History seems to come in sudden, bewildering bursts. During the Troubles, Bloody Sunday, the Hunger Strikes and the Good Friday Agreement stood out, announcing themselves even as they happened as events that would shape the future of Ireland. Then after the Good Friday Agreement, the world’s media packed their bags and went off to other places. Suddenly, explosively, the Brexit referendum result came in and with it the roof, littering the floor with old certainties.
Since that time nearly three years ago , things have been happening at such speed it was dangerous to make any comment, as events of the next day could have proved you an ill-informed ass. We are indeed living through momentous times.
Here are some of the events that have shaken our windows and rattled our halls.
- The 2016 Brexit referendum result was a ground-trember. The DUP had voted in favour of Leave, assuming that the referendum result would be to remain. If you watched Arlene Foster stride out to confront the media next day, struggling to look pleased with the answer the great British public had just served up, you knew that this was going to get worse.
- The RHI scandal led to the resignation of Martin McGuinness in late 2016. The collapse of the Executive and the death of the Deputy First Minister followed shortly after. It was hard to know whether to look towards at the smoking ruins of Stormont or towards the increasing noise from Westminster. David Cameron hummed a cheerful tune and left the stage.
- A number of elections knocked us back in our seats. There was the Crocodile election, when Sinn Féin came within touching distance of the DUP; and then the Westminster election, which swept away the SDLP and left Sinn Féin the uncontested voice of northern nationalism. The Westminster election also left Theresa May feeling very unhappy as the Tories found themselves having to curry favour with the DUP.
- At the end of 2017, Theresa May and the EU agreed on withdrawal terms from the EU, with said terms including a word no one had heard before and which some are now wishing they’d never heard: the backstop. The DUP announced that the backstop would mean a border in the Irish Sea – which was something up with which they would not put.
- Since 2017, English MPs have kept making their five-star incompetence twinkle brighter every day. From being the proud nation that told those damned foreigners what was what, the UK has come stumbling to the edge of the Brexit cliff, and what was sold as an opportunity suddenly emerged as in fact calamity.
- A last-minute but temporary stay of execution has been devised in recent days, and the Brexit hard-liners like Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson are now saying they’d vote for Theresa May’s hated withdrawal deal. That could leave the DUP cast in the role of heroic consistency or sad isolation, depending on which way you look at it. “Never, never, never, never!” works as a rallying cry, but if it means your party has dropped the entire UK and beyond into an economic nuclear winter, you’re going to be thinking this just might have serious electoral consequences.
- Two or three years ago, if you’d started to talk about a united Ireland, polite nationalists would have smiled and slipped away, or signaled to the barman to give you no more drink. Now, it’s the people who preach the wonders of the UK who are beginning to look like bar-flies. When people as moderate and restrained as former president Mary McAleese make statements such as the one below, you know you’re living in momentous times:
““[There are] those of us, and I am one of them, who believe that the truest and best potential of this entire island and all its people will only be realised when Northern Ireland and Ireland merge, and emerge as a modern, European democracy, inclusive of all, respectful of all.”
Eoghan Harris was right in 1997 when he said there was a ticking republican time-bomb somewhere about the place. His mistake was to think it was Mary McAleese, when all the time it was the DUP.
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