The new booklet, A Long Peace? by Trevor Ringland, Mick Fealty and David Steven challenges unionists to move forward confidently into the future. Instead, according to the authors, unionists have been 'talking themselves into defeat', a defeatism that threatens to be self-fulfilling. One has to recognise validity in this perception but this state of affairs cannot be explained solely on the grounds of unionist failing to grasp new opportunities. It is also related to the republican failure to lift the siege against unionists.
The days leading up to and immediately following the agreement were hopeful ones reminiscent of people in other times and places devising new structures bringing their respective conflicts to an end. The Belfast Agreement was a people's agreement involving working class people from both major traditions. There were downsides. When Sinn Féin came in, the DUP and UKUP fled and disgruntled elements within the UUP carped from the sidelines. Creating new institutions after decades of inter-communal violence was a messy business.
The real dampener, however, was the republican assertion that the agreement was transitional, combined with their refusal to declare the war over. This implied that nothing had really changed and condemned us to remain cramped within old mindsets. Just because republicans engaged in revolutionary rhetoric did not imply openness to new ideas. Rather they were harking back to a philosophy jettisoned by the Official IRA.
The supposedly new republican dream constituted a resurgence of conservative Gaelic Catholic nationalism drawing lightly upon leftist radicalism. There were attempts to reach out but these were based on the assumption that unionists would eventually recognise how wrong they had been. There was no real coming together to create some-thing entirely new and inclusive, except on a transitional basis.
Seeing the agreement in this way weakened the hope that it might represent a truly new and radical departure. The New Ireland was to be the old Ireland in drag. Yet hope was not extinguished and the possibility that loyalist radicalism and unionist liberalism might manifest itself, remained. Liberal unionists and nationalists had tried to create a new direction, but A Long Peace? quotes Paddy Devlin warning his SDLP colleagues at Sunningdale in 1973, that Brian Faulkner was being 'nailed to a cross' and could never sell what was being offered.
Most unionists were ready to give the agreement a fair wind despite suspicion that republicans wished to create an entity only to knock it down again through instability and the uneven population growth. Mark Durkan's recent assertion that the agreement would remain, even with Irish unity, was helpful but could never dissolve the rhetoric about 'inevitable' unity.
The SDLP and Sinn Féin protest their right to promote unity but surely the point of the negotiations was to create a win-win settlement reflecting and respecting the legitimate aspirations of both traditions. Such a settlement must be open to change but that is not the same as saying it was only a means to a specific end that subverted the central aspirations of one of the partners. A Northern Ireland facing both ways, east-west/north-south, as suggested by Norman Porter, was a more hopeful approach and one that appeared to underlie the agreement. Republicans, however, preferred to keep the Damocles' sword of supposed unity hanging over unionists' heads.
In republican eyes unionists represent a mistaken notion about the relationship between these islands. But beneath our ancient quarrel and its great hurts and pain lies a truth that our islands always have been and will remain, intimately interlinked. Perhaps the pain was and is so great because it reflects an internal family quarrel. Why should the honourable, if imperfect, unionist tradition be consigned to the dustbin of history as has nearly happened in the Republic? Cultural and/or ethnic cleansing should be seen for what it is – inhuman.
Republicans have gone a little way towards lifting the perennial siege, but by no means far enough. They appear to accept the consent principle but only until nationalists constitute a 50% +1 majority at which stage unionism ipso facto becomes fair game for extinction. This represents no change of heart nor does it free unionists from the terrors of obliteration.
Each side in isolation can smooth the path to reconciliation but only a mutual coming together can give us real peace. Unionism need not be entirely defensive but until we can fully respect this ancient, continuing and honourable Irish tradition, in which we all participate, unionism, and nationalism also, will remain cramped and perhaps alienated.
