It’s a phrase we hear all too often, dropped into political speeches or in answers to questions to journalists by Unionist politicians when discussing the constitutional issue. ‘The benefits of the Union’, the shorthand for the case for Northern Ireland’s continued membership within the United Kingdom that is apparently so obvious that it needs no elaboration.
In decades past perhaps it didn’t need elaborating. The United Kingdom was the roaring engine of that gigantic wealth extraction machine known as the British Empire, and much of the benefits of the Empire trickled down to what would become Northern Ireland with its thriving shipbuilding and textile industries. And after partition, being able to draw a contrast with an impoverished, agrarian, reactionary South meant that the case for the Union maybe COULD have been summed up in that pithy phrase.
But as time has worn on, and Northern Ireland changed, the same formula of words have been used by Unionists without reflection or explanation. We live in a completely different world and context to what existed a hundred years ago and yet the presumption that the case for the Union is self-evident persists among too many people.
I am not satisfied by this expectation and for the longest time I have wanted a Unionist leader to stand up and actually articulate what these benefits actually are. As a Nationalist I am admittedly primed to be sceptical of whatever case a Unionist may put forward, but I at least wanted an argument in favour of the Union I could engage with. But after many years of waiting it was only last week when Ulster Unionist Party leader and current Stormont health minister Mike Nesbitt rose to the challenge and penned an article for ‘The Irish News’. Entitled ‘Restoring hope: A case for Northern Ireland’s future in the United Kingdom’, Nesbitt addresses what is undoubtedly the primarily nationalist readership of the paper and finally tries to set out the Unionist case to a non-unionist audience (the article is behind a paywall).
Whilst it is commendable he stepped outside of his comfort zone to deliver the Unionist case to an almost certainly sceptical readership, the thinness of that case when delivered to a non-Unionist audience and the poverty of his arguments left me wondering if he had done more harm than good. Having waited so long for a Unionist leader to try and make the case for the Union confidently, I think I instead learned why they are content not to overly analyse what is a commonly held assumption.
Nesbitt begins by making an early mention of Brexit by saying that ‘The lesson of Brexit is that constitutional change can be destabilising, confusing and ultimately disappointing’ which is probably a stance the vast majority of Irish News readers would share, but one which fails to accept that most pro-unity advocates have already taken the lesson to heart in their own arguments. Brexit was ‘destabilising, confusing and ultimately disappointing’ because it was corrupt in motive, with the referendum being engineered as a means for David Cameron to manage Eurosceptic elements within his own party rather than as a response to any great desire in the British electorate to leave the European Union. Only once the referendum had been called, and the leave campaign were free to sell multiple contradictory visions of Brexit (something they were able to do so due to the deliberate lack of planning by the then Conservative government who feared articulating what Brexit would look like would boost a potential leave vote) as a panacea to any and all ills was the wider public engaged and, I would argue, mislead into voting for something that was not in their interest. The lesson of Brexit is not that constitutional change can be destabilising, confusing and ultimately disappointing, it is that it will be if you don’t plan for it and the proponents of reunification have cited Brexit in their own arguments that reunification absolutely must be comprehensively prepared for. Nesbitt’s use of the parallel is both ill-fitting and ill-judged, seemly designed to unsettle the reader a little and make them doubt the change reunification will bring, but it is not his primary argument.
He later writes that
“Restoring hope through prosperity is my party’s agenda, best done through our continued membership of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. True, our public services might not be in the best shape ever, but healthcare is still free to access. You may wonder why proudly socialist parties want to join with a government that charges its citizens for an appointment with their GP, or where there are tolled roads and where plans are in place to charge households for water supply and wastewater services for excess use.”
His line about public services ‘not being in the best shape ever’ is a masterclass in understatement.
‘The Irish News’ is carrying a piece from Dr. Tom Black in Derry whose headline is ‘The NHS on offer in Northern Ireland is so bad we wouldn’t accept it for our pets’. Many of us have horror stories of the pressures the NHS in Northern Ireland has been under for years, from extremely lengthy waits in A&Es to by far the worst waiting times in the United Kingdom. Whilst the Republic, like all modern countries, has issues with their health service what is on offer seems incontestably superior to what we are expected to put up with in Northern Ireland with the sole positive being that what we are served is ‘free’.
Similarly, when Nesbitt makes a virtue of our toll-less roads he neglects to dwell on the woeful lack of transportation infrastructure outside the Greater Belfast area. And when he points out that ratepayers in Northern Ireland aren’t charged for our water supply, he failed to point out that the chronic lack of investment in our water infrastructure has led to a lack of capacity that has exacerbated our housing crisis as well as left our sewerage and wastewater systems stretched to their limits, or even beyond!
Whilst there are cases to be made for and against water charges, for and against road tolling and for and against some measure of personal contribution to our healthcare, emphasising the free nature of those public services when the services rendered are dreadful seems perverse.
Perhaps aware that the Republic now offers superior services in all three spheres (though far from perfect of course), Nesbitt writes that…
“… while the Republic of Ireland economy has flourished on occasions, as part of the UK we are part of the sixth largest economy in the world.”
Which is one of the more common talking points in the case for the Union when someone is pressed into providing some actual answers as to what those are. It sounds impressive being a part of the sixth largest economy in the world. But in reality, what does that mean?
The statement ignores geography for one thing. We are an exclave from the rest of the United Kingdom, separated by the Irish Sea from the island of Great Britain which imposes a physical detachment from the rest of the British economy. Even leaving aside the protocol that Unionists hate so much, that physical detachment imposes a cost on someone in Birmingham trying to do business with someone in Bellaghy.
It also ignores the hugely lopsided nature of the British economy which is dominated by London and the Home Counties. Yes, we are a part of what is at this moment in time the sixth largest economy in the world, but most of the benefits of that accrue to one city in England and its suburbs. Citing it as a rationale for the Union is akin to bragging you’re a part of a wealthy family because one of your aunts or uncles you rarely talk with is rich.
Being a part of the sixth largest economy in the world is not meant to argue that it underpins our thriving economy, soaring productivity or world beating innovation either (because we have none of those things). It is meant to imply that the subvention we receive that keeps this place afloat is somewhat sustainable. Unionism isn’t a great fan of the begging bowl analogy that nationalists are prone to use when describing our economic situation, that our economic plan is best summed up by trying to get as much money out of London as possible, but given that Stormont regularly calls for more London money to help fix our issues and did so as recently as last week the complaint seems ill founded to me.
For the record, Britain was the largest economy in the world in the nineteenth century, slipped to second place in the early 20th Century as the US outstripped it, hit third in the aftermath of the Second World War as it was overtaken by the Soviet Union, slumped to fifth as the 20th century drew to a close as Japan and Germany recovered and finally hit sixth after the self-imposed wound of Brexit. The downward trajectory looks set to continue, and it is not too far-fetched that in a few years a Unionist politician will have to argue that ‘we are a part of the seventh/eighth/ninth or even tenth’ largest economy in the world!’. At some point, as a ‘Union benefit’, it ceases to have meaning.
It also minimises that the Republic is a part of the European Union. Whilst not a single economy in the truest sense of the word, the use of a single currency and the embrace of the four freedoms that underpin the Single Market mean that the distinction is probably of greatest interest to Semanticists and Economists. Were the members of the Single Market counted as one economic area, its only competitors on the world stage would be the United States and China.
Nesbitt also gives the Republic a backhanded compliment when he states its economy has ‘flourished on occasions’, implying the riskiness of independence, the uncertainty that would come with having to stand on our own two feet in contrast to the reliability of our dependence on London’s largesse. I find this point not only unconvincing but a little rich coming from the leader of the party whose historic actions led to the degradation of the Northern Irish economy and our collective impoverishment as a result.
The Republic demonstrates what independence can achieve and the benefits of real decisions being made by local, properly empowered leaders accountable to our vote. Whilst many can poke holes in the economic model of the Republic, (though I would recommend this article by the University of Limerick’s Ciarán Casey, an economic historian, on why getting a clear picture on Ireland’s economic strength is so awkward) the bald fact remains that independence allowed the Republic of Ireland’s governments to take the decisions for prosperity and growth that have left the country in a far better place than it otherwise would have been had it remained a backwater and ignored region within the United Kingdom. And for those who would cite the excuse that it was Republican and Loyalist violence that held Northern Ireland back and thus cannot be used as a point of comparison, we have an even better control for my assertion in Scotland.
A Celtic nation with a similar-sized population to the Republic (as well as other north Atlantic nations such as Norway, Sweden and Denmark) and with an even greater bounty of national resources (oil today and water tomorrow), Scotland should by rights be the wealthiest nation in the archipelago. Yet Scotland is not an independent country and Ireland is. Scotland cannot set an independent trade policy, Scotland was dragged out of the European Union against its will, Scotland is often at odds politically with London by electing Labour or SNP MPs when England tends to elect more right-wing representatives and in the House of Commons, Scotland’s interests are all too often trumped by English ones. Decisions are made on Scotland’s behalf by leaders outside Scotland, and Scotland has clearly suffered for it. Had all of Ireland remained within the United Kingdom with its early 20th century agrarian economy and limited sway at Westminster, would we be even debating the ‘phantom’ nature of Ireland’s GDP figures and whether it is really as rich as those figures suggest (it isn’t) or would we instead still be talking of a poor and neglected region with the United Kingdom that lacked the tools to shape its destiny for the better?
Scotland shows us the answer to that question would almost certainly be yes. It illuminates the path not taken, of Ireland’s fate if it had remained in the United Kingdom. Scotland is reaping the ‘benefits’ of the Union whilst the Republic prospers without. Yes, for many decades Ireland was an impoverished state on the edge of Europe even whilst independent, but that was due to the oppressive economic gravity of the United Kingdom which only European Union membership liberated Ireland from by allowing Ireland to diversify away from its economic dependence on Britain. Scotland, remaining within the Union, was unable to take advantage of the same opportunities. Whilst Ireland was laying the groundwork for the Celtic Tiger, Scotland was being used as a social laboratory by Thatcher.
And yes, the Celtic Tiger was ultimately put down and Ireland had to make some very painful decisions to put the country back on track. If the case for independence is undermined by every economic headwind, then no country should be independent at all.
Ultimately, the Unionist case articulated by Nesbitt for Nationalist eyes is hollow under even the most cursory of examinations. The few points raised are flimsy and easily dismantled, and collectively it is merely an appeal not to rock the boat. I am unsurprised the ‘benefits of the union’ are so often left unarticulated. At its heart Unionism is a nationalism, an identarian ideology whose real argument for the Union is emotional.
The vast majority of Unionists see their identity as at home within the federal identity of Britishness and wish for their home to be a part of the British state. That’s the honest reason. That’s the real reason. And many people are quite willing to tolerate a poorer quality of life for identarian reasons. But for the majority of people who live here it isn’t enough. Hence, he isn’t really arguing FOR the Union, but arguing against change, against the upheaval that reunification would bring, against rocking the boat.
He is appealing to the single most powerful force in politics, that of apathy. There are no real benefits to the Union. If there ever were, they’ve long since faded and none really justified the trauma of partition or the century of political chaos that followed. Overcoming apathy, as pro-reunification advocates must do, is a far more onerous task than debunking the Unionist case for the union. For that Nationalism needs a case of its own, and until that is in place we can critique Mike Nesbitt and other Unionists all we like, Unionism’s inability to argue a rational case as to why we should retain the status quo isn’t going to change anyone’s mind when we cannot present a substantial case to the contrary, nor is it going to overcome the real bulwark of the Union, the Unionist population’s emotional attachment to the way things are.
I’m a firm believer in Irish unity and I live in the border regions of Tyrone.
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