Opinion

Fionnuala O Connor: Irish language act would be no more than a recognition of reality in north

Senior Sinn Féin members attending a rally in May in support of an Irish language act. Picture by Alan Lewis, Photopress
Senior Sinn Féin members attending a rally in May in support of an Irish language act. Picture by Alan Lewis, Photopress Senior Sinn Féin members attending a rally in May in support of an Irish language act. Picture by Alan Lewis, Photopress

Why the prospect of legal status for Irish feeds such savage indignation is hard to hear, and harder to process for the indignant who deny their real motivation, perhaps even to themselves.

They say the cost bothers them. Or it’s the wrong language to boost; more Poles and Chinese here than Irish-speakers. Then there is the risk of discrimination against non-Irish-speaking civil servants. It has been undignified to witness. What it does to the minds of the objectors doesn’t bear thinking about.

If the language campaigners now fronted up by Sinn Féin win most of what they want, Irish will still be way less visible than English in this tiny state. Bridges, streets, public buildings and the street furniture of city centres will all proclaim a British past, a British presence. But the state will be changed utterly. Northern Ireland, post a language act centred on Irish, will be inarguably and legally Irish as well as British.

Although the most engaged NI Britishers see only insult, this would be no more than recognition of reality. Yet the very notion of a language act sets all of unionism a-jangle, or so the public reaction suggests. Alliance and the Greens have struggled to find their footing. Robin Swann will not abide it, like his predecessor, Mike of ‘Mike and Colum’ Nesbitt, whose next-to-last leaderly statement ‘warned’ that the DUP might be about to yield an act. For all-purpose anti-agreementer Jim Allister it is yet another example of the fiendish nationalist-republican agenda, another tool to ‘hollow out our Britishness.’

Wrapping it round with Ulster-Scots would pacify nobody and cut no ice with Allister, hardly a surprise since nobody in truth believes in Ulster-Scots, much less wants it given legal status. What was surprising was to see a Sunday Business Post reporter quote ‘an ex-DUP adviser’ (in the course of confirming that the party would not agree a stand-alone act) calling Ulster Scots ‘a load of nonsense. Your average unionist doesn’t give a stuff about it.’

Yet Britishness, English, British NI, must stand alone. Any admixture mysteriously ‘hollows out’ Britishness. (A mixture becomes less? Allister must not be a cook.) He uses the ‘hollowing-out’ formula against the range of nationalist/republican campaigns stretching back through objections to daily flag-flying, to restrictions on parade routes. All of which he sees, quite accurately, as efforts to beat back unionist entitlement. But ‘entitlement’ is not a sympathetic word.

Unionists may have originally written off talk about culture, identity, rights and respect as political correctness. But they relish turning the terms back on the once marginalised minority, now so unbearably uppity.

It is a tiring business, though real culture-warriors never tire (no pun intended). The claim now is that it was the Shinners who started the culture war over parades and flags and have ‘weaponised’ Irish. SF use everything, but these are wilful alternative facts; after a century of brandishing the Union Jack while demanding a ban on the Tricolour, two centuries of Orange marches, three centuries after spoken Irish and its native speakers were forced to the rocky shores.

Historical ignorance and insensitivity parades itself by ridiculing Irish as rarely spoken. Is it also denial, and dread, that the ‘British-Orange’ culture so proudly asserted by Arlene Foster amounts to no more than marches, bonfires, great heaps of stolen pallets and tyres that burn with much toxic smoke and risk to health and housing? That the passion to oppose restriction defends the right to annoy and pollute?

These are not thoughts that bother Edwin Poots, the man in the gap as talks folded beyond disguise. He had the DUP sticking-point off pat. ‘There cannot be a position where one culture is recognised above and other cultures.’ But Edwin the explainer was proclaiming in the mouth of the Twelfth, band-practice audible in much of Belfast, as practice-marches marched and police paused or re-routed traffic in much of the capital and town after town. Not necessarily for long, just matter of factly - as once was the case throughout the north with special measures where banners, flutes and the extra blatter going past the chapel were not appreciated.

Thwarted Orangemen still march weekly near Drumcree, to protest that they haven’t been allowed down Garvaghy Road since 1997. Though as the Parades Commission note, in addition to the weekly protest Portadown has ‘around’ 45 other loyalist or unionist parades each year. But one culture cannot be recognised above others?

May enlightenment eventually dawn. And tomorrow, where they are welcome, may the marchers enjoy themselves.