Unionist Parties: Good or Bad for Unionism?

If we reduce unionism to a simple definition of “maintaining the link between Northern Ireland and Great Britain” then it becomes problematic distinguishing the actions of unionist parties and the overall unionist method.

As a supporter of the Alliance party I come across this often, I choose to define my political ideology as liberal because I think that Liberalism is a universal ideology which should be applied to the laws of the UK or of Ireland. To me the constitutional position is almost secondary to what my primary goal is; to use public and private power to increase the individual freedom of my fellow citizens.

Before we had the GFA and Stormont, unionist discourse was within a UK wide lens because the only centre of power was in the house of commons. This allowed a “broad church” official unionist party to electorally flourish without the headache of accountability due to the closure of Stormont and direct rule.

When we finally got the GFA and our new institutions there was the usual rancour and chest beating between the usual hard-line crowd. The centre of power saw a shift back to Belfast and the DUP was able to quickly pick apart the decaying old Ulster Unionist Party.

What many forgot to query about the DUP, more specifically its voters, was what they actually believed? It has been well documented that ‘the big man’ Ian Paisley Senior was a right-wing populist, he said openly in the 1970s that if the link was broken with Britain then he could only accept an independent Ulster – irrespective of how this would even work.

There are good guides of public opinion such as the NI life and times survey. During our long running gay marriage debate poll after poll found that there was cross-community support for liberalisation. Yet the lazier narrative was that unionists all supported a socially conservative policy and that all nationalists supported a socially liberal one.

It is not only unfair to characterise Unionist voters like this, but it is factually incorrect. The reason I use the term ‘methodology’ when describing NI unionism is because I think that in the minds of many it is simply procedural. For most of us the idea of ‘supporting the union’ is not some flag waving, rule Britannia singing orange-fest, rather it is simply a maintenance in the socio-legal link with Great Britain.

This matters from an accountability standpoint because many unionist leaders, particularly in the DUP, still shy away from debating issues of domestic importance to NI and instead fixate of scrambling a narrative that maintenance the union means maintaining the status quo. They are allowed to do this because we do not distinguish them (unionist parties) from support for the union, Ian Clarke puts this more expertly in his slugger pieces on how unrepresentative the unionist movement has become.

We see examples of this in such mild things as Christopher Stalford scoffing at the notion that organisations such as Invest NI disproportionately target Belfast over Derry with grants, marketing and promotion. This doesn’t need to be “unionist vs nationalist issue,” both cities can thrive with a link to Britain or both can suffer – that is now wholly within the gift of Stormont and pretending it isn’t just lets them off the hook.

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