Unification would bring liberation – and chance of fairer society
■ Sectarianism is the foundation upon which the failed state of Northern Ireland was built. It is the natural consequence and outcome of Britain’s military occupation of Ireland, the Plantation and the colonial seizure of land and property accompanied by ethnic clearances of parts of the North and its indigenous Irish population. From discrimination against the natives in language, employment, law and housing via the misapplication of public funds, oppression, repression, emergency laws and gerrymandering, we have witnessed nearly 100 years of unionist misrule.
Sectarian division promoted by successive British rulers and governments has led inevitably to the green and orange divide in civil society here. The orange wants to remain as a colonial backstop for its imperial masters in parliament and cling ever tenuously to its former positions of power which today are more illusory than real. The green, representing the masses who were discriminated against, disenfranchised and marginalised, wants to end the immorality of partition and claim its civil rights in a modern, inclusive multi-racial Ireland.
All those who claim to want social equality will have to wait until the national question is finally resolved through reunification. As long as unionism has a veto on reconciliation and denies full Irish national sovereignty then the orange will vote in ever-increasing numbers for a regressive DUP and the green will vote in ever-increasing numbers for SF in order to bolster a Border poll and referendum.
Once the island is reunited, the raison d’etre for many voting for the DUP will falter. If they can no longer vote for the union, perhaps they will revisit the politics that effect their daily lives and abandon a conservative, anti-working class DUP and a conservative, antiworking class SF and embrace true politics and vote for alternatives that promote trade union, socialist, humanitarian values for the many, not just for the few.
With unification comes liberation, the liberation and freedom to vote and create a fairer society fit for and in the interests of all.
F Hughes Address with editor