“Wolfe, Russell and McCracken did not found a society for a united Ireland, but a society of United Irishmen…”

Seneca once wrote in his Letters from a Stoic: “enjoy present pleasures in such a way as not to injure future ones.” There have been fewer moments when the old Roman philosopher, statesman, and dramatist was more relevant to the politics of Northern Ireland.

Sinn Fein’s recent and significant gains on political unionism has given rise to a slew of journalists (and others) who create an impression that they are just looking at the issue for the very first time: touting solutions which vastly underestimate the complexity facing anyone taking on the job.

As DeValera said back in 1957 “the man or men who solve partition would deserve an outstanding place in Irish history.” But nearly sixty years later, despite all the enthusiasm unleashed by Brexit and this month’s Assembly elections, most analyses still don’t touch the fundamentals of that problem.

Much of it underestimates the mundane effects of the Troubles on the social lives of two communities. Demarcation of living has led to segregation of play (how humans learn their social intelligence), such that one ‘kid’s play’ can look very like a Zombie apocalypse to another.

These are nontrivial socio-political blocks to progress on taking down the walls that divide the island. Too few southern commentators are familiar enough with these splits and somehow imagine it can all be super engineered by getting the Brits to force ‘the Prods’ out of the UK.

As Fergal Keane noted in the Sunday Independent yesterday, Irish nationalism has long since lacked live awareness on this point:

O’Connell’s unhappier legacy was the association of nationalism and Catholicism.

He had made the priests his ward bosses in the campaign for Catholic Emancipation, a tactic that worked well but sent an unmistakable signal to the Ulster protestants about the Ireland they could expect if O’Connell managed to repeal the Act of Union.

On his visit to Belfast he learned the depths of popular protestant opposition. It wasn’t a lesson that stayed learned. In every generation nationalist politicians and revolutionaries found themselves surprised by what, in retrospect, was screamingly obvious.

Parnell paid little attention to the reality of life in Ulster – sharp-edged, violence bubbling – until the Home Rule riots of 1886 made the truth impossible to ignore.

More concretely, Diarmuid Ferriter notes:

…given the economic realities, tension and disunity in the UK, the desire of most in NI to remain in the EU, the increasing strength of Sinn Féin and the endurance of doubts (which have always existed) about Britain’s commitment to, or interest in, Northern Ireland – as well as an Irish Government more vocal about Brexit as something that demands a revisiting of the issue of Irish unity – it may be the case that the historic predictions about the impact of the European question on Irish partition could come true.

What will remain problematic in any move towards unity, however, is dealing with the reality of an Ulster unionism that may be much weakened, but cannot be ignored or coerced.

In the Sindo Eoghan Harris lays it out for those “Dreamers” who believe it will all happen via the magic of demographics (ie, treating Protestant families who’ve lived in Ulster for centuries as an alien population and amenable to subjugation):

Every country has one fatal flaw. Britain’s is the mindset that produced Brexit. Ours is an obsession with an outline mental map marked ‘United Ireland’.

For the past two months, the three biggest political parties in the Republic have been flying kites for a united Ireland, echoing coverage of the same topic in The Irish Times.

Gerry Adams began with pressure for a border poll. Enda Kenny followed with an EU speech calling for a united Ireland within Brexit. Last week, Micheal Martin told us that Fianna Fail is bringing out a white paper on the same subject.

Leo Varadkar rightly railed against raising a united Ireland at this time as it “alienates and causes enormous fear among unionists who are still half the population in the North”.

He goes on:

Last week, [Micheal] Martin told The Irish Times that “the unionist community go back into their trenches if they feel there is a threat or acceleration towards unity”.

Martin’s white paper will propose 12 concrete ideas to help cross-border relations before any referendum.mUnionists should note that, unlike Sinn Fein, Fianna Fail is not trying to ramp up tribal tensions.

In fact, the white paper will help to clip the green plumage of two beaky birds. It both robs the Shinners of their sole monopoly on united Ireland rhetoric, and muffles green Martin critics such as the O Cuiv faction.

Martin’s white paper is the political equivalent of using the Irish Army in 2016 to steal the Shinners’ thunder. Senior hurling.

Well, as I’ve said before, we’ll judge that as and when said White Paper arrives. But, he asks…

…why keep harping on about a united Ireland when its only result is to raise fears among the Northern Protestants? Isn’t there something immoral about risking the present fragile peace to satisfy a primitive nationalist pathology about Northern Protestants?

This brings me to my second question: do unionists want a united Ireland? You all know the answer to that.

But some of us still subscribe to a nationalist myth that comes close to a pathology: that unionist beliefs are based on nothing but bigotry and they can be bought off or forced to lie down by the Brits.

Time was I shared that myth and that pathology. But the Provo murder campaign forced me to change my mind.

What of the undoubted resilience of Nationalist confidence in Northern Ireland:

Gone for good are the old sectarian problems of local representation, discrimination in the allocation of local social services and access to higher-level education. All were essentially reformed by the end of the Wilson-Callaghan era. Patten was a great victory for the SDLP on policing.

Take just one symbol of the new prestige of Northern nationalists: the sole Northern Irish judge on the British Supreme Court at the moment is a Roman Catholic, Lord Brian Kerr. Educated at St Colman’s College, Newry, Lord Kerr looms large on the British legal landscape.

Even Sinn Fein’s own political elite, many of them with third-level degrees, show we are now a long way from the past “nightmare of Northern nationalists”.

This new nationalist confidence is reflected not just in the Assembly results but in conservative attitudes to reunification. The most recent poll conducted after Brexit showed that only 43pc of Northern Catholics support a united Ireland.

All of which adds up to a picture of fragile peace in spite of Sinn Fein’s efforts to torment the Arlene Fosters of unionism to retreat into tribal mode.

Finally, he recalls Jack Lynch’s words in An Gairdín Cuimhneacháin in Dublin from 1971:

“Perhaps the national majority need to examine their consciences in relation to the national minority. Have our political concepts been sufficiently wide to include them?

“Do we agree that as John Hewitt writes, they have ‘rights drawn from the soil and sky’ which are as good as any title held by any previous migration into Ireland? Let us today rededicate ourselves to reconciliation amongst Irishmen.”

Harris concludes:

Consent is the only firm foundation for the unity of minds and hearts that must precede any unification.

Let’s never forget that Wolfe Tone and his Northern Presbyterian comrades, Thomas Russell and Henry Joy McCracken, did not found a society for a united Ireland, but a society of United Irishmen.

Historical echoes here from Stephen Collins in the Irish Times too:

…the Sinn Féin victors in that byelection (South Longford, 1917), who denounced Redmond for his moderation, effectively ensured that partition would become a reality with the hardest of hard Borders between the two parts of the island.

In the intervening century nationalism has regrouped at regular intervals to campaign for a united Ireland and on each occasion has only succeeded in reinforcing the strength of unionist opposition to it.

…by moving immediately to campaign for a united Ireland nationalism has repeated the old mistake of underestimating the depth of unionist feeling. The louder the demand for a united Ireland the stronger unionist resistance will become.

In 1994, months after the Provisional IRA’s first ceasefire Gerry Adams told Irish Times journalist Frank Millar that “…the struggle is not over. And it won’t be over from a republican perspective until the union is replaced by and inclusive, democratic agreed Ireland.”

Republicanism cannot be wished away. The aspiration goes deep within the emotional body of people north and south, and it crosses the barrier between those who supported the Provisional’s use of the gun for more than a generation and those who strongly opposed it.

The reality of consent suggests that “re-unification is for stoics”, rather than “men of action”. The “work” being to re-humanise the parts cauterized by armed struggle by creating common spaces, and areas for common action.

And the most telling part of Harris’ analysis:

Put a face on most Northern Protestants and they look like Rory Best or Andrew Trimble, British and Irish, ready to lay their bodies on the line for Ireland or Ulster.

When are we going to give up the delusion that unionists suffer from false consciousness – that in the crunch they will clutch the tricolour, fold their tents, go silently into the night?