Opinion

Tom Kelly: The DUP have chosen but it is hardly a wise choice

Edwin Poots and the DUP are in a Faustian pact. The new leader’s first words had no references to the wider community, power sharing or partnership. Photo: Brian Lawless/PA Wire
Edwin Poots and the DUP are in a Faustian pact. The new leader’s first words had no references to the wider community, power sharing or partnership. Photo: Brian Lawless/PA Wire Edwin Poots and the DUP are in a Faustian pact. The new leader’s first words had no references to the wider community, power sharing or partnership. Photo: Brian Lawless/PA Wire

“The Union is in the process of being broken no matter how many hypocritical screams of horror come from people who have been blind to recent history. I would now consider a federal Irish parliament”.

These words were uttered by Desmond Boal QC, a founding member of the DUP in January 1974.

Boal, an eminent advocate spent most of the time between 1960 and 1974 denouncing every unionist leader from Terence O’Neill to Brian Faulkner for any attempt to establish a better rapport with the Irish government or to improve inter community relationships within Northern Ireland. Like Paisley he was a malign political influence opposed to equal rights and compromise. Unlike Paisley he had foresight. Boal was the thinker. Paisley was the agitator.

Three years after the founding of the DUP - the penny dropped with Boal. The British interest in Northern Ireland was at best benignly indifferent and at worst ruthlessly expedient.

Boal concluded “Sentimental attachment to Britain has recently evaporated even to be replaced by bitterness”.

In his view, unionists needed to recognise and understand how their best interests may be served in the future. Their objective, he believed was to negotiate that future as a “united and informed community from a position of strength”.

If this sounds familiar it should.

The Union is even more brittle now than it was in 1974. British interests over Brexit spectacularly smashed the delicate equilibrium of a society still in transition from conflict.

And political unionism is no longer able to negotiate anything from a position of strength. Northern Ireland itself is suffering a crisis of identity.

British, Irish, Northern Irish, nationalist, unionist and non aligned are all minorities within the region. Demographics suggest change will occur but when and how is not known.

Political unionism is punch drunk. The Ulster Unionists have loved and then lost five leaders in 16 years. The DUP took each of their three leaders and coldly ushered them to the door. Arguably the most successful, Peter Robinson, instinctively knew the future of Northern Ireland depends on reaching out beyond traditional unionism for buy in and by doing so neutralising nationalist thirst for unity. He nearly succeeded.

But the roots of the DUP are firmly set in the fertile soil of sectarianism. That party was born of anger and agitation. The cult of Paisleyism pervaded every aspect of the DUP with a toxic mix of politics and the pulpit. Compromise was regarded as backsliding. Of course, that was until Paisley had a Damascene conversion.

In the first DUP electoral contest for a leader Robinson reminded colleagues to choose wisely for fear they imperil the Union.

They have now chosen but it is hardly a wise choice. The choice of deputy leader Paula Bradley suggests the DUP is split.

The core party faithful (and that’s what they are) will be ecstatic with Poots - a leader who is one of their own. The wider audience of secular unionist voters will be less enthusiastic. Urbanites will continue haemorrhaging to Alliance. But Poots and the DUP are in a Faustian pact. The new leader’s first words had no references to the wider community, power sharing or partnership.

His views on the environment, equal marriage, abortion, the Pope or whether supporting Rangers should be made compulsory are all irrelevant. He could believe in the tooth fairy or Northern Ireland reaching another centenary and it matters little.

What does matter is if he or his ministerial team try to impose their views on the rest of society. Northern Ireland is not as monocultural as 1974.

Unionism doesn’t speak for Northern Ireland. No single political party does.

Poots is more like Canute than Craig and this tide is going out on political unionism.

There are always those who light fires only to extinguish them. So we could be surprised by the pragmatist Poots in relation to the protocol. But like Boal, the penny will eventually drop.