Very fact of Assembly weakening the union
Posted By: June 02, 2016
Newton Emerson.Irish News (Belfast). Thursday, May 2, 2016
Nationalist unease over Sinn Féin’s apparent weakness at Stormont ignores how the mere existence of Stormont weakens unionism itself.
This is something I am aware of because of my age – I have no memory of the previous Stormont or the Sunningdale executive and was almost 30 when devolution was restored.
Growing up under direct rule was a very British experience, certainly for those of us inclined to be British. Northern Ireland had no separate political being, beyond a few dry administrative arrangements. Stormont was like a National Trust property and the idea that it once had a prime minister seemed bizarre. In fact, with no Scottish and Welsh devolution, the entire notion of a parliament in Belfast seemed unutterably strange.
There was plenty of Northern Ireland politics, of course, but it was formally confined to empty corners of Westminster or the council reports of local newspapers. Alternatively, it took place on the streets, which only further deterred most people from having anything to do with it. The Belfast-based media had plenty to report but it was all events. Ideas and plans took place at the national level, drawing your focus accordingly.
Nationalists seem to find it self-evidently ridiculous that Margaret Thatcher called Northern Ireland “as British as Finchley” but in her day and in strictly constitutional terms she was correct – although ‘as British as East Anglia’ would have been even more accurate. Whatever else set us apart, officially we were just some quangos and an ITV franchise.
During the long period of direct rule, unionism got over the loss of ‘its’ parliament and embraced the idea of integrationism, where Northern Ireland would become indistinguishable from any other UK region, losing even its separate administrative character.
Figures like UUP leader Jim Molyneaux brought this concept in from the fringes to centre stage, with senior Tories like Ian Gow giving it a welcome in Westminster. The shock of the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985 moved it firmly into the mainstream, with opinion polls showing full integration to be the preferred option of the vast majority of unionist voters. As late as 1995, Robert McCartney launched his initially successful UK Unionist Party on an explicitly integrationist platform. But then the peace process bedded in and unionists slipped back to their devolutionary instincts.
Today, integrationism is completely forgotten and even people my age seem to find Stormont perfectly natural. For everyone younger, the idea of Northern Ireland without a first minister is presumably bizarre.
Devolution makes this region feel like a country. That is its irresistible attraction to Unionists, who thereby reveal themselves to be conflicted on the union. Is the UK not nation enough?
The same psychological effect is why Stormont was anathema to Nationalists for so long. The old Nationalist Party – effectively the remnant of Redmond’s Irish Parliamentary Party – saw Stormont as making Northern Ireland distinct from Ireland. Only in the mid-1960s, just too late, did it realise that Stormont makes Northern Ireland distinct from Britain and that this is its fundamental purpose.
At the time of partition, Unionists wanted UK integration but Westminster gave them a mirror image of the new parliament in Dublin, with what was meant to be a shared upper chamber. The whole design could hardly have been more clearly intended to keep Unionists at arm’s length en route to a united Ireland – and their ‘our wee country’ yearnings caused them to fall for it. Amusingly, the history of the term ‘Northern Ireland’ is identical.
One of the few Unionist leaders to show an understanding of this throughout his career was the late Ian Paisley. He squared the circle by creating a Unionist party that was really an Ulster nationalist party, eventually leaving office proclaiming himself an Irishman and chuckling with his brother Martin McGuinness. If McGuinness now seems more relaxed about Stormont than Sinn Féin voters, it is perhaps because it would be counter-productive for him to explain precisely why.
Arlene Foster is my age and from a UUP background, yet the psychology of Stormont has so drawn her in that she is acting like a prime minister rather than a first minister. She “won the election”, so there is no need to compromise on a justice appointment, an Irish language act, on dealing with the past or on any other totemic issue of delivery for Nationalism.
But how much does that matter while Stormont is slowly undermining the Union? It hardly takes a bilingual street sign to point out this direction of travel.
Nationalist unease over Sinn Féin’s apparent weakness at Stormont ignores how the mere existence of Stormont weakens unionism itself.
This is something I am aware of because of my age – I have no memory of the previous Stormont or the Sunningdale executive and was almost 30 when devolution was restored.
Growing up under direct rule was a very British experience, certainly for those of us inclined to be British. Northern Ireland had no separate political being, beyond a few dry administrative arrangements. Stormont was like a National Trust property and the idea that it once had a prime minister seemed bizarre. In fact, with no Scottish and Welsh devolution, the entire notion of a parliament in Belfast seemed unutterably strange.
There was plenty of Northern Ireland politics, of course, but it was formally confined to empty corners of Westminster or the council reports of local newspapers. Alternatively, it took place on the streets, which only further deterred most people from having anything to do with it. The Belfast-based media had plenty to report but it was all events. Ideas and plans took place at the national level, drawing your focus accordingly.
Nationalists seem to find it self-evidently ridiculous that Margaret Thatcher called Northern Ireland “as British as Finchley” but in her day and in strictly constitutional terms she was correct – although ‘as British as East Anglia’ would have been even more accurate. Whatever else set us apart, officially we were just some quangos and an ITV franchise.
During the long period of direct rule, unionism got over the loss of ‘its’ parliament and embraced the idea of integrationism, where Northern Ireland would become indistinguishable from any other UK region, losing even its separate administrative character.
Figures like UUP leader Jim Molyneaux brought this concept in from the fringes to centre stage, with senior Tories like Ian Gow giving it a welcome in Westminster. The shock of the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985 moved it firmly into the mainstream, with opinion polls showing full integration to be the preferred option of the vast majority of unionist voters. As late as 1995, Robert McCartney launched his initially successful UK Unionist Party on an explicitly integrationist platform. But then the peace process bedded in and unionists slipped back to their devolutionary instincts.
Today, integrationism is completely forgotten and even people my age seem to find Stormont perfectly natural. For everyone younger, the idea of Northern Ireland without a first minister is presumably bizarre.
Devolution makes this region feel like a country. That is its irresistible attraction to Unionists, who thereby reveal themselves to be conflicted on the union. Is the UK not nation enough?
The same psychological effect is why Stormont was anathema to Nationalists for so long. The old Nationalist Party – effectively the remnant of Redmond’s Irish Parliamentary Party – saw Stormont as making Northern Ireland distinct from Ireland. Only in the mid-1960s, just too late, did it realise that Stormont makes Northern Ireland distinct from Britain and that this is its fundamental purpose.
At the time of partition, Unionists wanted UK integration but Westminster gave them a mirror image of the new parliament in Dublin, with what was meant to be a shared upper chamber. The whole design could hardly have been more clearly intended to keep Unionists at arm’s length en route to a united Ireland – and their ‘our wee country’ yearnings caused them to fall for it. Amusingly, the history of the term ‘Northern Ireland’ is identical.
One of the few Unionist leaders to show an understanding of this throughout his career was the late Ian Paisley. He squared the circle by creating a Unionist party that was really an Ulster nationalist party, eventually leaving office proclaiming himself an Irishman and chuckling with his brother Martin McGuinness. If McGuinness now seems more relaxed about Stormont than Sinn Féin voters, it is perhaps because it would be counter-productive for him to explain precisely why.
Arlene Foster is my age and from a UUP background, yet the psychology of Stormont has so drawn her in that she is acting like a prime minister rather than a first minister. She “won the election”, so there is no need to compromise on a justice appointment, an Irish language act, on dealing with the past or on any other totemic issue of delivery for Nationalism.
But how much does that matter while Stormont is slowly undermining the Union? It hardly takes a bilingual street sign to point out this direction of travel.
