North of Ireland Politics

heard that alright last night, also heard INLA involvement too. Two lads arrested. Seen the CCTV footage of the attacker, pretty brazen, not much attempt to conceal himself, so much so that he has donned a high viz jacket 

David McWilliams article on the heightening possibility of a United Ireland seems to have gotten a lot of traction online. 
 

That Northern Ireland of the early 1990s seems like a different world. It is now just over 20 years since the Good Friday peace agreement. While power-sharing has not been easy, it has stopped the killings, is resoundingly supported by electorates in both parts of Ireland and has been the cornerstone of relations between Dublin, London and Belfast for almost a generation. These gains no longer seem so secure. The Brexit process has reminded us what is often not appreciated about peace: that resolving this conflict over one border depended heavily on the weakening of other borders within the European Union. Understandably, the focus of recent weeks has been on the immediate, the “backstop” — the fallback device designed to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic if the UK leaves the EU without a formal trade deal. Tortuous as this row has been, it is schoolyard stuff compared with what lies ahead. Behind all this manoeuvring, something more fundamental has occurred: the Irish question has shifted. The majority of people in Northern Ireland didn’t and still don’t want Brexit; they want to stay in the EU. As a result, middle-of-the-road Northerners have been pushed towards contemplating a united Ireland in Europe. Brexit was championed exclusively in Northern Ireland by the Democratic Unionist party (DUP), a party implacably opposed to Irish reunification. That is looking increasingly like an own goal: latest polls indicate that 60 per cent of Northerners favour entering a political and economic alliance with the Republic if it would help the economy. South of the border, talk of unity was until recently the preserve of romantic Nationalists and “five-pint Provos” who find their inner Padraig Pearse (the nationalist political activist who was one of the leaders of 1916’s Easter Rising) after a few drinks. However, as a result of Brexit, politicians in the Republic are talking about unity in a way I have not heard before. It is still remote but not improbably so. It may take decades, it will not be straight­forward and the risk of a return to violence is ever-present, but make no mistake something is in train. 

For many in the Republic, the North is the final frontier. Not for me. Like most Southerners, when I was growing up I rarely crossed the border because of the violence, until I met a certain bridesmaid at a wedding in County Down in July 1994. Being best man is always tricky; being best man at a northern-southern union during the Troubles posed a new set of challenges. At 3pm on the dot, the groom and I stood at the altar waiting for the bride. The entire right-hand side of the church was full: punctual northerners. It is understood everywhere that brides are usually late, but congregations are supposed to turn up on time. As we looked down from the elevated altar, almost every pew on the left, the Dubliners’ side, was empty. The southerners had, almost to a man and woman, observed the great Irish ritual of the swift one before the big do. This was in the days before mobile phones. I had to barrel down the road in the minister’s shiny red Vauxhall to shoo Dubliners into the church. The bridesmaid couldn’t stop laughing at these Dubliners, their casual attitudes to time and ritual; then, reader, she married me. So began my 25-year education in the intricacies of Northern Ireland. A Loyalist mural in Cookstown proclaiming allegiance to the UK and to the Ulster Volunteer Force. Catholics are likely to be a majority in Northern Ireland by the end of the next decade, and recent months have seen growing displays of Loyalism in Protestant areas © Sean Breithaupt I’m a regular visitor to the North; our children are the Belfast Agreement incarnate. Recently I’ve been travelling around Protestant parts of Ulster from rural Markethill in South Armagh to the prosperous King’s Road, Belmont and Stormont suburbs of east Belfast, and from coastal fishing villages of the Ards Peninsula to the council estates of Cooks­town in Tyrone. I am seeing Union Jacks and even Ulster Volunteer Force flags where I never saw them before. Recent months have seen increasingly neurotic displays of loyalism in Protestant areas probably because, on present trends, Catholics are likely to be a majority in Northern Ireland by the end of the next decade. 

Of course, being Catholic does not mean you are nationalist but it’s a fairly good proxy. In the last Stormont assembly election in March 2017, Unionists lost the political majority in Northern Ireland for the first time. The latest census data we have on the North, from 2011, show that Protestants and Catholics are almost evenly split. But digging deeper, there is a profound variation in the proportion of Catholics and Protestants in various age groups. Of the elderly, those over 90 in the North, 64 per cent are Protestant and 25 per cent are Catholic. A total of 9 per cent had no declared religion. This division reflects the religious status quo when these people were born, in the 1920s, and more or less reflects the realities of the partition of Ireland. The numbers underscore the sectarian buffer that was supposed to ensure that Northern Ireland remains Protestant and Unionist. However, that didn’t envisage the flight of middle-class Protestants to universities in Scotland and England. Few come back. Today, that sectarian buffer is getting ever thinner. On Carrickasticken Road, north of Dundalk, the border between the Republic of Ireland (on the left) and Northern Ireland (on the right) is marked by nothing more than the end of the white line road markings © Sean Breithaupt In the census, when you look at the cohort of children born since 2008, the picture changes completely. Compared with the over-90s, among whom Protestants outnumber Catholics easily, the corresponding figure for the young is 34 per cent Protestant and 45 per cent Catholic. In one lifetime, the Catholic population in the youngest cohort has nearly doubled, while the Protestant cohort has almost halved. When you look ahead, you see that the Catholic population will soon be a majority and this could be as early as the end of the next decade. Protestant Northern Ireland is old, shrinking and increasingly nervous; Catholics in the six counties are young, expanding and confident. One of the most striking developments of the past three decades is how much richer the Republic of Ireland has become compared with the whole of the UK in general and Northern Ireland in particular. Commercially the union has been a calamity for Northern Ireland. Everyone has suffered financially, Catholic and Protestant, nationalist and unionist alike. Although rarely appreciated in the din of local politics and recrimination, as an economic experiment, Partition has been a disaster. 

 If we go back to Partition in 1921, 80 per cent of the industrial output of the entire island of Ireland came from the six counties that would become Northern Ireland, largely centred on Belfast. This was where all Irish industry was based. Northern Irish entrepreneurs and inventors were at the forefront of industrial innovation. By 1911, Belfast was the biggest city in Ireland and the north-east was by far the richest part of the island. The collapse of the once-dynamic Northern Irish economy versus that of the Republic is stunning. Having been a fraction of the North’s at independence, the Republic’s industrial output is now far greater than that of Northern Ireland. Exports of goods and services from the Republic are €282.4bn; total exports from the North stand at a paltry €10.1bn. This obviously reflects the investment of multinationals, but it also underscores just how far ahead is the Republic’s industrial base. Producing close to 30 times more exports highlights a vast difference in the globalis­ation of business. In the Republic, one in six people are foreign-born — higher than the UK. In the North it is fewer than one in 20. According to the most comparable international indicators, income per head is now €22,000 in the once wealthy Northern Ireland and €38,000 in the once impoverished Republic of Ireland. Over the years, the dependent nature of Northern Ireland’s economy has become endemic, with handouts from London replacing the urge to pay for itself. More subsidies have made the Northern economy more, not less, fragile. Economic supplicants rarely stand on their own two feet. If the North had to pay for itself now, its budget deficit would be about 27 per cent of its GDP. The UK’s annual subvention is just over €10bn annually. When seen from the perspective of the North, with its total GDP of under €50bn, it looks like a significant figure — but when seen from the perspective of Dublin, it is not insurmountable. The usual way financial markets assess whether national expenditure and debts are sustainable is the debt/GDP ratio. Northern Ireland would cost less than 4 per cent of the Irish Republic’s GDP annually. Of course, even this manageable figure would end up lower because the combined Irish GDP of the Republic combined with the North would be well over €300 billion, reducing the subvention as a percentage of income yet more. In pure budgetary terms, there is little doubt that the Republic’s economy could absorb the North and this is before the commercial dynamism of unification kicks in. Take Kilkenny and Armagh, two similar-sized provincial Irish towns, both with city status, both marketed as great places to visit. Armagh, like Kilkenny, has a vibrant cultural life. But — and here’s the big but — whereas TripAdvisor has reviews of 176 restaurants in Kilkenny, it has just 43 in Armagh. Loyalist/Unionist British flags outside a home on Belfast's Shankill Road © Sean Breithaupt Kilkenny, in the South, has more than four times more restaurants than Armagh in the North, reflecting a divergent social scene, a more evolved tourist industry, much more sophisticated local economy and profoundly different levels of income and willingness to spend and consume. Casual TripAdvisor prosperity is the type of vibrant prosperity the South has and the North lacks. Back in the North, not far south of Armagh, is the village of Markethill, which each summer hosts the world’s biggest Lambeg drumming contest. This village is home to three fish-and-chip shops on one roundabout and an enormous arch celebrating Protestant victories at the battles of Derry, Aughrim, Enniskillen and the mother of them all, the Boyne. The huge banner at the edge of the village urges me to “Fear God, Honour the King and Love the Brotherhood”. Such sectarian slogans will not save the union with Britain. Recommended The muralists keeping peace in Belfast’s no man’s land Do you live in ‘Northern Ireland’ or ‘the north of Ireland’ Demographics imply that Unionists will soon need Nationalists to vote Unionist to preserve the Union. This will only happen if Northern Ireland is prosperous and open, rendering the Union more attractive for middle-class Catholics than joining the resurgent, tolerant Republic. Arguably the best way Northern Ireland might achieve this is by embracing the “special status” trading option offered by the EU, whereby Northern Ireland would be a special trading region within both the EU and the UK. Investment would flood into Northern Ireland, the type of investment that has made the Republic wealthy. This is Unionism’s only long-term option. Prosperity, not Protestantism, will save the Union. Right now the biggest threat to this is the DUP and their Brexiter allies. The staunchly Unionist DUP is against special status and ultimately their stance threatens the Union. A Whitehall-dependent Northern Ireland is a poorer and more parochial Northern Ireland and as a result the Union is far less attractive to lukewarm Nationalist voters. The future of Northern Ireland is a bit like a custody battle where neither side — Ireland nor Britain — is particularly sure they want the child, but both know that the child can’t survive, financially or emotionally, on its own. Maybe it’ll have to be joint custody, because despite the divergent economic performances of the two Irelands, Ireland is not just about economics. Culturally, there is a deep strain within the Unionist tribe that won’t accept the Republic on any level. Once we were too Catholic for them, now — having voted for both gay marriage and abortion — we are too liberal. In the village of Bellaghy in County Derry, the Seamus Heaney HomePlace, an arts centre commemorating the late Irish poet, was opened in 2016 on the site of what was a police station for the Royal Ulster Constabulary 

Meanwhile, many in the Republic too want to preserve the status quo. While the South’s economic resurgence may make the prospect of a united Ireland financially more do-able, that very wealth means that the Irish middle class has much more to lose, given the political risks involved. A significant proportion of people in the Republic might not want unification because of the financial cost or the medium-term threat of civil war if loyalism decides to fight. Ultimately, it may be the case that the biggest enemy of unification is not unionism but soft-focus southern patriots, who are in no mood to risk their comforts to pay for the dole of unemployed Rangers fans from east Belfast. When Brexit was voted on, Ireland was barely mentioned in Britain. And yet here we are again, long after the continentals have stopped caring, a hundred years after the island of Ireland was carved up by London, trying mutually to figure out the best way forward. In Northern Ireland, politics is tribal but demographics is destiny. The prospect of a new Ireland is emerging. While the unification prediction made by Data in Star Trek might have been out by a decade or so, surely, in the critical years ahead, Mr Spock’s motto “live long and prosper” is a better option for all of us than “no surrender”.

Uh oh looks like a certain Mr Paisley took another luxury holiday abroad. BBC spotlight reveals all later on tonight.

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What a shame for Ian Óg