Opinion

Fionnuala O Connor: Arlene Foster again showed how lost she is, how leaderless her party

Arlene Foster's comments this week wiped away any good vibe after Sinn Féin and the SDLP responded with courtesy to the death of Prince Philip.
Arlene Foster's comments this week wiped away any good vibe after Sinn Féin and the SDLP responded with courtesy to the death of Prince Philip. Arlene Foster's comments this week wiped away any good vibe after Sinn Féin and the SDLP responded with courtesy to the death of Prince Philip.

This may be the moment that the circle is completed. Nationalists are being urged – let me add to the chorus - not to gloat at the state of unionism. Don’t do it. It’s an ugly business, bad for you as it has always been bad for unionists. Anything that downs them further is no good to anyone.

The 1920s, the absorption of the UVF into a paramilitary police force left a mark like a bad burn on the new state. A half-century’s domination by one party - dedicated to entrenching one identity, ruthless towards the feeblest internal challenge - shrank the Stormont gene-pool. It arguably drove away the politically bold and brave in both communities, and encouraged the most passive in nationalism. Now there is supposedly a ‘culture war’ against Britishness.

Two days after courteous speeches about the death of Prince Philip from Sinn Féin, and the SDLP, the DUP leader wiped any lingering good vibe. Typical of her reflex snappishness to criticism, this time of a tweet about loyalist violence serving ‘to take the focus off the real law breakers in Sinn Féin’ she made an assertion unsupported by evidence of a ‘cultural war on unionism from republicanism.’ She said herself the text language had been clumsy. But she plodded back into the mud of grievance. If anyone still needs an example of how lost she is, how leaderless her party, this was it.

Simply by not turning up, the party has stymied two north/south ministerial meetings. Excuses about non-availability stand in for an open boycott declaration. A woman under multiple strains, the culture war assertion came on the day she spoke in court on her libel case. Oh, and this executive may not get around to that Irish Language Act; very busy schedule, pandemic. Sinn Féin were pretty hushed on both fronts.

An unknown number of Protestants have apparently now convinced themselves that their identity as British has been undermined. How? Because Catholics all but equal to them in number want the place they inhabit to reflect their ‘culture’ and identity as well as that of Protestants? British identity is allegedly ‘hollowed-out’ because the Irish identity is also reflected, though only to a degree. But then the claim is also voiced, including by the present DUP leader a few years back, that Britishness is essentially ‘pluralist and diverse’, even multi-cultural. (Yet a DUP fight to save ‘gay conversion therapy’ from a ban is scheduled for debate today.)

Making a bogus argument has been bad for many. Knocking it down is almost as bad for others. Arguing something so personal and fought-over is emotive, draining. The most brazen and/or deluded profess bemusement that nationalists cannot see how equality for Irishness erases Britishness. Lived experience suggests the opposite.

Any Catholic here over the age of 60 grew up in, and anyone over the age of 50 was born into, a unionist state. That state was beginning to fray. It still enforced the flying of one flag, banned display of ‘the other’, used police and courts to enforce the ban, insisted on the ceremonial singing of one anthem, refused use of the Irish language in any official forum, and demanded that teachers (and lawyers, civil servants) take an oath. Of allegiance or loyalty to the British monarch, the Queen. (It wasn’t part of the oath but the Reverend Ian Paisley enjoyed explaining that his people pledged themselves to ‘the Crown being Protestant.’)

None of this had the least impact on Irish identity except perhaps to make it stronger for some. Telling people what they must believe tends to have contrary effects. Catholic nationalists should understand that British identity is diminished by experience which dictates to Protestants, if at all, only when they insist on marching with triumphalist banners past Catholics?

SF may be muting responses simply to prolong a stalemated Stormont. Unionism is doing a fine job of rubbishing its own case.