NORMAN PORTER's vision of "civic unionism" is the most cheering blast of idealistic thinking to have come out of Northern Ireland for some considerable time. The author comes from the hardest of hardline unionist backgrounds. He admits that in 1970, before he left for Australia - where he would spend most of the next quarter century - he was "an extreme loyalist and an explicit Protestant bigot".
His time in Australia was clearly a road to Damascus. If unionism has a future, it can only be the generous, inclusive future as outlined by Norman Porter. He puts his central thesis thus: "The ultimate end for civic unionism is not the Union per se, but the quality of social and political life in Northern Ireland - a Northern Ireland that includes not Just unionists but also nationalists and non-unionists of other descriptions." In this spirit, he looks forward to the day when concessions to just nationalist arguments will be not be seen as "selling out the Union".
Porter is clear that if unionism is incapable of "remaking itself", the alternatives are grim. He identifies two main unionist currents: firstly, what he calls "cultural unionism" usually identified with Rev Ian Paisley and significant elements of Porter's own Ulster Unionist Party; and secondly, "liberal unionism", better known as integrationism".
He argues compellingly that cultural unionism "relies on a notion of Britishness unrecognisable in Great Britain, offers a political deal for Northern Ireland guaranteed of rejection by non-unionists, exaggerates the role of Protestantism in the maintenance of civil and religious liberty, and invokes problematic ideas of conditional loyalty".
Remarkably for a unionist, Porter fully accepts that this brand of unionism is both exclusivist in the present, and has practised shameless - his word - discrimination against Catholics in the past.
Similarly he points out how illiberal is the position of those who argue for complete integration with Britain. Despite their talk of "equal citizenship", they are so besotted with the pluralist dream-world they imagine Britain to be that they ignore the fact that what are symbols of British liberal values to them are redolent of unionist triumphalism to nationalists. This allows them to misunderstand the fundamental reasons why nationalists are alienated from the Northern state and to bed oblivious to any responsibility to do anything about it.
One can only dream of the day when a real liberal like Norman Porter is a significant voice within unionism rather than a visionary maverick on its margins. His vision of a "politics of openness in Northern Ireland borrows Edna Longley's powerfully appropriate image of Northern Ireland as a "cultural corridor", open at either end to both British and Irish influences.
He is particularly strong on the need for "parity of esteem", which he prefers to call "due recognition". He is virtually unique among contemporary unionist thinkers in being able to empathise with his nationalist fellow citizens. "Irish unity is impossible without unionist agreement but, in the absence of such agreement, the interests of northern nationalists require nothing short of an institutional recognition of Irishness within Northern Ireland; and the challenge to unionism is to accommodate such recognition," he says.
Porter is not a good writer: he often uses five words where one will do, and some of his philosophical excursions will leave the general reader bemused. But this is a book that is rich in ideas and generous in vision, and his is a voice of prophetic common sense which is sorely needed in a place where both prophesy and common sense are rare commodities.
And in case unionist readers make the wrong assumption that this review is written from a facile nationalist standpoint, let me disabuse them. Porter is no closet "Lundy". In Northern Ireland's "cultural corridor", he stresses, British factors must carry most weight, because the wishes of a majority of its citizens cannot be overruled when it comes to the province's constitutional future.
There is also a strong implicit message for nationalists in this important book. It is this: here is the most flexible, generous unionist voice they are likely to come across now or in any foreseeable future. Porter sees nationalism being accommodated constitutionally within Northern Ireland, even if culturally and institutionally this will involve cross-border links. This is the only attainable future for nationalists, as for unionists. Anything more is a fantasy.
Unionism in Modern Ireland, like most books of historical essays from disparate sources, is a mixed bag. The contributions range from a superb piece by Peter Hart on the cruel and conveniently forgotten terrorism practised against southern Protestants between 1920 and 1924, through a damning indictment by Colin Coulter of the complacency, self-enrichment and political bankruptcy of the unionist middle classes under Direct Rule, to an underdeveloped study of three early 20th-century unionist writers and a rather partial look at the sociological significance of the notorious soccer match in Belfast between the two Irelands in November 1993.