Raging Against the Dying of the Light – Unionism in Twilight

“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

Dylan Thomas’s ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’ is one of my favourite poems. It is simply so very Human in how Thomas exhorts his subject not to yield to the inevitability of the end but to fight it, to go down kicking and screaming and in doing so assert a kind of unyielding dignity. He is telling you, screaming at you, that as the darkness closes around you to not just let it wash over you. Claw and scrape and fight and shout for every last breath, every last moment.

But when ideologies enter their twilight years, the same exhortation can have a ruinous effect on societies. We can see this in the ongoing culture war over the Irish language and its presence in the public sphere in Northern Ireland, most recently encapsulated by the ongoing controversy in Belfast. Just over a week ago the City Council adopted a new Irish language policy which, according to the Council website, ‘sets out how the council plans to promote and use Irish across its services, including interpreting and translation, key documents and publications, signage at facilities, on the council website belfastcity.gov.uk and within the council’s corporate identity, including its logo.’

The policy had been subject to consultation and was designed to align with international standards of best practice in regards to minority languages. It was passed overwhelmingly by Belfast City Council with only the Unionist parties voting against.

The vote wasn’t the end of the matter of course, as those Unionist parties have not taken their loss in council lying down as this BBC article published shortly after the vote shows, containing as it does responses from Unionist politicians bitterly complaining about the result…

“Dean McCullough (of the DUP) said unionist concerns had been “dismissed” and “demonised” and his party would “continue to oppose” the policy…TUV deputy leader Ron McDowell added that the Irish language was being “weaponised, politicised and forced on communities that don’t want it”.

Unionist councillors triggered the call-in process on the policy after it was passed which means the policy must be reconsidered at the next meeting of the Council, it must have an 80% super-majority of councillors present voting in favour (which this policy will not reach) and the call-in must have been deemed legally valid (which at the time of writing has not been decided and is probably the deciding factor on whether the call in will succeed or not).

DUP leader Gavin Robinson went even further as this article in the Newsletter made clear

“Belfast Council’s decision to blast the Irish language across Northern Ireland’s capital city shows a ‘new Ireland’ would systematically erase unionist identity, DUP leader Gavin Robinson states…Mr Robinson stated: “We will not be silenced, nor will we be erased, and together we will ensure that Belfast’s future is one where the British identity is defended with confidence and pride…”

Robinson’s language is extraordinarily revealing, most prominently in how he characterises the addition of Irish culture to the public landscape in Belfast as the ‘erasure’ of British identity, thus demonstrating that for him this is a zero-sum game. One side’s gain is inevitably another side’s loss.

In her own opinion piece covering these events in the ‘Belfast Telegraph’, Suzanne Breen cannot hide her exasperation with Robinson’s stance (and the stance of wider Unionism)

“Symbols of Britishness are embedded in the everyday life of Belfast, but you’d never guess that from listening to those protesting loudly about the council’s new Irish language policy. The names of prominent places, institutions and thoroughfares in our city reflect royalty, aristocracy and empire. We have Queen’s University, the Royal Victoria Hospital, King’s Bridge, Queen’s Bridge, Albert Bridge, Royal Avenue, Great Victoria Street, and Chichester Street to mention but a few…The council’s draft Irish language policy adopted on Wednesday will include the introduction of English-Irish signage at its facilities and a new bilingual logo. This historic move threatens no community, identity or individual. No rights are being taken away. The English language isn’t being eradicated, Irish is just being added. This is about inclusivity, not exclusivity.”

Which is correct, but Robinson’s comments went further than revealing his view of cultural matters as a zero-sum struggle. His criticism of a ‘New Ireland’ (which the Newsletter article helpfully explains as ‘… generally means a united Ireland that provides space for unionist and British communities to maintain their identities’) is now a standard part of political discourse here of course. Terry Wright, who often writes for Slugger, said much the same thing a little over two years when he wrote of the situation in Derry.

Terry at the time was taking exception to the fact that there would be no Unionist Mayor or Deputy Mayor in Derry over the following term of the Council and characterised that decision as almost an electoral tyranny and, as Robinson did in his response here, this decision is held up as an example of what a ‘new Ireland’ is supposedly going to be.

It’s going to be the place of Unionist nightmares in other words, where Irish Nationalists hold the whip hand and Unionist culture and representation is to be suppressed. Now I can, and will, argue that is nonsensical. Terry’s complaint falls apart when it is pointed out that Unionist parties didn’t get a mayoral slot in Derry because they didn’t win enough seats under the D’hondt process. Similarly, Robinson is railing against a decision that was overwhelmingly endorsed by Belfast City Council and that Council was democratically elected and it wasn’t even a wholly partisan decision, with the cross-community Alliance, Green and People Before Profit parties backing the new arrangements alongside Sinn Féin and the SDLP.

Both complaints from Robinson lead back to the very root of this culture war. It is not that British culture is being erased as Robinson said, or that Unionists are being deliberately excluded as Terry argued, or any of the other times any action has prompted the bleak warning that ‘this is what things will REALLY be like in a United Ireland’… it is that they are not being privileged.

It is very important to unpack that of course, so please bear with me. A few weeks ago I posted an article, ‘The Benefits of the Union ⸮’ in which I asserted that the practical, pragmatic case for the Union between Northern Ireland and Great Britain no longer existed, if it ever had.

Unionist attempts at articulating a pragmatic case are rare and, more often than not, vague and anodyne. Mike Nesbitt has submitted his own article to Slugger as I write this and I don’t believe he has done anything to improve on his Irish News article which prompted my own original piece…the most damning line I feel was this

“When there is a problem the first thing you should do is name it. Then deal with it, openly, transparently and honestly. And there is an issue with unionism’s failure to properly articulate the case for Northern Ireland to remain in the United Kingdom.”

And once again the case goes unarticulated, Nesbitt either relying on the idea that case is so obvious it doesn’t need to be elaborated upon (and my contention in my own piece is that the real reason it is never elaborated upon is that there is very little substance behind the boast) or that it is the job of someone else to do that elaborating and not the leader of one the three Unionist parties because after writing these lines he pivoted to talking about something else. I feel well within my rights to take this as further confirmation of my belief that the Unionist case is not a pragmatic one.

But then if the case for the Union between Northern Ireland and Great Britain is so weak, why does a plurality of our population support it? What is the corollary of my argument that there is no pragmatic point to the Union?

What we need to understand at the beginning is that Unionism has engaged in a bit of semantical subterfuge with its very name. There is an ideology, a civic ideology that is prevalent in Great Britain yet worn lightly by most of its adherents. This civic ideology is Unionism, though we might term it civic Unionism, and it is the shared belief by people from England, Scotland and Wales that their interests are best served by pooling their resources within a single state, the United Kingdom. And such an ideology is invariably presented in a good light by the media, it is not rooted in base and exclusionary nationalism but in supposedly higher principles of common good and mutually beneficial co-operation (that civic Unionism doesn’t match its lofty aspirations though is increasingly obvious, particularly in how British interests are so readily conflated with the interests of the Home Counties vis Scotland, Wales and the North of England but that is not the point of this article).

But Unionism, our Unionism, the one we are intimately familiar with, it is not that ideology at all. The semantic subterfuge comes from conflating the civic Unionism in Great Britain with local Unionism. Local Unionists may share the aim of preserving the Union with their civic Unionist counterparts, but they don’t share a purpose at all.

The harsh truth is, Unionism is a nationalism. Ulster-British nationalism to be more precise, and Ulster-British nationalism has a different goal, a different purpose. The Union is not the be-all and end-all, it is merely a means to an end.

And that end is the maintenance of a homeland on the island of Ireland that is reflective of themselves and themselves alone, something which cannot be sustained without the Union and which may be doomed even WITH the Union. Over a year ago I wrote another article in response to comments from Edwin Poots where he argued Unionism had to reach outside its comfort zone.

At the end of the article, I reached the following conclusion

“Unionist leaders, past and present, whose job it was to stand at the heights and strategise a future, can see where the current trajectory is leading them. Not towards reunification as an inevitability, but towards a Northern Ireland that is fundamentally different from the one they grew up in. To shore up the Union and forestall reunification, as Robinson and Poots wished to do involves sacrificing some of the substance of the unionist Northern Ireland their forebears have constructed to embrace a more pluralistic vision. And the truth seems to be that a large chunk of the Unionist base sees that outcome as nearly as bad as reunification.

While I believe they truly desire more Unionist voters, they would wish for those voters outside Unionism to conform to their thinking, rather than for Unionism to stretch itself to accommodate the different aspirations those whom they seek to attract. Acquiescence to their current status quo, rather than striving towards a new shared future, is the aim”

This is the knowledge you need to understand what motivates local Unionism. This is why political Unionism keeps making what on the face of it are bad mistakes and poor choices that either weaken the Union or are PR disasters for their movement on the international stage. From the disputes over Orange parades, to their trenchant opposition to social reforms such as equal marriage and reproductive rights for women, to the insanity of supporting Brexit to the dominant culture war issues of our time, the Irish Language and migration, political Unionism has a habit of finding the wrong side of history on an issue (or at the very least the side most lacking in empathy) and planting their flag proudly upon it.

This is because most issues involve changing things and political Unionism is deeply suspicious of change, particularly any change that dilutes the character of the place. Change is only supported if it they believe is a change back, a restoration of what in their view are better times.

Just as Unionism fears reunification they also fear Northern Ireland changing from the place their forefathers built into a more pluralistic space. Reunification would be the culmination of that, the political erasure of that bespoke homeland in the single most blatant fashion. That is why the Union is so important, it is the bulwark against the ultimate expression of the loss of that homeland and its reduction to a mere aspect of an all-Irish state. But whilst reunification is not a certainty, the transformation of Northern Ireland is ongoing.

I believe the root cause of the opposition of Unionist politicians is rooted in this need for a privileged position. David Trimble and the then dominant UUP reportedly nixed the idea that the First Ministership should consist of two Joint First Ministers at the time of the Good Friday Agreement because he believed his community needed to see that one of their own was in the superior position and one was in the deputy position (though that was of course making a rod for Unionism’s own back in the long run).

That impulse is almost understandable. If Northern Ireland is your homeland, then your identity SHOULD be privileged within it, should it not? Your identity SHOULD have primacy, right?  You’ve no problem with others living here just long as they respect that this is YOUR country. Gavin Robinson was at pains to emphasise his opposition to what Belfast Council had voted was certainly not anti-Irish after all…

“Stating anyone who wants to enjoy the language is free to do so, he maintained unionist objections are with it being “imposed on others who have no interest”, plus “squandering” public money on rebranding all council buildings, parks, playgrounds, leisure centres and sports pitches to include it.”

And that is why this issue is so controversial. The use of Irish in the public sphere is a recognition that it is a part of our shared heritage and that it will not be denied. Robinson and other Unionists want to hold the line against this, to keep the Irish language in the private sphere and thus maintain the illusion of the primacy of the Ulster-British identity in what they perceive to be their own homeland for as long as they can.

None of this is good for the Union of course, it makes a mockery of Edwin Poots arguments from a little over a year ago that Unionism needs to convince other people of the merits of the Union.

But Unionism cannot broaden the case for the Union without being willing to sacrifice the substance of what they believe Northern Ireland to be, and that substance is the entire point. The Irish language is just once facet of how Northern Ireland is changing in the face of political Unionism’s dogged resistance, as incrementally it is emerging into the public sphere at every opportunity and every attempt by political Unionism to reverse that process either fails or ends up looking extraordinarily petty.

If pushed Unionists point to the quote from the 1980s that “every word of Irish spoken is like another bullet being fired in the struggle for Irish freedom” when they seek to justify their opposition, complaining that Irish has been weaponised by Republicans. But I am not really willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on that one, we are several decades removed from the end of the Troubles and I don’t think language rights and recognition deserve to be held hostage to a single line uttered nearly four decades ago. It’s an excuse, and it is actually another line from the 1980s that is more pertinent to this wider discussion.

Margaret Thatcher once said that Northern Ireland was ‘as British as Finchley’. It is in defence of this illusion that Unionism keeps making those bad choices, one after the other, standing always against change, always reactive and never proactive and as a result always, inevitability, losing. The Irish language is just the latest battlefield.

With no practical case on hand, the emotional case appeals only to those born into the political tradition who can now only see the grim vista of retreat, retrenchment and further retreat. Some within Unionism deride the constant erosion of their position as ‘roll over Unionism’, implying that greater strength of will would instead see Unionist gains when in actuality Unionism tends to play a losing hand on cultural matters when its argument is predicated, no matter how skillfully described, as being based on the maintenance of the privilege of their tradition over the ‘other’. Reunification may not happen, but the end of a Northern Ireland wherein the Ulster-British identity is privileged is assured in the fullness of time.

And so modern political Unionism, enmeshed as it is in our ongoing culture wars and trapped in the paradox of desiring things to remain as they wish but lacking the electoral strength to hold back change, simply rages at the dying of the light.