‘England’s out of touch with us. We’re a nuisance’

Karen Moore loves her job and loves the Union. In 20 years of teaching at the primary school in Aughnacloy she has seen successive generations of children she taught raised in peace and safety. She’s married a local and was born a stone’s throw from the village, which sits hard against the border. The militarisation of life has come and gone. The heavily fortified police stations that were once emblematic of the state’s commitment to a Union under fire have been abandoned or sold off, but the long shadow of unresolved hurt remains for both communities here.

The tribal ties that bound people on both sides are loosening as mixed marriages and the decline in church attendances foretell the late arrival of a more secular, postconflict world. But that feeling of being isolated and misunderstood remains for Unionists like Karen and has the capacity to radicalise. Betrayal is in the cultural DNA in this far-flung outpost of the Union but that doesn’t make it any less real.

“Hardline political leaders are getting a real bashing but they are only saying what other Unionists are thinking. It just seems to be that Unionism has lost more and more to Republicans. England’s out of touch with us, we’re a nuisance. We didn’t even get to celebrate the centenary of Northern Ireland because the councils voted against it. And yet we’ve nothing to fear from a united Ireland?”