Crossing and abandoning the border

When we were young and the sun shone on a Sunday, my father would pile as many of us as would fit into an old Morris 8 and head for Bundoran. We were joyful from the start, but once we crossed the border we would yell and cheer. Nobody told us to do that, although one of our parents might eventually tell us to pipe down. It was as if we’d been encased in a cumbersome suit of armour and  suddenly the weight had lifted, we were free.

These days, the same sense of Irishness emerges in watching the Republic of Ireland play and win in the glorious way they did a weekend or so ago. I’ve never felt the same affinity watching a Northern Ireland team play. I might note that Conor Bradley of Liverpool via Aghyaran is a prominent team player, but I never had any sense of identification with them.

I’m guessing there are some unionists who’d think me ungrateful for all the things being in the UK gifts me with, but I suspect other more thoughful unionists might see that my feelings throughout my life towards this north-eastern huddle of counties  relate to the fact that it was createed at gun-point, that Catholics were despised and discriminated against for fifty years and more, that down the centuries there were people who resisted the weight of Mother England sitting on them.

But the times are definitely changing, and they will change more radically in the not-so-distant future.  There are some unionists who see history as it is and have abandoned shameful attitudes of superiority (‘We are the people’) There are others who resist change, some because it’ll diminish their powers, some who still subscribe to the patently counter-productive ‘Not an inch!’ school of thought. 

But we all know other unionists who are clear-eyed and courageous, who celebrate their Irishness and would be glad to join nationalists and republicans as they  scramble into the lifeboats and row vigorously away from the leaking, sinking hulk of the UK and its future purblind captain Nigel Farage.