Unionism is angry – but it must tread with great care
ANGRY unionism is nothing new. It was born in anger in the 1880s – when it recognised the threat posed to it by the Home Rule crisis – and it has remained angry ever since. Angry in 1972, when the Stormont parliament was closed. Angry in 1974, when power-sharing arrived. Angry in 1985, when the Anglo-Irish Agreement was foisted upon it. Angry in 1993, when the Downing Street Declaration stated the British government had no “selfish strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland”. Angry right now, because the Northern Ireland Protocol, by leaving NI in the EU, has pushed it into the constitutional equivalent of a granny flat.
Adding to this latest outburst of anger is the fact it was Boris Johnson who agreed the bespoke arrangement with the EU which has pushed Northern Ireland much further away from the rest of the United Kingdom. The same Boris Johnson who was roared to the rafters at a DUP conference in November 2018 when he promised he would never allow Northern Ireland to be reduced to “semi-colonial status”.
The same Boris Johnson who told an election meeting in Belfast in November 2019 there would never be a border in the Irish Sea – and who insisted he was the sort of unionist who would protect Northern Ireland’s constitutional position.
Yet unionism now finds itself, in Northern Ireland’s centenary year, starting an e-petition to force a parliamentary debate in the House of Commons on the consequences of the protocol (which turned out to be a damp squib and delivered no change in position from the government).
Last Friday it launched a judicial review claiming the protocol, by changing Northern Ireland’s constitutional status, breached the 1800 Act of Union and 1998 Belfast Agreement. Even if successful – which seems unlikely – the UK government would introduce legislation to allow it to continue with the protocol.
The irony is that one of the reasons the DUP gave for supporting the Leave campaign in the Brexit referendum was it would restore sovereignty to the UK parliament: yet it was a majority vote in that parliament which endorsed the protocol which has so unsettled the DUP and the entire pro-Union community.
As I noted above, unionism has been angry before. But this is a different kind of anger because this is the first time in Northern Ireland’s history it has been in a different political, economic, trading and constitutional jurisdiction to Great Britain. The existing land border separated the UK from the Republic; the one in the
Irish Sea separates Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK.
The problem for unionism is how it now overturns this “constitutional calamity”. Over a century ago, when the Third Home Rule bill was before parliament, Conservative leader Bonar Law said he could “imagine no length of resistance to which Ulster can go in which I would not be prepared to support them”. Many unionists believe there are probably no lengths at all to which Johnson would go to help them right now. The consensus is that he deliberately dumped them in the mess and has no intention of extracting them from it. There are no votes for him in Northern Ireland and any rescue package would require concessions to the EU and risk his Brexit base in Westminster.
Speaking in the Commons on Wednesday, Northern Ireland Secretary of State Brandon Lewis announced the UK government would take a series of “temporary operational steps” to give more time to implement the protocol. That doesn’t suggest the government has any interest in dumping the protocol. But even if it does manage to reach a sort of side deal with the EU which gets rid of or reduces some of the trading complications accompanying the new border, it still leaves Northern Ireland in the granny flat.
So, if it can’t win in Westminster where can unionism win? There have been suggestions it should abandon the Northern Ireland Assembly, maybe even bring it down altogether. But that would be a Pyrrhic victory, surely, because a return to direct rule from London, with input from Dublin, is hardly likely to do unionism any favours. Rallies and disruptions by a united unionism will be difficult with Covid restrictions, and anyway there is little evidence to suggest that tactic has worked in the past 50 years.
While there have been rumblings of concern from those linked to loyalist paramilitarism I don’t sense any desire for armed conflict: not least because taking on your own government at the same time as you’re supposed to be celebrating the union’s anniversary would be, to put it kindly, a remarkably complicated “sell”.
That said, it is worrying that the Loyalist Communities Council (an umbrella group representing a number of loyalist paramilitary organisations) has now written to the British and Irish governments, “withdrawing their support for the Belfast Agreement and its institutions until our rights under the Agreement are restored and the protocol amended”.
With each “betrayal” heaped upon it, unionism will find it increasingly difficult to make a case for UK membership in the event of a Border poll – it’s hard to sell a marriage when it looks like your spouse is treating you with utter contempt.
Unionism/loyalism must tread with great care because there is no easy or obvious route to victory.
Indeed, it may still have to learn to live with the worst of both worlds – not fully in the UK, stuck with the protocol, but not in a United Ireland either.
While there have been rumblings of concern, I don’t sense any desire for armed conflict