Alienated, unionists are. From? Britain, which has ‘betrayed’ them. Nationalists of course, the Irish, north and south, the Irish state. Today’s US government and that headed by Bill Clinton. And currently, the European Union.
It is quite the list. Although Sir Jeffrey Donaldson is so alienated from Britain the betrayer that he wants the Union flag to fly on every government building as Johnsonian Jingoism now demands - everywhere except in Northern Ireland.
This may be a government out to fake-patriot its way past the pandemic and Brexit’s troublesome consequences. The initial signs are that they believe they can blink at northern unionists’ latest unhappiness, or have yet to think about it.
Do you realise whose fault above all it is that ‘alienation’ is a new name for the insecurity unionists have always felt about the Northern Ireland state (which until the past decade or so most automatically referred to as ‘our’ state)? Who brought this concept to the ancient quarrel?
It was nationalists, whose ‘alienation’ from the state of Northern Ireland caught attention in the 1980s, when leading Dublin politicians claimed the malaise on their behalf. Garret FitzGerald did fine monologues on the theme, speaking faster than most politicians then or since. With the notable help of senior Irish civil servants and energetic input from several politicos, Peter Barry and Dick Spring both particularly good at looking British ministers in the eye, Anglo-Irish negotiation chuntered into an Anglo-Irish Agreement. But you know the story of levelling the playing-field.
Not all northern nationalists, or northern Catholics as some then tended to primarily identify themselves, were won by the crusading lingo of Garret the Good. ‘Alienation’ was overly psychological for what many experienced, from their earliest consciousness of the unionist state, as a sickener.
Those who supported the IRA mocked the mere idea of negotiating with British governments, until they themselves started serious negotiating. Those who stood over violence as the only way to ‘make the British see sense’ jeered at Dublin’s efforts, and at the SDLP for tucking in behind successive taoisigh. They did more than jeer. Dublin ministers were ‘quislings’ who were selling out Ireland’s inalienable right as a nation. The SDLP were the Stoop Down Low Party. Between them, those who would negotiate ‘betrayed’ Ireland.
And what did unionists make of nationalist ‘alienation’? They mocked, condemned, called it an attempt to justify the IRA’s bombs and bullets, told nationalists the fault was theirs for never fully accepting partition. In other words, nationalists had alienated themselves; wouldn’t even call the state by its name. Unionists were baffled. As though a loving state had wrapped nationalists in a warm embrace and given them, always, equal respect.
People who have never shown empathy asking others to empathise with them is not persuasive. Nor is standing on their dignity as British citizens treated less equally than those in the rest of the UK, not while they, unionists, refuse to accept British legislation they happen to dislike. Certainly not by complaining of having EU customs rules forced upon them, after insisting on the most extreme Brexit though the Northern Ireland majority wanted to stay. And not by putting the IRA near the top of their grievances. The IRA never had the support of the majority of northern nationalists/Catholics. Its political voice only became the vote-winning Sinn Féin when the IRA put its guns down. Some unionists deny that fact.
Ex-DUP leader Peter Robinson’s latest News Letter column explained alienation as fed by ‘incessant and unending demands from republicans to erase everything British and indulge everything Irish’. Just as Sinn Féin urged Britain to ensure the Westminster-created abortion provision that unionists block, his timing was off.
Given his long-diminished credibility and tendency to feed out contradictory advice to his community, P. Robinson only deserves a late mention. Not helpful, even before Sir Jeffrey’s variation. More flag protesting? It’s as if unionists want to turn back the clocks.
