Border Poll as destructive neurosis

An important essay about Northern Ireland is Edna Longley’s From Cathleen to Anorexia, available in her collection The Living Stream. Though written 30 years ago, this essay continues to have important things to say about choices on the island, south as well as north. From its analysis there is a lot to learn.

The Irish nationalist dream, Longley suggests, ‘may have declined into destructive neurosis’ allowing ethnic assertion ‘to punch above its weight’ and set a universal tone –the politics of the worst threatening to marginalise the possibility of the best. She cited Robin Glendinning’s view (who was a founder member of the Alliance party) that nationalism is always ‘finding novel ways of saying the same damned things’. Longley argued that the traditional ideological vehicles - unionism as well as nationalism - were no longer fit for purpose. Progress, she thought, must admit complexity and ‘requires an intricately engineered four wheel drive’. 

Complexity (even constructive ambiguity) was inscribed into the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. Instead of the simple majoritarian principle – the principle against which nationalism had campaigned for generations – cooperation and consensus became the new values. In many ways the intricate and interlocking machinery of the B/GFA resembles that ‘intricately engineered four wheel drive’ Longley argued for.  However, one part of the B/GFA remains faithful to the simple majority principle. That is the provision for a referendum on Irish unity (or ‘border poll’). Agitation for a Border Poll has become louder recently. It is agitation which reduces the complexity of the B/GFA to one idea and one only requiring 50%+1 to be successful – a potentially destructive neurosis indeed.

Scholars, via robust polling and surveys, show that a border poll delivering a majority for Irish unity is not imminent. Support for Northern Ireland’s present status remains consistently strong. Most people do not think a referendum to be a priority and much of the uptick in support for Irish unity is a hypothetical response to a possibility twenty years hence. The UK and Irish government do not favour a poll.

You would be forgiven for thinking this recent agitation is yet another way of saying the same damned things. And it follows a familiar pattern of thought. There is no majority for Irish unity yet it is inevitable so we need to prepare for it now so that those unconvinced can be persuaded. Since the answer is already known, the conversation can only be framed with a set of questions delivering the correct answer. It’s the old politics of transition.  It works backward from Irish unity (as destiny) to the present.

The concern of those who dissent from this agitation is a practical one. If a border poll is put at the centre of public policy we will not develop the potential of the B/GFA. Political and civic energy will return to re-imaging the future through the past and energy will sucked into the old divisive majority/minority debate. In other words, it is the core of an UnMake Northern Ireland strategy.

This is not exclusively a pro-Union concern. Nor can it be dismissed as border poll ‘denial’ syndrome. It is a reasoned calculation of effect shared across the political spectrum – especially by those who have experience of the old politics. For example, Alban Maginness pointed out that an Irish border poll would only serve to inflame historic enmities. The late Seamus Mallon also argued strongly against the ‘one last heave’ thinking - on a simple majority basis – involved in pressure for a border poll recognising a ‘destructive neurosis’ when he saw it.

Advocates of a border poll reject Mallon’s principle of a ‘super majority’ as anti-democratic – a simple majority is enough. But they try to smuggle in its truth (with bad faith), claiming that ‘planning and preparing’ for unity now will deliver the broad agreement their majoritarian strategy denies. In short, the invitation is, ‘Let’s have a conversation about a border poll and we will deliver Mallon’s super-majority anyway in a referendum on Irish unity’. That invitation can be put another way, ‘Let’s substitute the complex, consensual modus vivendi of 1998 with the simple, binary, absolute and assume a consensus can be delivered on the basis of that profound division’. In terms of logical hypocrisy, that argument illustrates nicely the old maxim of the tribute that vice pays to virtue.

Here is the choice. On the one hand, reduce the B/GFA to one and final purpose – unity – and return political culture to exclusive symbolic identifications, as if nothing has changed since 1969 (never mind 1998). On the other hand, promote a collective interest in making Northern Ireland work – employment, health and welfare – and engage seriously in the project defined by Mallon, making Northern Ireland a ‘shared home place’. To use an old line of John Hume’s, uniting people is more important than uniting territory. Conniving with your own tribe - on the expectation that in 2028 there will be a nationalist majority – is the same damned thing all over again.

Different and positive things can be said and are being said. Making Northern Ireland work should be the goal for those who want to show what a United Ireland would look like as much as it is to demonstrate the advantages of the Union.