Thank goodness for Lisburn council. They provide a useful reality check on unionism. In these days of partnership and rotation of municipal offices you could be forgiven for thinking unionists have been converted to the principles of power-sharing and equality of status. You'd be dead wrong, so Lisburn is both a timely reminder and proof that unionism has not changed one iota.
Since the overall nationalist vote in the north is now 44% there are few councils where there aren't enough Sinn Féin or SDLP councillors, or both, to upset the traditional unionist apple cart. As a result there's power-sharing now in most councils. Some even use the d'Hondt system to ensure a fair rotation of top posts over a four-year period. But, and this is the point, it's only as a result of the increase in nationalists on councils. If unionists had their way they'd keep all power, paltry as it is, to themselves. They still think they own the north and everything in it.
You don't hear much from horrible, bigoted councils like Castlereagh because there aren't enough nationalists yet to make a difference. Mind you, it has to be said that a single outstanding councillor can make a difference. Look at John Dallat, Coleraine's Lone Ranger, who fought single-handedly for years to bring about change there. Generally speaking though, it's the few remaining overwhelmingly unionist councils in Antrim and Down which resist power-sharing.
That's why Lisburn is important. In its council area the nationalist community is huge and rapidly growing. Over the last 30 years unionists have done everything they can think of, legal and illegal, to suppress, slow down, deter, discriminate and otherwise obstruct the growth, development and wellbeing of the nationalist community spreading from west Belfast.
It's hilarious to hear the mendacious, dishonest arguments of the semi-literates who try to justify the dirty deal the UUP and the DUP did in Lisburn this July to keep all the chairs and vice-chairs to themselves. The stupidest argument they put up is this: the DUP has been excluded in the past, so now they won't be, so there's power-sharing. Give us a break.
So far journalists have let them away with this. As the DUP well knows, that is not the issue: it's between nationalist and unionist communities in the district. When it suits them, as for example at every election, the DUP and UUP call themselves 'the unionist family' and ask for a sectarian vote to minimise the nationalist vote. At council meetings they act as a bloc to defeat Sinn Féin and SDLP as they did in July. The whole point of partnership is to share across and between blocs.
Only breathtaking intellectual dishonesty allows the DUP and UUP to deny that the argument is between two communities and claim that allocating positions to the DUP somehow compensates for excluding nationalists. Still, you'd expect that sort of attitude from the DUP.
It's the UUP which is more despicable. They simply deny anything is wrong. The MP for the area, Jeffrey Donaldson, in a recent interview said: "I would say that the record of Lisburn in providing for the nationalist community is a very good record." And: "The whole record of Lisburn indicates that they're pretty fair." What a load of rubbish. This is the council that refused to empty the bins in Twinbrook and Poleglass and had to be repeatedly threatened with court action to compel it to carry out its responsibilities. Pretty fair? About 35% of the district's population is Catholic yet only 18.6% of council employees are Catholic. So what's unfair?
So, far from deploring the behaviour of its party in Lisburn, the UUP actually endorses it. Now think about this. The vast majority of unionists elected to the last assembly were councillors and will be again if there's ever another assembly. None of those councillors supports the concept of partnership in councils, let alone the principle. The UUP party leadership remains silent on the issue. In the past its leaders were on record as opposing it. Have they changed?
Don't forget, both the UUP and the DUP refused for a generation to share power with the SDLP in any assembly and sometimes spurned local government office when the SDLP offered it to them. Their position now in rejecting Sinn Féin as a partner is therefore fundamentally no different from the one they adopted in 1973 and clung to until the nineties. You've never heard a speech from a unionist advocating power-sharing or partnership and you won't because they don't believe in it. That's why unionist behaviour in Lisburn and the support of the leaders of the UUP and the DUP for majority rule there is such important evidence.
