My Irish News colleague Fionnuala O Connor has asked why unionism seems comparatively “perked-up” beside “stale nationalism”.
The answer may be something many unionists do not believe in - evolution. As an unpopular people with an unfashionable cause, unionists live in an exceptionally harsh environment. One response to this would be a descent into victim-hood, like everyone else. But unionists are so unpopular that we cannot even get away with that, as revealed by numerous failed attempts.
So there is no choice but to adapt and some remarkable transformations have been witnessed. Consider the recent cases of flag protester Jamie Bryson and deselected DUP councillor Ruth Patterson, who have very publicly called for moderation and engagement, recanting the whole tenor of their political lives to date.
This has not been driven from within unionism. Quite the opposite, in fact - it is barely two years since Bryson was briefed by unionist leaders at the Haass talks. His transformation is due to an external environment of ridicule that made the failure of his tactics and the hopelessness of his position undeniable, despite all the flattery and celebrity that might have deceived him otherwise.
Republicans operate in kinder climes. Fringe figures far worse than Bryson are less likely to be mocked than to be honoured as the legion of the rearguard. At most, they will be told their cause is just but their methods are presently unsupported.
This expectation of respect extends well into the mainstream, as revealed by this week’s ‘Booby Sands’ misprint in a Sinn Fein election leaflet. The thin-skinned reaction of republicans to being laughed at, which in fairness was noted as much by nationalists as by unionists, reveals a worldview that cannot accept it has made even a tiny little mistake.
Of course, republicans have changed - but in the abandonment of violence, to take the most significant example, their rationale is only ever that they were right all along, becoming more right in retrospect as they go along. This is increasingly humoured by others, yet if mistakes are not acknowledged they cannot be learned from, making for shallow and dangerous victories.
One of the greatest victories external contempt has given unionism is the defeat of the Orange Order. As with all evolution, it would be a fallacy to see this as having any pre-ordained goal or forward direction - and not just because Orangemen have had to unlearn how to walk on dry land.
In accordance with the sort of Gaian philosophy that would enrage Sammy Wilson, the Orange Order helped to create a hostile environment for itself by first creating a hostile environment for nationalists. Nevertheless, the result of this has been to finally put manners on unionism’s most toxic institution, at least beyond the loyalist cauldron of Belfast, on which pressure to conform with the rest of Northern Ireland is now intense. The brethren would never have reached this conclusion on their own. It has dawned on them extremely slowly under an onslaught of disdain that would not be suffered by most organisations laying claim to cultural and religious antecedents. Imagine how much trouble unionism would be in if everyone had to tiptoe around Orangeism for fear of causing it ‘offence’.
This phenomenon applies right up the evolutionary scale, to the primates of literary Dublin. Last weekend I opened the Irish Times arts section - normally a safe space from ethnic hate crime - to read a glowing review of an Abbey Theatre play about loyalists that would get everyone involved arrested if made about any other group in society.
It gave me the same sense I have heard so many other people voice about the gay cake case - that the infantile contradiction of the modern left, ‘no hatred except for those we hate’, is on the verge of unravelling. But nationalist intellectuals seem oblivious to this, unlike loyalist dinosaurs, who have had their incoming meteor gleefully pointed out to them so often that they might actually step out of its way.
If criticism of unionism is forcing it to drop so much fundamental baggage, nationalists and republicans might wonder if further criticism would see the end of unionism itself. That would be a critical misunderstanding. Unionism may have dreadful and stupid characteristics but it is a not a post-colonial delusion, for people to snap out of once they see the error of their ways. Unionism is British nationalism - no more inclined to evaporate than Irishness, or Kurdishness.
Laughing at unionists is not the revenge that Booby Sands had hoped.
