Curious, but not all that surprising.
Since Catholics/nationalists are turned off Stormont and feel cheated by the Tory-DUP deal, Protestants/unionists should surely be in cheerful mood, moderately optimistic?
But optimism is beyond northern Protestant unionists and has been for perhaps centuries. This community may be past cheering up.
Perhaps this is the point to get rid of a quibble, though these days only sticklers raise it.
Some used to balk at equating Catholics with nationalists, Protestants with unionists. What about the Catholics who vote unionist, they niggled, Protestants who don’t think of themselves as unionist?
What we now have is what wishful thinkers lament as ‘increased polarisation’ and the rest of us recognise as the truth of ages.
Stickle how you like; mavericks fail to make an impact, too few for this place’s good. Most unionists are Protestant, most nationalists Catholic.
And here we are, well into a changed demographic situation that one section refuses to acknowledge.
Catholic schoolchildren outnumber Protestant children, the bigger number of the most elderly is Protestant. Only one outcome ahead, but Protestant unionists cannot say it outside their own homes, church halls, Orange lodges, perhaps pubs and clubs, anywhere ‘the others’ might hear.
The growing Catholic share of the population is to be talked down, ignored.
The evaporating majority is felt as brutal fact, but denied. That denial underlies and perhaps excuses, certainly accounts for much in unionist politics, lack of leadership and state of mind.
The assembly election was a big frightener. The Westminster turn-up for the books was not a famous victory. Instead of voicing satisfaction at the DUP’s king-making unionists fret, primarily that Theresa May is a broken reed.
Criticism of the DUP’s ‘bung’ - as the London media mocked it with creationist and homophobic quotes for light relief - produced Protestant ‘hurt’ and ‘dismay’.
Under the headline ‘PM didn’t deserve vicious abuse... and we in NI shouldn’t be sneered at either’ the Belfast Telegraph’s religious correspondent and former Queen’s University public affairs officer Alf McCreary wrote that he had never been a DUP supporter. ‘But I believe they - and the rest of us - have been sneered at dreadfully by London commentators who depict us as country bumpkins and political crackpots.’
Some who imagine their mindset is not predictable much less tribal were as hurt as the others, the openly-unionist wounded.
Far from enjoying a moment in the sun anxious Protestants saw May’s vulnerability and returned morosely to their Stormont dilemma.
Unionists appeared to like being back on the hill more than nationalists, republicans. But its lure seemed to gradually fade as Irish became the big sticking point. Now the Orange Order and Jim Allister are in full cry; defensiveness and bad temper rule.
There is half-spoken admission that unionists have come badly out of this shared Stormont, from the start seen as a reward for terrorists, a non-British arrangement, now also an incubator of social liberalism. Direct rule is becoming a preferred option. Mightn’t it hook ‘the province’ back into the consciousness of ‘the mainland’?
A middle-class unionist reluctantly but solidly on board for the early peace process marvelled that Catholics made so much of Arlene’s crocodiles.
RHI and previous scandals had passed him by. ‘A nationalist song-and-dance’, he said angrily.
Another thought the assembly’s possible inbuilt corruption on top of the executive’s stalemate had diminished an efficient Foster, made her look unimpressive.
The fault, in other words, is not in unionism but in the structure. In which the unionist majority is no longer safe.
The overall verdict is that we are off to hell – or a united Ireland - in a handcart.
As if the unspeakable demographics aren’t scary enough Brexit is looming, its outcome unreadable. The conclusion is near-despair. Which republicans, it seems many believe, have engineered - or rather which has been designed, plotted and choreographed by the all-knowing, terrifying Gerry Adams.
To match the 1916 centenary, unionists talked up plans for the state’s 100th anniversary.
Today’s mood is more like whistling past the graveyard. ‘It’s classic profound unionist insecurity, all shark-infested waters,’ says a long-time unionist specialist. ‘Theresa probably won’t last, Brexit - and Corbyn - are out there, while Adams, the biggest shark of all, is cruising ever closer to the shore, with his border poll, Irish unity etc. And nobody really knows what the next census will bring.’
How Adams personifies the nightmares is what strikes another chronicler. ‘When he goes, what on earth will they do?’ Well, who knows. Not unionists. But they won’t relax.
- Last week Fionnuala O Connor wrote from the Nationalist perspective: Northern nationalists are in a stroppy mood
