The Republican movement faces its own harsh reality…
Contract the experience of northern Nationalism over the last forty years to a single word, and it would be ‘separation’. By and large they have lived separate lives. Separate from our neighbours, by school, sport, preferred language and by large scale segregated living. And, often most painfully of all, separate from an independent state to which most would much prefer to belong. In debates on Slugger some nationalists give the impression of living in an idealised parallel universe where political unification is as certain as Darwin’s theory of evolution. Philip Johnson in the Telegraph notes the reality facing the Republican movement is a great deal harsher than that:
For the republicans it means supporting the police in their work; appreciating that the British army is entitled to have a peacetime garrison in the province and to guard it effectively; and to allow the PSNI to rebuild its intelligence network which was dismantled when the RUC Special Branch was wound up. It was the paucity of intelligence on the dissidents that forced Sir Hugh to call in the Army’s Special Reconnaissance Unit to help out.What is being seen now are the first worrying signs of a deeper split in the republican movement over the tactics adopted by Adams and McGuinness. They thought that by agreeing an accommodation with the British in Northern Ireland, they would make political inroads in the Republic and thereby achieve their goal of a united Ireland through the ballot box rather than the bullet.
But things have not worked out the way they wanted. Sinn Fein was humiliated in the 2007 general election in the Republic, derailing Mr Adams’s “all-Ireland” political strategy. The protest vote in the South is being picked up by the Labour Party rather than Sinn Fein and this trend will continue as the recession deepens. There seems to be little appetite in the south for the ideology of Sinn Fein and membership of the EU has rendered unification of Ireland a redundant aspiration.
Worth noting the Telegraph’s nice new Northern Ireland webpage, complete with a too-short blogroll…
Horseman
I think you are way too sensitive over the matter and I wasnt trying to offend but to emphasise a point.
It is not beyond the realms of possibility that the ROI ends up bankrupt and in the eyes of future unionists (regardless of religion) they would be out of their minds to hitch their pensions and long term prosperity to such an entity.
Anyhow your posts are usually not behind the door with the odd below the belt jibe at unionism so i think you doth protest a little too much.
However forget that comment then and advise if you think that such thinking would cross the minds of dissidents – I am not even an Irish republican so I cant fathom how they think ?
Well the economic meltdown might leave a few of the dissidents with more time on their hands, which could be destabilising.
But I don’t think that the economic downturn will suddenly cause people to ditch abandon non-violence. The dissidents reject the reject the GFA. They reject notion that given time unity can come about peaceably. They want total victory and they want it sooner rather than later. They are utter fantasists.
John East Belfast,
… your posts are usually not behind the door with the odd below the belt jibe at unionism ..
I think -isms are valid targets for subjective remarks. Most -isms are riddled with contradictions that need to be pointed out. But using a deliberately derogatory term to describe a whole state, without any objective attempts to justify the remark, seems to be ‘ad hominem’ writ large.
Curiously enough, though, you are happy to hitch your wagon to the UK (a “banana monarchy” maybe?) which is in no better state than the south. And lets not get into the fruitiness of NI’s economy – it couldn’t survive in the wild at all!
I presume, of course, that when the south’s economy was doing very well, you were advocating reunification? If not, why not (by your logic)?
Horseman
I have never advocated separatism from the UK.
When the Celtic Tiger was good it was still no better than the economic prosperity of the UK of which NI was a central part.
The UK economy has a future but the same cannot be said of the ROI who are going to have to totally re-think their whole model.
Anyhow the point I was making was that the plan of Moderate republicanism (if that is what SF are)is on the rocks. An end of the Union as a result of a majority vote by its citisens to share the tax burdeen and pension deficit of its neighbour is a pipe dream.
If some dissidents see it that way then in their eyes they only have one option.
SF/PIRA opted for the current course for one of two reasons – ie they were ultimately defeated or they thought they had a better plan.
If it was the latter then we have something to worry about.
i think the line “he British army is entitled to have a peacetime garrison in the province and to guard it effectively” throws up a big flag in relation to the whole ‘peace process’. The recent Military parade in Belfast city centre was seen by many within the Nationalist community (republican or otherwise) as being totally counter to the principles of the GFA. “The North” was meant to be completely ‘de-militarised’ and whoever gave permission for this parade to go ahead was either silly or guilty of blatant ‘triumphalism’ (in the style of the Orang Order of old! A big mistake (in my humble opinion). Also most Republicans (or Nationalists) have huge difficulties with the U.S/British/Israeli ‘tri-partite’ alliance and its terrible oppression against the Palestinians (in particular) and other Muslim constituencies.
“economic prosperity of the UK of which NI was a central part”
JEB – you are having a laugh.
An end of the Union as a result of a majority vote by its citisens to share the tax burdeen and pension deficit of its neighbour is a pipe dream.
A person such as myself who believes that the political future of Ulster is determined by statistical trends such as the steady fall in the Unionist vote over the last 35 years must always be on the look-out for what Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls a ‘black swan’, a totally unpredictable event which screws all these statistics up.
In the last year we have witnessed two unforeseen events: a world economic collapse and the recent murders. Do these constitute a ‘black swan’? I’m afraid they don’t. National allegiance is based on ancestry, not logic or even economic advantage. Obviously if there are people so very unobservant as JEB who has convinced himself that the 6 counties enjoyed the same advantages as the Celtic tiger, there will also be Nationalist folk who will ignore the debt mountains and pension craters of their desired unified homeland. Indeed the supposed collapse of the Celtic tiger might even accentuate the Nationalist vote, due to numbers of 6 county “ex-pats” returning home in the temporary absence of work.
Funny thing is, we only get Unionists coming on Slugger saying “Eeh, it’s terrible down south, thank god I’m not part of that”, just as we only seem to get Nationalists who think reunification would be beneficial.
To some extent this strange overlooking of economic reality is justified: the thing about sectarianism is that when your sect is in power it is cushioned against the economic woes that the other side has to endure.
The border runs through Catholic districts, not Protestant ones. Whatever economic disruption partition caused was made up for by supplying decent Unionists with jobs in the police and prison service. If the largest oilfield in the world were discovered off the coast of Kerry our trueblue Orangemen would be busy trying to formulate arguments showing that wealth does not bring happiness: certainly not amending their prejudices.
So really it all depends on the statistical relationship of each camp to one another. Economics has no part in it: but if a tsunami were to destroy Derry City, that would be a black swan. Just how far the Unionist sun has declined in its descent over the horizon you will find out in 12 weeks or so.
Paddy
The problem though for instinctive unionists and nationalists like you and me is that ultimately we are the minority.
The vast majority – including about the third who never vote – have in their eyes greater concerns than the border.
Take the 100,000 who appeared for the GFA vote – I think you will find they will all re-appear in a Border Pole.
Hence I wouldnt rely on the voting patterns of Unionist & Nationalist parties in normal elections.
In addition there are a greater proportion of Catholics are unionists than Protestants are nationalists – indeed very difficult to find the latter I have found.
So all the hardwork in a Border Pole will be for the Separatists – and harking back to a “nation once again” mythology wont cut it for the majority of NI citisens.
Dewi
Yes in terms of taking a greater proportionate share of UK national wealth then that demonstrated its place in the UK.
You see the problem with Nationalism is that because it chooses to isolate itself from all things British then they think the same is happening in unionist circles.
It isnt
We are fostering Business links via the CBI, Chritable links like the Princes Trust and our kids and schools are involved in the Duke of Edinburgh or Officer Training Corp. Our church organisations such as Boys Brigrade all number the Union flag among their others which come out on Remembrance days and other occasions.
In every sense we are see ourselves as British and the 26 counties is a different world to us.
There is no unionist osmosis towards a United Ireland going on – the Irish Language, Gaelic Sports and your blinded view of Irish history and our part in it are alien to us.
Therefore you havent a hope in hell of convincing more than 10% of Protestants of the merits of a Separatist United Ireland in the current economic climate.
Your challenge is to even get two thirds of Catholics.
Take the 100,000 who appeared for the GFA vote – I think you will find they will all re-appear in a Border Pole. Hence I wouldnt rely on the voting patterns of Unionist & Nationalist parties in normal elections.
You live in hope, obviously. However, the mysteriously appearing 100,000 seem to have voted for a settlement, and not followed the advice of the Orange Order to reject one, so I think you are a little optimistic in relying on them.
Your lecture to Dewi sounds a little strange, given that he is a Welshman living in Wales! My own no doubt biaised opinion is that your view of “Britain”, with its Boy’s Brigade and Duke of Edinburgh award, is based on an idealised view from the past, rather than the present day realities.
I think there is a tendency to assign too much importance to a border poll: though I suppose, if there is a real prospect of Unionism being defeated as a majority tendency in the 6 Counties, this is the last ditch comfort blanket on which you will inevitably fall back. It remains to be seen how long Stormont would be able to keep functioning with a Nationalist majority. It is also a worrying prospect: the authors of recent sanguinary events would be able to argue that they had the people’s mandate.
But a comparative study of the voting returns and the census leads me to the inevitable conclusion that Catholics vote Nationalist and Protestants Unionist, the only statistically significant exception being when the voter is married to one of the other sort. In bye-gone days there was a tendency for Catholics not to vote at all, because there was no prospect of their candidate being elected, but this has diminished with the increase in their population and STV.
There is also a tendency when one side live in areas predominantly occupied by those of the opposite tendency for them not to adopt the politics that might be expected of them. This is what causes the optimistic partisan of one side or another to imagine that the other sort are going to be on his side.
However, changes in the pattern of population, the constituencies and the type of voting can defeat this tendency, and these changes can be sudden and unexpected, like the election of a SF MLA for South Antrim.