Congratulations and a bottle of champagne go to Graham Gudgin for predicting to within one% the Catholic share of the north's population in the last census: that's what he asked for if he got it right. Just goes to show there's a first time for everything. Dr Gudgin, one of David Trimble's Special Advisors until last autumn, is an economist who has for years taken a special interest in matters such as the size of the Catholic population, he tends towards the low estimates; fair employment legislation, he was a critic of the 1989 act; and the prospects of a united Ireland – never. Why these items should be of such consuming interest to an English economist remains a mystery, but it takes all sorts.
Like most unionists Dr Gudgin has concentrated on whether, if ever, the census figures indicate there might be a voting majority for national reunification. Dr Gudgin's prognostications encourage less numerate unionists to heave a sigh of relief. Phew, no united Ireland just yet, so no change.
It's the wrong conclusion. The fact is the census confirms the profound change in the terms of trade within the north that has taken place in the last forty years. Unionist leaders should be educating their voters about the consequences. In the 1961 census Protestants outnumbered Catholics 63%-35%. They had their own local administration, they owned the north. It had remained fossilised just as Lloyd George and Churchill had presented it to them in 1920.
Why did those two hand unionists only two-thirds of the province of Ulster which Carson described as 'Protestant' despite its large Catholic population? The answer is brutally simple. The brother of the then Sir James Craig, C.C. Craig MP, told the House of Commons that 'six counties is the largest area we can hold'. Subtle eh? As Dr Eamon Phoenix told a radio audience a couple of weeks ago, Carson and Craig turned down the nine counties because it had, wait for it, a 43% Catholic population. In March 1920 Craig persuaded the Ulster Unionist Council, probably the same members as today as well, to reject a nine county state. In his opinion it would be unstable and 'ungovernable'. So what does that make a six county entity with a 44% Catholic population?
It means that unionists no longer have any place to call their own: that's what Northern Ireland was.
It was given to unionists as the largest space where they could, in the words of Craig, keep Catholics 'in order'. That implied sole possession. Lose that and the reason for the entity goes. Although unionist politicians know full well the new terms of trade which the census figures exemplify mean that they can't have sole possession but must share the place on equal terms with nationalists, not one of them has given a considered public speech acknowledging this fact. Instead they reinforce nonsense about conspiracies and sieges, change only being 'a sop to republicans, a slippery slope, thin end of the wedge and so on.
The north of Ireland is still a unionist entity in its civil service, its security forces, its judiciary, its emblems, parts of its public broadcasting and business elite. Legislation is in place to change most of that. The census shows the change is going to be rapid. In the 2001 Westminster election SF and SDLP together won 43% of the vote. It will be higher in the next election and will quickly reach 46%: we know, because the voters are already born.
Wouldn't this new year be a good time for a unionist leader to spell out the consequences of these facts? Would it be going too far to point out that having a goal of 50% Catholics in the PSNI in ten years time, yes it will take at least that long, might be an inevitable and desirable result when almost half the voting population is nationalist? Is it not even more desirable when there are already parts of the north where the nationalist population is over 70%?
On the contrary, the sulky silence of unionist leaders who have watched the raison d'etre of their wee six vanishing has left their voters bewildered and frightened for the future. As a result, they have been congregating in self-designated ghettos in Antrim and north Down with outposts in County Derry. Instead of trying to make the north work in the changed circumstances, unionist political leaders have turned on each other. Nationalists, on the other hand, no longer trapped by a unionist regime, will work in the short term to strengthen ties to the south through the all-Ireland bodies. They know where they're going. They set the agenda now. Unionists react. Any unionist want to say what the north is for now? Any unionist got an idea?
