There is a refusal to accept the inescapable truth that this place is the last remnant of England’s first colony.
As such it ticks all the boxes of an ethno-political or politico-ethnic problem which any political scientist would instantly recognise.
That creates the same problems as similar divided societies across Europe: in Belgium, northern Italy (Alto Adige/Sud Tyrol depending whether you’re German or Italian-speaking) and of course the Balkans.
As my colleague Alex Kane correctly says, “it would be difficult for even the Pollyanna wing of optimists to make a convincing case that we are a happy, settled, reconciled society”.
That’s because it’s never gonna happen, because it’s not and never will be ‘a normal society’.
What happens in such places, whether it’s Belgium or Switzerland or Bosnia-Herzegovina, is that appropriate political mechanisms are devised to enable ethno-national groups to share the place. The Good Friday Agreement is exactly that. It’s probably no coincidence that Mo Mowlam’s PhD thesis was on democracy in Switzerland and how it worked in cantons.
Recognising this place for what it is, as those who devised the GFA did, helps to accept reality instead of hankering for some shimmering Shangri-La.
Thus, in Belgium no-one rabbits on about reconciling the Flemings and Walloons. In Switzerland in 1978, after years of strife, a new canton of Jura was established after it seceded from Bern (or Berne) canton. No-one rabbits on about reconciling French Swiss and German Swiss.
You’ve heard of the Swiss army knife made by Victorinox. It’s made in Jura, but in German cantons the Swiss army knife was made by Wenger until Victorinox took over the company in 2005. You could multiply such examples across Europe: the Basques, Catalans, Macedonia etc.
The only way unionists will be reconciled to their diminished and diminishing position is in a reunited Ireland. Here’s why.
There will be a border poll within the next decade – that’s within the span of Starmer’s likely two parliaments. The generation who will vote for reunification are coming on the electoral register in ever-increasing numbers. The evidence of elections since 2022 proves that.
The Irish government will hold back until they’re sure a referendum will be successful, but they’re already making preparations. The ESRI has been publishing studies of how much it will cost and how long it will take to bring the north up to southern standards.
Unionists will wait until the last minute to move, until they see the writing on the wall, but they will enter negotiations about the shape of a new Ireland and their place in it.
Unionists will wait until the last minute to move, until they see the writing on the wall, but they will enter negotiations about the shape of a new Ireland and their place in it
Brendan O’Leary, a global leader on divided societies, has written ‘Making Sense of a United Ireland’, providing the range of options.
Have unionists thought about remaining in a north run by republicans as unionists’ political clout here shrivels inexorably? Would insisting on a Stormont created for them that they will never again control be wise?
No, the reason unionists will only be reconciled to their fate in a reunited Ireland is because they will have negotiated a position satisfactory for themselves as an ethno-national bloc, a settlement with the rest of the people on the island, a settlement their own supporters here can support.
Incidentally, that’s what Lloyd George and Jan Smuts, the South African leader advising the British, intended should happen after the British left in 1921: that the Irish people should work out their own settlement on the island.
There will still be two ethno-political communities here, like Belgium. The challenge for unionist leaders is to take control of their own destiny.
Peter Robinson saw this coming down the track 15 years ago but he couldn’t persuade his party to start thinking about it.
You’d think the events of the last eight years would have persuaded unionists they can’t depend on the British, that their only future security lies in reconciliation with Dublin.
