Unionists dislike the way the Belfast Agreement is working out because it removes the special position of unionism in Northern Ireland and places it on an equal footing with nationalism, writes Brian Feeney.
The title of the Northern Secretary's speech to the Institute of Irish Studies in Liverpool last November was "Becoming Persuaders - British and Irish Identities in Northern Ireland". Dr John Reid's central point was that political leaders in the North should come together to persuade each other's community, which he called "Catholic" and "Protestant", that the Good Friday agreement offered "reassurance, respect and belonging" to both communities.
In heavily veiled language, he implied that unionist leaders had not been persuaders. Instead, he said, some of them argue that "the battle is lost, consolidation of what remains and the rebuilding of a stockade mentality is the only alternative to a destructive and humiliating retreat".
The response to the speech was less than a triumph for the usually flawless NIO spin machine. Unfortunately, as is the way with politicians' speeches, few people read it. The single sound bite which emerged was Dr Reid's injunction that "Northern Ireland must not become a cold place for Protestants", a deliberate mirroring of David Trimble's remark about Catholics in his Nobel Prize speech.
Dr Reid said he wanted to challenge the notion of the zero-sum game, namely that if one community in the North feels good about something, then it must be bad for the other. But the effect of the sound bite was that he reinforced the notion he set out to challenge.
The speech was seized upon by the DUP at its conference two days later as endorsing its position that the agreement offered an endless stream of concessions to republicans.
The newly formed Loyalist Commission, largely composed of loyalist terror groups, also welcomed Dr Reid's remarks.
Ever since that speech, anti-agreement unionists have been quoting Dr Reid's "cold place" remark to justify opposing the agreement he was appealing to unionists to support.
Substantial numbers of them do support the agreement, but last year's election results show that a majority, perhaps 60 per cent, do not. They do not, because they dislike the out-working of the agreement.
Here is why.
The purpose of the section of the agreement which applies to the North of Ireland is to remove the special position of unionism in Northern Ireland and place unionism on an equal footing with nationalism.
Removing unionism from its special position to mere equality necessarily means downgrading it; the corollary means that nationalism is upgraded. It cannot be otherwise and it is useless to deny it.
Now, since Northern Ireland was devised in 1920 as the biggest area unionists could dominate, just as Lebanon was devised in the same manner at the same time to preserve the Christians of Mount Lebanon, any alteration in the founding principles of such places inevitably causes mental turmoil as well as communal strife.
Ulster Unionists have struggled since the 19th century to avoid living on equal political terms with the rest of the people on this island because they believed that was the only way to preserve their community from submersion in a Gaelic, Catholic society.
It is a profound shock for them to be told that the reverse is true, namely, that written, legal, enforceable guarantees of equality, endorsed democratically by nationalist Ireland, North and South, and by Britain, provide the only certain security for their community.
The paradox of the unionist reaction to the Good Friday agreement, and one which John Reid did not address, is that while Irish nationalism has substituted the traditional demand that self-determination can only be expressed in ownership of territory and replaced it with legally guaranteed rights for the Irish people to express their identity in diverse ways, unionist leaders still cling to the idea of having a piece of earth only they possess. Unionists are now the irredentist nationalists.
It is easy to understand why. From being nurtured on a supremacist myth to justify refusing to live on equal terms with nationalists - which led Prof Joe Lee to call them Herrenvolk - unionists are now a community in retreat.
The 2001 census will show Catholics at around 45 per cent of the North's population. Belfast, once one of the biggest centres of Presbyterianism in the world, is now a Catholic city.
The Rev Dr John Dunlop in his excellent book, A Precarious Belonging, shows that between 1967 and 1987 Presbyterian baptisms in Belfast fell by 71 per cent.
Around the city Protestant churches have become carpet warehouses and second-hand furniture marts or have simply been demolished.
Such visible signs of decline must pierce the heart.
Yet, as Disraeli said when Conservatives resisted his reforms, "Change is the only constant."
Since no unionist political leaders have faced this truth, therefore none of them can present the Good Friday agreement as a vehicle for change which guarantees unionists a position at the controls. Instead they still see the agreement as a gain for nationalism, a chute designed to convey benefits only to nationalists.
No unionist has worked out a vocabulary which can portray change as anything other than a defeat for unionism.
The result is that some unionist politicians make a laughing stock of themselves by actually arguing against equality and human rights legislation because they benefit nationalists.
THE vocabulary is there. Again Dr Dunlop has thought about these problems from a Presbyterian point of view. He says there is need to "evolve an ideological construct or mental attitude which is rooted in reformed convictions about individual liberty and is capable of accommodating diversity.
"This will require a change of mind and a fundamental revision of the prevailing ideological construct of siege, isolation and defensive thinking."
His conclusion is that there is no security, justice or well-being for Presbyterians which does not include security, justice and well-being for everyone. For Presbyterian substitute unionist, and there's a readymade political programme.
The problem for unionism is that no leader is saying to himself (they're all men): "I wish I'd thought of that first." Any politician using such language would be accused of selling the pass.Unionist political ideology has not changed; therefore its political practice cannot.
Dr Brian Feeney is a writer on Northern Ireland affairs and a former SDLP councillor
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