The Good Friday Agreement may fudge some issues but it's clear on this one: "The two Governments recog-nise the legitimacy of whatever choice is freely exercised by a majority of the people of Northern Ireland with regard to its status, whether they prefer to continue to support the Union with Great Britain or a sovereign united Ireland."
Last week-end John Taylor, now known as Lord Kilclooney, could contain himself no longer and told the unionist people that this month's 2001 census figures would contain some bad news and some good news. The bad news: the census would probably show that Catholics here form more than 45% of the population. The good news: that despite these figures, "Catholics will remain a minority". High Priest Trimble's altar boy Steven King takes a similar line. Yes, he says, Catholic numbers have swollen in recent years, but the swelling will soon go down.
Really? Let's look at some Department of Education for Northern Ireland figures we already have. In the school year 2001-2002 – last year – the reported religion of pupils in schools here was Catholics 51%; Protestants 42%.
The remaining percentage points were mainly occupied by those indicating no religion. That's nine% more Catholic youngsters than Protestant youngsters.
And if we look only at the pre-school education sector – the very young – we see that 51% are Catholic, 40% are Protestant. That's an 11% gap. Therefore, from a Protestant/unionist viewpoint and contrary to John and Steven's declarations, things actually aren't getting better. They're getting worse.
But, Mr K and Lord K might argue, the school figures are part of the temporary Catholic bulge. Catholic families are getting smaller; in 10 years time there'll be fewer Cath-olics in the adult population and fewer Catholics in the school-going population than now. Quite right. But there will also be fewer Protestants. That's because, at one end, there are proportionately more elderly Protestants than elderly Catholics. Each year, roughly two elderly Protestants die for every elderly Catholic. At the other end – the young adult end – the figures consistently show more young Protestants than Catholics going to Scotland or England to study, and having qualified, staying there. That head-and-tail assault soon eats into a population. So yes, there will be fewer Catholics around in the coming decades AND there will be even fewer Protestants. But hold on. Isn't all this a bit sectarian, all this Catholic/Protestant head-counting? Not really. In fact not at all. For a number of historical reasons, religious background and political allegiance here tend to converge. You may wish it were otherwise but that's how it is. To acknow-ledge this fact is not so much to be sectarian as realistic. Besides, remember how and why the north came into being. The British government committee of 1920, which established partition, favoured a nine-county Ulster as the natural boundary for the new northern state. But Sir James Craig, then a junior minister in the British government, objected strongly. Sir James had done some Catholic/Protestant head-counting, and he realised that a nine-county northern state would have five counties with a nationalist majority. Worse still, the 1911 census figures showed him that in a nine-county stateCatholics would constitute 43% of the population and that would make the new state "impossible to govern".
Well now. If a 43% Catholic population made the state inherently unstable 80 years ago, what will 45%-plus do today? And that figure doesn't exist in isolation, remember. When census returns are released this month, the figure beside the Catholic 45% will not be 55% Protestant. When "others" have been factored in, the Prot-estant population in the north is likely to emerge as less than 50% for the first time in its history. And then there's the future: those tidal waves of nine% and 11% Catholic majorities coming out of the schools.
Some unionists, of course, have been watching the tide for some time. That's why we've begun to hear the banging of the Double-Majority Drum (DMD). According to the DMD argument, it won't be enough to have a simple nation-alist majority to effect constitut-ional change. Any such move will require the consent of a majority of unionists as well. Sorry, chaps. When nationalists signed up to the Good Friday Agreement, they accepted a northern majority would be necessary for change. Unionists happily accepted the same. So wouldn't it be an odd notion of democracy that acclaims the validity of a unionist majority in the north and dismisses that same majority the moment it becomes nationalist.
