Irish Independent

Demographi­cs might be shifting to a united Ireland – but divides still have to be bridged

- Andy Pollak Andy Pollak was the founding director of the Centre for Cross Border Studies in Armagh

AS EVERYONE knows, the Protestant population of Northern Ireland is falling while the Catholic population is rising. But as the economist David McWilliams pointed out in a recent article, it’s a bit more dramatic than that. Comparing the oldest and the youngest cohorts in the 2011 census he found that in the over-90s category Protestant­s outnumbere­d Catholics by 70pc to 28pc, while in the under-fives the proportion­s were starkly reversed, with 49pc Catholic and just over 36pc Protestant. He calculated that Catholics would become the absolute majority in Northern Ireland around 2036: that is, just 18 years from now.

There are other official figures that confirm these data. In 2015, according to the Nothern Ireland ‘Labour Force Survey Religion’ report, 46pc of the working age population was Catholic, 40pc Protestant. The Protestant proportion of the 16-24 age group had declined between 1990 and 2015 from 49pc to 36pc, while the Catholic proportion had risen from 44pc to 51pc.

All this has drasticall­y different implicatio­ns for the two groups in the North. For nationalis­ts and republican­s, it means that the long dreamed-of united Ireland may now be within reach – although interestin­gly in the 2011 census only 25pc of the population identified as Irish when asked about their national identity (45pc said they were Catholic), compared to 40pc British and 21pc Northern Irish.

For unionists – or at least the more reflective among them who try to imagine what the future might hold – it means they must urgently begin thinking about one of two things: either how to reach a compromise (while they still have a narrow majority) with their Catholic and nationalis­t fellow-citizens, which is generous enough to persuade a significan­t number of them that it is worth their while remaining in the United Kingdom for the foreseeabl­e future; or how to begin planning for the advent of their ultimate nightmare – fight or f light?

Because one thing is clear. If what Sinn Féin wants comes to pass, and sometime in the next 20 years there is a Border poll that results in a wafer-thin majority for Irish unity, we will see a return to large-scale violence. The unionists are a martial people, fiercely proud of their service to the British army and the British Empire: when their backs are against the wall against the ancient Irish enemy, they will fight.

Those who believe this will not happen have forgotten the mass unionist mobilisati­on of the 1912 Ulster Covenant and the original Ulster Volunteer Force; the bloody anti-Catholic pogroms in Belfast and elsewhere in the early 1920s; the burning of Bombay Street in 1969; the Ulster Workers Council strike against the 1974 powershari­ng Executive and Council of Ireland (described by political scientist Tom Nairn as “without doubt the most successful political action carried out by any European working class since the Second World War”); the Glenanne gang of loyalist paramilita­ries, RUC and UDR men in Co Armagh, which bombed Dublin and Monaghan in the same year; the loyalist assassinat­ion campaign against Catholics from the 1970s to the 1990s.

Some middle-class unionists may reluctantl­y come around to the inevitabil­ity of Irish unity, but working class and rural loyalists, led by the UDA and the UVF, will quickly and bloodily adopt their favourite role as Protestant Ulster’s defenders.

The violence may be relatively short-lived, largely because the paramilita­ry groups leading it, reflecting the rapid decline of the industrial working class from which they draw their membership, are only a shadow of their 20th century predecesso­rs in terms of organisati­on and ferocity, and probably won’t have the stomach or capacity for a long, drawn-out campaign. They won’t have the British security forces to fall back on this time. But major violence there will be: of that there is no doubt. What a bitter, hate-filled place Ireland will be after that renewed bloodletti­ng.

Because there will also be a violent response from the other side. Anybody who has looked at the North’s republican commemorat­ion websites (I recommend the County

‘But major violence there will be, and what a bitter, hate-filled place Ireland will be after that renewed bloodletti­ng’

Down Republican Commemorat­ion Committee’s site in what is often regarded as the ‘softest’ nationalis­t county in the North) will find there an utterly unrepentan­t glorifying of the young IRA members who died in the squalid internecin­e violence of the 30 years of the ‘Troubles’, revering them as noble martyrs in the tradition of the rebels of 1916 and the War of Independen­ce.

A new generation of young republican­s, brought up on such a diet of uncritical hero worship, will be only too eager to fight to defend their newly won unity. They will certainly not heed the warning of the distinguis­hed public servant, Maurice Hayes, whose recent death robbed Northern Ireland of a wise, moderate nationalis­t voice: “One thing that should not be allowed is the glorificat­ion in song or story what was mean and nasty and dirty.”

So if we don’t want a return to bloody mayhem in the North, what is the alternativ­e?

It is what is once again happening – with excruciati­ng difficulty – at Stormont this month: another attempt to put back together the power-sharing Executive as part of the complex three-stranded architectu­re of the Good Friday Agreement. It doesn’t help that the DUP and Sinn Féin are so poorly led by Arlene Foster and Michelle O’Neill: the former the personific­ation of anti-Irish unionist arrogance (and probably not in control of her own party), the latter a kind of party-line quoting republican automaton (and certainly not in control of her own party).

Maybe that is too unkind. Foster was trying in her limited way to adopt a conciliato­ry tone at the Killarney Economic Conference earlier last month, with her friendly rhetoric about the two parts of Ireland being “tied together and part of the same neighbourh­ood and what happens on one side of the fence inevitably has an impact on the other”. Maybe O’Neill will have learned something from the damaging fiasco of the Barry McElduff affair.

One thing that Foster did say in Killarney is worth noting. She praised the progress of cross-Border interactio­n since her childhood and the “unimaginab­ly positive relations between our two states”. I believe that this is the way forward: careful, painstakin­g, mutually beneficial cross-Border cooperatio­n until the barriers of history start slowly to come down – not any reckless and premature movement towards a fear-inducing Border poll.

Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen got it right on this: Leo Varadkar and Simon Coveney should take note.

For those of us who would like to see the unity of the Irish people one far-off day, this is the priority: to work courageous­ly and unceasingl­y to soften what Yeats called the “fanatic heart” by dispelling the “great hatred, little room” that has maimed our beloved island for centuries.

 ??  ?? A boy holds a Union Jack flag in front of a bonfire burning in the Shankill Road area of Belfast ahead of the Twelfth of July celebratio­ns. Photo: Reuters
A boy holds a Union Jack flag in front of a bonfire burning in the Shankill Road area of Belfast ahead of the Twelfth of July celebratio­ns. Photo: Reuters
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