Fintan O’Toole: The DUP created this mess but now it belongs to all of us

Five years ago, in April 2016, the Democratic Unionist Party published its manifesto for the forthcoming Assembly elections. Among other things, it said that "Northern Ireland was established as a legal entity on 5 May, 2021 [sic]. This should be made a one-off public holiday and for that day and year a full programme of events developed to celebrate and examine our history."

It is safe to say that Northern Ireland was not established in 2021. But it was not established on May 5th, 1921, either. When challenged, a DUP spokesman said the date cited in the manifesto really should have been May 3rd: “May 3rd has been chosen as a date to mark the centenary of Northern Ireland as it is the date on which partition took effect under the Government of Ireland Act.”

But why May 3rd? This is a date that appears on Wikipedia, though not, so far as I know, anywhere else. Wikipedia credits it to the historian Joe Lee’s Ireland 1912-1985, but Lee doesn’t use it at all.

Charles Townshend, in his excellent and apparently definitive new account, The Partition, gives May 4th, 1921 as the date on which the Government of Ireland Act establishing Northern Ireland came into force and James Craig became its prime minister. So the DUP seems to have managed to get the date of the centenary wrong twice, both in its original proposal and in its "correction".

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This gaffe is, in itself, of no great consequence. But it does open a small window into the crisis and contradictions of Ulster unionism. On the one side, there is the legitimate desire to “celebrate and examine our history”. On the other, in that fateful year of 2016, the celebration completely outran the examination.

Harmonious unity can never mean incorporation, assimilation or annexation. Britishness will always be a part of the Irish future

When the DUP decided to back Brexit without thinking through its consequences, it abandoned the task that any political movement must always engage in: that of taking its bearings, not from its dream world, but in the landscape it actually inhabits. Waving the union flag took precedence over the cooler headed but much more necessary work of thinking about where, in the course of history, Ulster unionism now lies. The current crisis is the cost of that great distraction.

Let’s be clear: there is no gain for anybody in unionism’s pain. Tribalised glee at the disarray of the enemy is idiotic. Disarray, as we know all too well, is dangerous for everybody on the island.

And unionism is not, in any case, the enemy of Irish national aspirations – it belongs in them. It should not be necessary to emphasise this, but apparently it is: people in Northern Ireland have an absolute and permanent right, under the Belfast Agreement, to choose to be British, with or without being Irish as well.

And, under the amendment to the Constitution that 94 per cent of voters in the Republic supported in 1998, it is the “firm will of the Irish nation, in harmony and friendship, to unite all the people who share the territory of the island of Ireland, in all the diversity of their identities and traditions”.

No annexation

Harmonious unity can never mean incorporation, assimilation or annexation. Britishness will always be a part of the Irish future – not because nationalists graciously accede to it but as a matter of right, of national and international law, and of the democratically expressed will of the people of both parts of the island.

So, there is an overwhelming mutual interest in Ulster unionism having a clear strategic sense of its own interests. There is no great mystery in where those interests lie.

Unionism needs two things. One is the maintenance of the United Kingdom as a stable entity. The other is the maintenance of a high level of consent among the Catholic/nationalist population to the continued existence of Northern Ireland as it has been reinvented under the Belfast Agreement.

In April 2016, when the DUP was mixing up its centenary dates, Ulster unionism had both of those things. In 2014 the UK had, at least for the immediate future, seen off the existential threat of Scottish independence. And all the polling evidence showed that enough of the Catholic population was sufficiently contented with the present arrangements to mean that there was no real prospect of a majority for a united Ireland, and therefore no grounds for the calling of a Border poll.

Ulster unionism is a vital and inextricable part of the futures of Ireland and Britain

One of the ironies of the current situation is that Ulster unionism has been shaped by a basic mentality: what we have, we hold. It has always seen itself as being about the conservation and safeguarding of a position, a culture, an identity.

Yet it had its two most important conditions, and it has been utterly reckless about holding them. It was obvious to any objective observer that Brexit, which was decided just two months after the DUP published that manifesto, would have two huge consequences for Northern Ireland.

They were exactly the consequences that unionism should have most feared. Brexit would destabilise the UK as a political entity. And it would, by dragging them out of the EU against their will, alienate the Catholics of Northern Ireland. It was a missile precisely targeted against Ulster unionism’s own protective walls. The DUP said: “Fire ahead!”

Prince of lies

This strategic blindness has been compounded by the DUP's tactical ineptitude. It had a period of power at Westminster when it could have helped Theresa May pass the withdrawal agreement she had negotiated. That would have meant neither a hard border on the island of Ireland nor a so-called border in the Irish Sea.

But instead of taking the best of what could be salvaged from Brexit, the DUP sank it. It chose instead to do something no sober person has ever done: trust Boris Johnson’s assurances of undying love. There has seldom been a more openly, gleefully mendacious figure in British politics – but the DUP still manages to be shocked that the prince of lies gave it guarantees he had no intention of honouring. This goes beyond naivety, deep into the territory of wilful self-delusion.

The problem, though, is that it doesn’t really matter that the DUP has made its own shambolic bed and deserves to lie in it. Its mess is everybody’s mess. Ulster unionism is a vital and inextricable part of the futures of Ireland and Britain. If it falls apart, and tips into incoherence and infighting, it will merely become more alienated and more reactionary.

Irish nationalists actually have a vital interest in unionism’s recovery of a sense of its own direction. Reconciliation has to precede any real prospect of unification – and you can’t reconcile with people who have lost sight of self-interest.

That self-interest now lies in making the Northern Ireland protocol work and in seizing the opportunity to make Northern Ireland viable through its double existence, both inside and outside the EU. Unless unionism can find a way to articulate that possibility as a positive outcome of Brexit, its own recent history will not bear much examination.

It will certainly not be up for celebration, on any date the DUP chooses to set.