Letters from Unionism: Three Voices

Three unionists write in their own words, interwoven with my reflections.

I have come to see that I still feel a kinship with unionism, even though I’ve moved away from supporting the Union. My hackles start to rise as I hear unionist communities reduced to stereotypes, patronised, and unfairly branded with historic guilt. It’s shown me that my identity and loyalty run much deeper than the constitutional question, even though I haven’t felt unionist or British for a very long time.

And so I’m thankful to Arnold Carton, Connswater and Ian Clarke for agreeing to share what unionism means to them, in their own words. Sometimes unionism is expressed loudly and with little reflection. At other times, it’s carried so self-consciously that people hold back from expressing it altogether. Most often, people don’t examine it closely but take it for granted as part of who they are.

Identity isn’t something to be settled by argument. I’m not here to persuade, only to invite reflection. If you want to pick someone’s identity apart, you’ve missed the point.

Arnold begins with a reflection on inheritance:

“I did not choose to be British, nor is it something embedded in my ‘Planter’ genetics. No one chooses their family or nationality; we were born into it, and we share a common bond with other members of our tribe, some of whom may be infuriating, but we still would not wish them gone.”

He then invokes a powerful image:

“My nationality runs through me like text on a stick of rock, but not in the flag-waving way that some associate with being British.”

That image made me pause. Many people accept unionism or nationalism as a birthright. I always saw it as an accident of birth, something I could choose to change. Yet something does still run through me, or I wouldn’t be writing this piece.

Ian is more blunt:

“I’m a unionist primarily because I was born British into a British family in a British community in East Belfast in the United Kingdom. I remain British living in the UK and I’ve no desire for that to change. If we’re honest, the overwhelming majority of folk in NI will recognise that as their own reality, whether Unionist or Nationalist.”

Later, he pushes back against caricature:

“We favour the union without being stridently unionist or flag-obsessed. We are British, but we also take pleasure in our Irishness. We supported equal marriage and were embarrassed by being lumped in with those who opposed it. We believe we should be guided by the judgment of women on reproductive matters. We voted Remain in significant numbers. We are not supremacist or triumphalist, but nor will we accept such attitudes directed against us.” 

Arnold complements Ian’s point, placing his own emphasis on Irishness:

“I’m both British and Irish. My Britishness does not in any way equate to anti-Irishness.”

Unionism is a broad church.

For Connswater, the Union shows up in the routines of daily life:

“The BBC has always been and remains part of my daily life. Blue Peter as a child and now Newsnight, and In Tune on Radio 3.”

These things are powerful, and the continuity is comforting. My own experience was very different – I grew up in a household without a television, so I never formed strong bonds with British popular culture. That probably lessened my sense of Britishness.

Connswater adds a powerful note of gratitude:

“The NHS to an asthmatic working-class child was a lifesaver. Today, after major surgery, I can say, like John Major, the NHS has saved my life twice.”

I moved back north largely because of the NHS, deeply thankful for what it had already given my family. I believed it would be there for me too, but now I’m afraid it won’t. There are many misconceptions about healthcare in the South, including the assumption that poorer people can’t access it. It’s not perfect, but currently, outcomes look better than in Northern Ireland.

Connswater also reflects on how conflict shaped his life:

“I’m an internal economic migrant, in part because of the impact of the PIRA’s campaign on the economy of NI. I experienced and witnessed bigotry, intimidation, threats of violence and actual violence. I saw how close NI came to a civil war, a war potentially not unlike, but more bloody than that fought in Ireland after the War of Independence.”

Connswater acknowledges frustrations with the Union, but his conclusion is steady:

“Northern Ireland is, as part of the Union, about as fair a compromise and management arrangement for the divided six counties as is ever likely to emerge in any of our lifetimes.”

He also sees the Union in a larger perspective:

“I live in a ‘Nation of nations’, a complex, messy, and, at times, frustrating, unusual, but powerful, amazing and long-lasting, nation state of political compromise… without the easy glue of crude homogeneity.”

For him, the strength of the Union lies not in sameness but in its ability to hold together difference.

Connswater links that vision to Northern Ireland’s peace. In his view, this came:

“Thanks to the deployment of troops, the suspension of Stormont, the Anglo-Irish Agreement and the Good Friday Agreement. Even the Windsor Framework can be seen, in the aftermath of Brexit, as the kind of complex, qualified, ambiguous arrangement which a complex, divided and fragile society requires.”

This contrasts with my own longing for clarity. I remember hearing a public health announcement while driving in Connemara and feeling a pang of longing, because in the South, belonging to a government rooted in its own place was simply taken for granted. Here we live with the dysfunctional tangle of Stormont, power-sharing, Westminster and dependency on London, and so an empowered government that puts people here first feels like a pipe dream.

What came through strongly is that unionism isn’t transactional.

Arnold makes the point:

“Too often when people discuss the Union versus Irish unity, the talk moves quickly to the economic or other advantages of either. But for most these would not be decisive. They lack the emotional depth that creates a sense of belonging.”

Ian puts it with characteristic directness:

“People make the case currently that unionists should look south at what is currently a stronger economy. Yet those same people did not step away from their nationalism when the UK was stronger for the first 95 years of Irish independence. I will not stop being British because my country is going through a bad patch. Mine isn’t a conditional Britishness. It is who and what I am.”

Arnold also reflects on the future:

“If a border poll resulted in the people choosing Irish unity, I know that for young republicans there would be a sense of excitement, almost like setting out in a new marriage with a new identity, but I hope they can understand that for unionists it would be an emotional and sad occasion. Having said that, I think most of us would accept the change and make the best of the new identity. I would most certainly oppose anyone who tried to use violence to overrule the democratic choice of the people.”

“Most of us live in a world of stories, stories in which our identity is important. If a border poll is called, it would be wise for republicans to talk to unionists about how the story of Ireland could be reimagined so that we unionists could feel we belong in a role other than that of ‘villain’.”

Ian echoes the concern, frustrated by how unionists are often spoken about:

“Domestically, there is a sense of an increasing trend within a growing section of nationalism that demographics will take care of the border and that the views and concerns of unionism need not be considered. This is the absolute doppelgänger of the attitude that nationalists (often correctly) have ascribed to political unionism for most of the past century. It is an attitude that would be likely to hinder and disrupt any intra-unionist debate held in public.”

And he adds, just as firmly:

“I am too young to have had any influence on society, even in the latter days of Stormont. Also, I came from a working-class East Belfast background where no one in our family benefited from that regime. I will not accept any responsibility for the sins of other people’s fathers.”

That last point stayed with me. I sometimes sense hostility from a minority of nationalists, and I notice a subtler prejudice at times even among those who present themselves as tolerant and reasonable. In a place like this, some of that is probably baked in, but my growing watchfulness means I notice it more and more. Truthfully, I feel more trust in the Irish government than in Northern nationalism, which is still somewhat caught in the bitterness of history. The maturity and restraint I see in Ireland’s politics is what I hope for here too.

Given I’m not pro-Union, I’m especially grateful that Arnold, Connswater and Ian trusted me with their words. It isn’t only loyalty or defensiveness that led me to write this, but a conviction that it was necessary and fair. Unionist voices deserve to be heard in their own right. I hope you’ll let their words sit with you for a while and allow them to settle, rather than rushing to argue them away.

The only future worth building is one where we treat everyone as one of our own.