Opinion

Denis Bradley: Those who want a united Ireland need to engage more maturely with those who regard Northern Ireland as their home

Denis Bradley

Denis Bradley

Denis Bradley is a columnist for The Irish News and former vice-chairman of the Northern Ireland Policing Board.

It would be mannerly, as well as politically wiser, for nationalists and republicans to engage with events marking the centenary of Northern Ireland. Picture by Niall Carson/PA Wire
It would be mannerly, as well as politically wiser, for nationalists and republicans to engage with events marking the centenary of Northern Ireland. Picture by Niall Carson/PA Wire It would be mannerly, as well as politically wiser, for nationalists and republicans to engage with events marking the centenary of Northern Ireland. Picture by Niall Carson/PA Wire

I have a vivid memory, very early in the Troubles, of being asked to meet a Tory MP who wanted to learn what was going on in the Catholic areas of the north.

The person who set up the meeting brought with him a copy of An Phoblacht, the Sinn Féin newspaper, and gave it to the MP to have a read.

Before he got to the third page, he cursed loudly and ripped up the newspaper. The editorial line was all too much for a delicate Conservative stomach.

There is a lot of 'newspaper ripping' going on these days. The commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the establishment of Northern Ireland is nearly upon us and, already, there are a good few nationalist and republican organisations unwilling to engage with the, as yet, ill-defined events that will mark that occasion.

Undoubtedly, there will be celebratory events that will be exclusive to unionists but surely there will be commemorations, discussions and debates that could be attended by mayors, academics, politicians and others.

Would it not be mannerly and politically wiser to welcome the invitation and then pick and choose as to what to attend?

Those who believe in the inevitable unity of the island are currently inviting, even pleading, with unionism to have grown-up conversations about the future. They want civilised, mature and creative conversations with the various strands of unionism.

They want to talk about the effects of Brexit, about the implications of a border down the Irish Sea, to explore the growing fragility of the United Kingdom, the possibility of another Scottish independence referendum, the ramification of changing demographics and voting patterns.

There is a whole agenda of material to be discussed, debated and perhaps negotiated before a referendum on Irish unity that will most probably happen sometime in the medium future.

But in response to engaging with the uncomfortable and maybe even distasteful reality of Northern Ireland, united Irelanders are more comfortable in tearing up the newspaper.

In more recent days I was invited on to a Zoom lecture by Steve Aiken, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party.

It was entitled 'Resetting British-Irish Relations in the Post Brexit and Covid Period'.

Steve Aiken has a long and friendly relationship with organisations and people in Dublin. He revealed that he lived and worked there for at least three years.

He comes across as a true and honest Ulster man who calls a spade a spade. He was the first CEO of the British/Irish Chamber of Commerce and consequently a firm advocate for economic co-operation between the two parts of the island.

But he is also more than willing to tear up the newspaper. He is happy to discuss the merits of shared islands; England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Ireland.

But he is not going to enter talks about a shared Ireland. Unionists are not interested and, anyway, it is not going to happen, he says, so no time will be wasted on such futile discussion.

The Tory MP, on that night all those years ago, was told that a day would come when his party and his government would have to sit down with Irish republicans to bring the violence to an end.

Nowadays and in the future, those who want a shared island will need to engage and empathise more maturely with those who regard Northern Ireland as their home and a unified Ireland as their nemesis.

Unionists were reluctant listeners when they were told that they would have to share Northern Ireland with their nationalist neighbours. But they got there or, more accurately, they were taken there by political reality.

Hopefully, more of them than Steve Aiken might want to admit don't want to tear up the newspaper and are willing to have a mature conversation about how the diverse peoples of this island are going to respond to changing realities; economic, social, environmental and political.