Thirty-seven years ago, on November 23 1985, about 100,000 unionists crowded into Donegall Square in front of Belfast city hall to protest against the Anglo-Irish Agreement.
They came from all over the north and comprised the 57 Heinz varieties of unionist, some in anoraks, others in sheepskin coats, young and old. They were harangued by arch-bigot rabble rouser Paisley who gave a typical incendiary speech. The slogan was ‘Ulster Says No’ which he expanded breathlessly into ‘Ulster says Navar, navar,’ with a final gasping sibilant ‘navar’.
When you compare the intensity, emotion and ferocity of the reaction to the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985 to the so-called anti-protocol rallies you can see the current antics for what they are: contrived, confected outrage whipped up by pound shop politicians out to save their electoral skin from the penalties due for supporting Brexit. There are other important comparisons too.
Belfast city council, then completely dominated by incoherent unionists, decided to erect a banner across the city hall saying ‘Ulster Says No’. They ignored advice that it needed planning permission because they knew they wouldn’t get it. The Alliance party leader on the council, David Cook, went to court to compel the council to remove the illegal banner. The unionists refused, were surcharged, appealed (against senior counsel advice) and were fined and surcharged by the Court of Appeal for misusing public money.
The comparison is this. At present the DUP is in the process of dismantling the Good Friday Agreement. None of its institutions is functioning, no not even the extravagantly expensive Ruritanian toy town parliament.
Yet when a citizen went to court for a ruling on the failure to observe the legal requirement to attend the North-South Ministerial Council, the court agreed the failure was unlawful, but hey, it’s politics, so it wouldn’t interfere. In short the court couldn’t see the wood for the trees. Not good enough. One element of the GFA knocked down and the culprits get away with it.
Next element the executive which Donaldson tells us won’t be coming back until he gets his minority way.
In the past 120 years unionism has always proceeded by habitual predictable means: subversion, sedition, insurrection, violence and the threat of violence, though not necessarily in that order. The one lesson that history teaches is that government has to stand up to unionism. If he wasn’t before, John Hume was fully apprised of that lesson after the cowardly British Labour government caved in to loyalist violence in 1974. He warned Lady Hacksaw in 1985 she had to be prepared to stand up to unionist ‘days of action’, strikes, violence and the threat of violence in 1986. She did.
The other worrying comparison today is that what passes for government in Britain these days is shamelessly biased towards unionism and has demonstrated that comprehensively over the past twelve years, not least with Theresa May’s disgraceful political pact with the minority political view here. Most recently by their dishonourable refusal to make good their word (an oxymoron?) on the Irish language.
There’s worse. Not only will this current dreadful government not stand up to unionists, senior members of the government, like the oleaginous Michael Gove actually agree with unionists that the GFA was a mistake. It was concocted by that Tony Blair and the Labour party whose every achievement they have tried to pull to pieces. Furthermore, the GFA offends their archaic notion of sovereignty because it gives Dublin a say in the running of this place, not that Johnson’s crew acknowledges that. After all, they refuse to employ the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference which the GFA stipulates will have ‘regular and frequent meetings’. Hah.
The upshot of all this is that if the DUP want to dismantle the Good Friday Agreement which they’ve always opposed, simultaneously claiming it’s really the protocol damaging it, then the mendacious British government will support them.
