Behind their own doors, what do people here really think about the nature of this state and the prospects of it changing in any major way?
In the long-ago when newspapers had money, at a time like this – Brexit bubbling under, a Stormont set-up in dispute - reporters would have had a fortnight at least to find a few dozen views in the two main communities and weigh them. Among northern Catholics/nationalists that would have covered people of different ages, waged and not, from various points of the political spectrum. The times that are in it now call for columnist types to take society’s temperature, to spread their wings as they suck their thumbs (a position that would make anyone concentrate).
Northern Catholics, it seems to this writer, are in a stroppy mood. Not desperate, things have been a lot worse, but in the doldrums, more than a bit disgusted. Supposed negotiations have been fronted by a Sinn Féin team that looks only half-awake plus an energetic new Dublin rep who may or may not be engaged with the SFers and of whom few if any northerners have the measure. Uninterest - born of tiredness and trying to earn a living, rear families - tussles with anxiety.
A powerful sense that Stormont doesn’t matter vies with worry. To show themselves pragmatic, non-sectarian, worthy of Dáil respect, will the Shinners sign up to a deal that they cannot hold the DUP to? Because three weeks down the line, if not sooner, isn’t there every chance that Gregory will have a new joke to share? Or Arlene will feel the need to improve on her recent mini-rhapsody about her children’s education in Ulster-Scots, its vital place in the state-school curriculum. Sammy must have a few gems squirrelled away. Young Paul Givan has the look of a lad whose need for notice cannot be denied much longer.
DUP majoritarianism, to go for a big word that covers most of the above behaviour, sticks in many throats. Some who find it hard to thole are allegedly Protestant, but their disgust is rarely voiced – or not in public. There was a moment when Catholics thought that’s it, no more unionist Stormont majority, surely that’ll impose manners? It was a moment snatched away.
Working backwards, the story is not wonderful. The summary is as terse as it is angry.
What many northern Catholics feel – meaning from those nationalist to greater or lesser extent, believers, non-believers, the Sundays and family occasions type - is ‘we wuz robbed.’ With her snap general election, as well as making her own career immeasurably more complicated, Theresa May turned the result of the assembly election upside-down.
That result took from unionists the winning margin they had held since the state’s formation. But after her narrow squeak May puffed the DUP up again. One minute the party, in the person of Foster, was in the dog house. Next the same party, in the persons of N Dodds and J Donaldson, knight of the realm, preened outside Number Ten, sat at a ceremonious table and signed off on a sizeable ‘bung’, as disobliging, unimpressed London put it.
It played very badly back home, among the ‘minority’ that makes up almost half the population and that broadly believes the old majority should get used to its real state, with no puffing, no artificial boosting.
This has been a long, slow period of anti-climax after the trauma of the Troubles. Up-beat republicans, dismayed but always pragmatic SDLPers, agnostics on the northern state who thought the basics had been sorted – equal opportunity if not enough jobs, an end to open discrimination, policing at least half-reformed though needing waching, an ‘Irish’ dimension written into the under-pinnings - these people for these reasons settled fairly positively for a power-sharing Stormont. It hasn’t worked.
The nationalist sense has been of a poor show halted in its tracks, a dozy vehicle in for an overhaul. The Northern Ireland vote against Brexit may as well not have happened. Martin McGuinness RIP – and doesn’t it turn out that for one large strand of Protestantism even the phrase is unsayable.
Now along comes a new Dublin team, on a Brexit mission. There is more to the psychology of a community than political choices and posturing. Leo Varadkar and Simon Coveney are unlikely heroes of northern nationalism but they may be just in time to raise spirits. Northern nationalists have run out of local heroes.
Next week, northern unionists (and then a fortnight off.)
