Opinion

Alex Kane: Constitutional debate keeps on crippling compromise

Former Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams calling for a vote on a united Ireland at an event in 2013 - the constitutional issue has long dominated Irish politics and will continue to do so. Picture by Niall Carson/PA Wire
Former Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams calling for a vote on a united Ireland at an event in 2013 - the constitutional issue has long dominated Irish politics and will continue to do so. Picture by Niall Carson/PA Wire Former Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams calling for a vote on a united Ireland at an event in 2013 - the constitutional issue has long dominated Irish politics and will continue to do so. Picture by Niall Carson/PA Wire

NOTHING has changed. And yet everything has changed.

The constitutional question remains at the heart of all political debate here; yet that question is louder and more pressing than it has been in my lifetime. This point was always coming, of course.

Indeed we have lived with the certainty of it every day since the first NI Parliament met in June 1921.

Brexit may have pushed it higher up the agenda, but it was always on the agenda. As long as there were nationalist choices for one community and unionist choices for the other the question was never going away.

That's why Alliance is stuck. That's why no real alternative choices have emerged in almost a century.

That's why, even in the absence of terrorist campaigns and with a requirement for mandatory power-sharing and in-built vetoes for each side, we still don't have consensus and genuine cooperation.

From 1921 to March 1972 Northern Ireland was, to all intents and purposes, a one-party state.

From 1972 to April 1998 we struggled to find ways of working together, governing together; trying to convince ourselves that if we only managed to get ourselves around the same table and on the same committees we would somehow build a 'new era' Northern Ireland.

How often did we hear a variation of the line: "If the parties worked together in government and had to make collective decisions about health, education, social welfare et al, they would find out how much they had in common and we'd finally move away from Orange/Green/Us/Them politics."

What the past 20 years have taught us is that there is no escape from the past.

We don't seem to want an escape from the past, either, because escaping from the past requires both sides to acknowledge their own errors and then build a future based on genuine compromise and integration.

Such a future requires new voices and vehicles. It requires new thinking and a new way of doing business together. That is not happening. It is not going to happen. And it cannot happen until conflict stalemate is replaced with conflict resolution.

Some people have acknowledged that particular reality and are suggesting that we should try and 'draw a line' under the past. Again, that's not going to happen.

It might have been possible had we agreement on the constitutional future, but we don't; and that means that every election is a numbers game and 85 per cent of the electorate vote for parties which have a clear stance on the Union versus Irish unity.

It is not possible to draw a line under the past in those circumstances because the past is always in front of us.

We will always be dragged back to the identity question. It is unavoidable.

Brexit has certainly complicated matters but it is nonsense to argue that politics here would be anywhere close to 'normal' or harmonious even if the UK had voted overwhelmingly in favour of Remain.

Sinn Féin wouldn't have abandoned the unity project begun long before Brexit. Academics and economists would still be producing papers setting out the benefits of unity.

We would still vote along us-and-them lines. RHI would still have happened. The relationship between SF and the DUP would still be poor. The SDLP would still be pro-unity.

The DUP/TUV/UUP/PUP would still be pro-Union. My friend Brian Feeney would still be writing articles like his most recent one - which I disagreed with, yet enjoyed the passion behind - about the economic sense of unity.

Yes, the issue would be less pressing and important than it is right now, but it was never going away.

It never will go away. Even if Irish unity happens the identity question for hundreds of thousands of people will not go away.

In exactly the same way that 'British rule' in Ireland never squashed the identity of those who regarded themselves as Irish, a united Ireland will never squash the identity of those, like me, who will always regard themselves as unionist and British.

As it happens, I don't think it would ever be possible to protect and promote that identity in a united Ireland.

And while it's true that Brexit has raised concerns for small-u unionists it is, I think, a mistake to assume that those concerns would translate into a vote for Irish unity.

Anyway, we are where we are. The debate is well under way and the figures are being pored over by both sides.

The debate - and it could last anywhere between five and 20 years - will hang over local politics and cripple any chance of compromise, consensus and breaking new ground.

It is as it ever was. Everything has changed - 1968, 1972, 1974, 1985, 1998, 2007 spring to mind.

Nothing has changed - every year springs to mind. Time to give the 'dreary steeples' their regular dust down and repointing.