Southern unionism

Is there a partitionist mentality in the south of Ireland? One’s first reaction is to say No. After all, for decades the south had Articles 2 and 3 in its Constitution, which claimed that the whole island of Ireland formed the national territory. Granted, 2 and 3 were amended in the Good Friday Agreement,  and now the ruling is that anyone born on the island of Ireland has the right to be part of the Irish nation. The change was made in the interests of peace and in the belief that national reunification could be achieved by non-violent means.  Not everyone liked the change. Some Irish people saw this as abandoning the democratic right of the Irish people to govern themselves, but most thought amending Articles 2 and 3 was not to abandon the aspiration of national unity.   That’s the official position.  However, there are also those who would see the biggest obstacle to reunification as lying not north of the border in the unionist population but south of the border in its unionist population.   Because yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as southern unionism. That is, those south of the border who perhaps posture as nationalists but who actually would prefer the southern state to continue as it has for the past one hundred years.

These southern unionists see it as bad politics as well as bad manners for southern politicians to intervene in the north. The south should at all times refrain from poking its nose into northern business that doesn’t concern it   Which is pretty much the line that northern unionists like Nigel Dodds take. You remember how Nigel told off Enda for expressing an opinion on BREXIT, insisting that this was strictly an internal UK issue.  OK, shortly after that Charlie Flanagan TD asserted the right of the Taoiseach to speak on matters that would affect relations between the north and south.  But let’s not forget that Charlie Flanagan is the south’s Minister for Foreign Affairs. When he decides to come north, he comes in that Foreign Affairs role. Shades of Wendy Austin “driving into Ireland” some years back.

At one time, a common response among unionists to civil rights agitation  was to advise the complainer,  if he or she didn’t like it up here, to pack his/her bags and go live down south.   Northern unionists don’t come out with that line quite as frequently now, but that doesn’t mean it’s gone away. It’s alive and well and living south of the border.   One example. In  the Sunday Independent last week there was a column headed “If it’s so great up North, Gerry, why not go back?”  In the column, the Louth TD was told that, since he’d drawn invidious comparisons between the south’s health system and that available in the north, he should just take himself back home where he came from.

The sentiment doesn’t stop within the pages of the Sindo. A considerable section of the south’s population have been taught to see northerners as “different”.  They talk in a funny northern way, they “don’t understand the south” (Joan Burton’s assessment of Gerry Adams a while back), and  essentially they’re a  bolshie bunch of whingers who are forever making judgement on the state of things in the south, when it’s none of their business. This kind of passive unionism represents as great a challenge as persuading northern unionists their true home is as part of the Irish nation and that they would be exchanging a 2% presence in Westminster for a 20% presence in the Dail.

As long as the southern media continue to present northerners, especially republican northerners, as interlopers, then many in the south will continue to view their fellow-Irishmen and women living north of Dundalk as, as, well dammit,  – foreign.