In North(east)ern Ireland, we pride ourselves on talking. We talk in shops, in taxis, at funerals, and in long winding queues outside the chippy. We talk so much that it often seems the talking is the real end, not any agreement that might follow. Yet there is one subject that still, somehow, brings on a sudden epidemic of sore throats: the possibility of a united Ireland. Mention it to many Unionists and the shutters come down faster than a pub when the police were on their way in the 1980s.
This refusal to engage is curious, because Unionists are otherwise enthusiastic conversationalists. They’ll talk about bonfire regulations, EU sausages, flags of every conceivable dimension, or the proper thickness of Tayto crisps. But on the question of what happens if—when—the North tips into a nationalist majority, lips clamp tight. It’s a political version of a child putting their hands over their ears and singing la la la, can’t hear you.
It’s not as though the discussion itself is dangerous. A debate is not a border poll; a citizens’ assembly is not a customs post. But Unionist leaders behave as though opening a conversation about constitutional change would instantly dissolve the Union like a sugar cube in tea. It betrays a lack of confidence: if the Union is really as secure and beneficial as they claim, why not welcome the chance to make the argument?
Instead, the strategy is silence, punctuated only by occasional warnings of doom. Any talk of Irish unity, we are told, is divisive. This from people whose political project has been defined by drawing a hard constitutional line for over a century. The irony is so thick it could be tarmacked on the Westlink.
Worse still, the refusal to discuss it cedes the intellectual ground. Nationalists, academics, and even the odd pragmatic business lobbyist are sketching out what a united Ireland might look like—healthcare, taxation, education, flags. Unionists, meanwhile, stand outside with folded arms, sulking. When the conversation becomes unavoidable, they risk having no influence over the shape of the future because they spent the crucial years refusing to participate.
There is also a profound discourtesy in the refusal. Unionists demand, rightly, that their identity be recognised and respected. Yet when the demographic and political reality makes Irish unity a live issue, they refuse to respect the legitimacy of that aspiration enough even to talk about it. Respect, apparently, is a one-way street.
Unionists ruled this part of Ireland for fifty years. They have had to either share government with the nationalists or rely on England for another fifty. Without doubt the NEXT fifty years will see them in a free United Ireland. Regardless of how much Ben Lowry and Pete Shirlow try to massage the facts. Thankfully we have no intention of treating our Protestant neighbours as badly as their ancestors treated the Catholics!
Yet, if what we are hearing is to be believed, they are discussing it a plenty among themselves.
Very good Jude free Palestine