There is an assumption too that ‘most Unionists will admit to the inevitability of a united country’ and that the ‘search for agreement should begin now’. There is little point in evading any further the inevitability on which all are agreed’. This was said in 1971 – by John Hume. It is still being said. Later Hume changed his language and approach to accept an ‘agreed Ireland’ rather than a ‘united Ireland’ and to advocate the uniting people and not territory. Achieving the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement was partly born from that changed language.
Of course it is not only nationalists who think that way. The former chair of the Alliance Party and now independent MLA, Trevor Lunn, follows a similar logical path. He has argued that things are changing and pro-Union people are now prepared to think seriously about the constitutional question. If you accept that change is coming, he argues, ‘then you may as well be in on the conversation. If something is going to happen and you have the option to talk about it in advance or not, the choice is fairly obvious.’ Though not advocating a united Ireland, Lunn believes discussing its form and content is ‘a process we need to get into.’ And Unionists remain the problem for Lunn too. He advises those who do advocate Irish unity – in particular the Irish government - not to be afraid of offending those who are pro-Union – if only because they are ‘easily offended.’
Lunn’s argument is based on the common wisdom (especially amongst republicans) that Brexit is the ‘game changer’, pushing along the change that ‘is coming’, determining the need to be ‘in on the conversation’ (another term favoured by republicans) and shaping the ‘process we need to get into’. And Brexit is also the measure of what you must not do – call a referendum before you have ‘prepared and planned’ for the outcome. That’s the conventional lesson that has been taken from the experience of the last four years based on the assumption that all rational people would then have voted Remain. That’s an article of faith rather than a truism.
There is another lesson that can be taken from Brexit and it is this. Accepting that a referendum was going to happen, generating a conversation about it, setting out a process that everyone needed to get into – and this was announced in 2013, remember, even if David Cameron had little expectation of acting on it – had the effect of shifting the EU from an issue of low public priority to the only game in town. It distorted political culture and the effects we can now see.
But where is the evidence of an irresistible march towards or an insatiable desire for Irish unity? Much has been made of a recent LucidTalk finding showing 43% of those who responded favouring Irish unity. Of course, even that poll was down on the figure reported a year before (45%). The Lucidtalk polls are seriously out of line with academic studies (for example the Liverpool Study and Life and Times Surveys) which show sustained support for Northern Ireland staying in the UK. The sort of argument Lunn and others find convincing is an expression of faith not a truism. As Lord Bew wrote is response to the recent LucidTalk poll, there ‘is no historic train — instead, as there has always been, a big task ahead for those who want to make the case for Irish unity by consent.’ They aren’t doing a very good job of it.
A point made in a previous post applies here too - the important point is to show and not (only) tell. The argument is a simple one. Making Northern Ireland work is about showing (as well as telling), that Northern Ireland does work and that we should be committed to making it work better for everyone. That is an evidence based exposition of the pro-Union case. Equally, if you want to convince not only ‘slightly unionist leaning’ people like Lunn but also those easily offended Unionists he dismisses then showing you are interested as well in making Northern Ireland work is the obvious strategy. Though he is proffering advice to Micheal Martin, Lunn should take note of what Martin has been saying. For it is a good example of showing rather than telling.
When he launched the Shared Island initiative, Taioseach Micheal Martin spoke of ‘the genius of the Agreement is that we do not need to be defined or dominated by constitutional questions, as we were in the past.’ He noted that because no outcome is pre-ordained under the B/GFA, everyone could work together ‘for a shared future without in any way relinquishing our equally legitimate ambitions and beliefs - nationalist, unionist or neither.’ It was refreshing to hear Martin speak of the ‘need to probe some of the simplistic narratives about what we have all come through, which have emerged on both sides of the border.’
Some nationalists fear the connection building of the initiative because it could show that a shared island is achievable without unity (as Stephen Collins observed recently in the Irish Times) whereas some unionists think it is all about creeping unification. Neither position makes much sense today. Martin’s initiative isn’t the grand politics of telling – like the New Ireland Forum in the 1980s – but it is the politics of showing - putting practical issues rather than symbolic ones at the heart of politics. Pro-Union groups can be comfortable with its cooperative spirit and few are against better North-South relations. Martin’s refusal to make a commitment to a border poll acknowledges the potentially destabilising consequences of the process Lunn thinks it’s a good idea to get into. As Lord Bew observed, in the 1990s the UK and Irish governments ‘accepted that there were two functioning economies on the island of Ireland.’ Furthermore, a single Ireland economy is not mandated post-Brexit and ‘the rhythm of economic and social life between north and south will be quite distinct.’
For ‘middle Ulster’ (not only unionists) and for ‘middle Ireland’ (not only nationalists) there is a common purpose in the prosperity, stability and welfare of Northern Ireland ‘as a shared region of these islands’ (as Longley described it), north south, east and west. This is the truth, whether you want there to be unity or whether you want to maintain the Union.
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