Unionists talking about fixing the ‘present crisis’ are exhibiting their perennial myopia, their inability to see the wood for the trees.
Alex Kane: A united Ireland is not the answer
Listen, Alex, for as long as we both remember this place has been in a permanent state of crisis, ever since arch-bigot and hate-monger Paisley fomented the Divis Street riots in 1964. Since then it’s been non-stop: political crisis, security crisis, sometimes both together.
The British, sometimes with Irish help if they were sensible, have applied sticking plasters, occasionally tried a bit of surgery, but there’s no internal solution that will cure this inherently unstable sub-polity. It’s an artificial concoction. It doesn’t work, never will.
It won’t work because the point of unionism is, and always has been, to avoid living on equal terms with the rest of the people on this island.
All attempts by the British to force them to share power with the northern elements of the Irish people have failed. Unionists destroyed the first attempt in the 1973 executive, then spent 25 years refusing to share power with the harmless SDLP. John Hume used to repeat “Agreement threatens no one”. Unionists believe it threatens them with mere equality.
Never once has a unionist leader reached out the hand to a nationalist leader to initiate a deal. After unionists were once again dragged kicking and screaming into power-sharing in 1998, the DUP worked relentlessly to undermine the Good Friday Agreement. Now, led by the man who walked out on the GFA in 1998, they have wrecked it, but propose no alternative.
Essentially what unionists have always done and are doing again is to frustrate the self-determination of people on this island including themselves.
Ah, they say, a united Ireland is not a solution to the, wait for it, ‘present crisis’. This is just another way to chant “nevaar to a united Ireland”, to energise their voters. It’s a mere shibboleth, an Aunt Sally. The idea that you can flick a switch and reunification happens is a piece of nonsense. Unionist leaders know that perfectly well. It’s just another ploy to refuse to engage on equal terms.
They have no other aim except to run this failed entity on their own terms, an impossibility. They refuse to contemplate cooperating with anyone who offers their children better life chances and greater prosperity than the basket case their antics have produced.
Since 1931 this place has depended on handouts from the Treasury. The north sits at the bottom or top of every socio-economic index, wherever on the index is the worst place to be. Health, education, productivity (17% below the UK average), life expectancy, wages, all superior in the Republic.
In 2022 average gross salary in the south was £45,311; in the north £30,784 – £2,500 below the UK average. Pensions and benefits in the Republic are far higher than here, the lowest in western Europe. The Republic’s economy is six times bigger than the north’s with only 2.5 times the population.
We’re now in the end game. The people who will vote for reunification are at school and university. The only way to bring this 60-year cycle of crisis and instability to an end is to plan for that inevitable reunification, with a bonus of a return to the EU – not to pretend, as unionists do, that there’s an imaginary switch that will cause them inevitable chaos and loss. Certainly not to tinker with current arrangements. That offers no solution. It guarantees a return to the cycle unionist intransigence created.
Opposing or rubbishing Irish reunification is no solution either; that’s just an unthinking reflex born in a previous era.
Sadly unionist leaders cannot see a way to tell their supporters that the future belongs to them too, that they can exercise self-determination by participating in it rather than hankering after a return to an imagined past of supremacy.
Instead, they strive to keep this place shackled to the noisome decomposing corpse of post-imperial Britain.
