to the crown sits in the middle of a political vacuum and while it proclaims a unionist culture, there is a limited body of literature, music or art to justify that belief. Most political organisations plan where they would like to be in five or 10 years’ time.

Unionism’s long-term goal appears to be to return to where it was 70 years ago. It knows where it has been, but appears unsure of where it is going. As a result, it reacts to events rather than setting its own agenda. That comes from an intellectual laziness, fostered by having 50 years of guaranteed power in the old Stormont. When Stormont fell, unionists had no idea what unionism stood for. They still have that problem today, as evidenced by the three-party split. The UUP and DUP are further seriously splintered.

The UUP is unionism’s comfort blanket, offering reassurance that the union is safe. Someone once said that the Church of England is a social organisation with God as an optional extra. The UUP is a bit like that – the sort of place where political realities rarely interfere with the primacy of the union. The DUP is different. Paisley appears to have founded it on the belief that God was a unionist and that the Protestant Reformation began somewhere near Ballymena. It has shed some of its religious overtones, but it is still the most religiously righteous of our political parties. It was unfortunate then that its former leader turned out to be a criminal. Jeffrey Donaldson worked for the British government overseas. That apparently gave his political masters in London sufficient control to require him to claim that the government had abolished the Irish Sea border. He may have been unionism’s equivalent of Stakeknife. Has London been running the DUP?

Meanwhile, the TUV has become the new DUP, still believing in a unionist heaven. Three-party unionism will not survive. It needs to abandon its narrow right-wing base and embrace, for example, anti-monarchists, left-wingers, Gaeilgeoirí, a healthy sprinkling of atheists and, heaven forbid, Catholics. Otherwise it will become a historical enclave, isolated from a changing world in Ireland and Britain. Sixty years ago Ian Paisley launched his “O’Neill must go” campaign, to oust Terence O’Neill from the office of Prime Minister. This week, some in the DUP said O’Neill must go as First Minister – a different O’Neill, but the same antiquated reaction to events.

Unionism has yet to learn that reaction is not a strategy. Its best way forward is to become a broad political movement, embracing progressive social and economic ideas and down-playing constitutional issues to gain the widest possible support. However, New Unionism is unlikely to emerge. Rather than uniting to form Stormont’s biggest party and ousting Michelle O’Neill, unionists prefer to remain divided over something which none of them has ever defined. Now that’s what Brendan Behan would have called a proper split.