Malachi O'Doherty

This is the text of a speech I made at QUB last week, launching The Contested Identities of Ulster Catholics.

I have already saved myself a bit of work and possible embarrassment with this book. For John Coakley and Tony Gallagher have done the research for me into demographic shift, political attitudes and the evolution of catholic education.

What we have here is a collection of perspectives on what we call the catholic community. It is diverse enough to be of value to thinkers and writers in a wide range of fields, from memoir and biography – from Connal Parr and Stephen Hopkins –  to the breast beating of republicans from Niall Gilmartin an Anthony McIntyre – to the analyses of where we are and where we have come from – from Claire Pearson on Abortion rights to Brian Hanley’s accounts of how the expectations of refugees from west Belfast clashed with the good intentions of those who made haste to help them in 1971.

The first thing to be said about this book is that it belongs on the shelf of every serious writer and commentator on Northern Ireland, the academic, the journalist or the blogger.

And the conception itself seems to recognise the diverse appetite out there for sound research by drawing together writers from different fields.

My main point is this: The Catholic community will decide the future of the Union and therefore has to be understood and engaged with by anyone interested in preserving the Union or dispensing with it.

Some people have not caught onto this yet. Theresa May has.

In a conversation she was reported to have had with Jacob Rees Mogg last year, she is said to have expressed a fear that the ‘moderate nationalists’ – her phrase – would react to a hard Brexit by opting for a united Ireland.

More recently, Newsnight reported that the Secretary of State – who should perhaps read this book too and a few others I could suggest – had decided not to call an election to the Assembly because a nationalist majority would leave her with no argument against a border poll.

On the other hand we have David Trimble and others arguing that the fear of a growing demand for a united Ireland is being whipped up by Sinn Fein and that it has no substance.

Unionism, it strikes me, is being uncommonly blithe about the changing context, having arguably over-reacted in the past when it thought that the IRA was a real threat to the integrity of the UK, an estimation of the clout of republicans which was shared only by republicans themselves.

So the people who panicked in the past say there is no need to panic now, though the circumstances are radically different. But it is good they are not panicking. It’s not so good that they are not noticing the breadth of change.

The first big change is that the unionist majority has gone. The proportionate rise in the catholic population that was the bogey of much unionism throughout the history of Northern Ireland, has arrived.

Coakley tells us it is expected that the 2021 census will reflect a catholic majority.

This means that the Protestant Ulster that Ian Paisley senior sought to defend has gone.

The argument that the Union must be preserved to prevent protestant Ulster being absorbed into its Romish neighbour is obsolete. It is dead, an ex-argument.

So one of the traditional props of the Union, the call to arms in defence of the faith is now only of historic interest, as irrelevant to our current politics as the prestige of Catholic bishops, who used to be received on the Falls Road and in Andersonstown or Creggan with bunting and cheering crowds. My mother, if she had ever been allowed close enough proximity to a bishop would have been expected to kneel before him and kiss his ring.

Now, at best, their eminences can hope for a bit of normal civility, and they mightn’t even get that.

It may indeed be a sign of a new generosity in the unionist community that it has not reacted with alarm to this new circumstance, that the Union requires catholic support to continue, and trusts so lightly that that support is there.

There can be no Union now other than one endorsed cross community.

Yet there is a sectarian assumption at work there too, that Identity matters more to protestants than it does to catholics.

Indeed, Dr McIntyre alludes to this as a reality in his chapter where he says that unionists are much more concerned to defend the union than nationalists are to get rid of it.

The implication is that unionists preserve the Union out of love for it, a passionate sense that their identity relies on it. Catholics are different – they are more concerned about what side their bread is buttered on.

But this diagnosis is tested by Brexit and the insult that our Irishness is of no consequence when an English nationalist majority makes a decision, without our support, to overhaul all our relationships, The presumption is made – wrongly, I think – that a few practical concerns about trade across a frictionless border – if they can be met – go to the heart of the problem.

We will see. I don’t know. We may be discovering, through this experiment, aspects of the character of the Northern catholic community that we hadn’t weighed up before, like a possible preference among many – enough to make a difference – for mending relations in the North over uniting the island into a single jurisdiction. Who of us doesn’t feel more at home in Ballymena than in Ballinasloe?

But that is not the only question before us.

A conjunction of phenomena has emerged like a startling planetary alignment.

Catholic Ireland is being dissolved. Even if there still was a protestant majority, and if Paisley was at his thunderous best, he could no longer claim that the Republic is a catholic state being manipulated by the Papacy.

In fact, the idea is so laughable that some of you may need reminded that this was a powerful conviction in play during the Troubles period.  The Rev Martin Smyth, later Grand Master of the Orange Order and an Ulster Unionist MP, told a Vanguard rally in the Ormeau Park in 1972 that the killing would stop immediately if the Bishop of Rome would put his house in order.

At the same time as we have a loosening of the grip of the church over Irish catholics, appalled by abuse scandals and entering into the general European trend towards secularisation, we have a counter force in the North in the form of the DUP, determined to resist same sex marriage and abortion law reform.

So, at a  time when we might have seen chauvinistic rages settle down, we have a new dividing line.

And this has led to disaffection with devolution in the North among catholics and nationalists.

We can trace the collapse of Stormont to the RHI scandal and the denial of a stand alone Irish language act, but if we look to why so many people don’t seem to care if it comes back or not, among catholics and nationalists, distaste of the DUP and a lack of enthusiasm for restoring to them the power to block social reform is, I think, primary.

I suspect even Sinn Fein has been taken by surprise by this.

So forces are in play that were not in play during the Troubles, the demographic shift, secularisation North and South and an aversion to the social conservatism of the DUP.

And Brexit.

Which might turn out fine.

A DUP adviser tells me that they expect that everything will be OK after next March, people will realise it was all a fuss over very little and then we can settle back into routine politics.

Implied in this is a confidence that the catholic community can be relied on, in sufficient numbers, to endorse the Union – though never calling themselves Unionists – and we’ll put Stormont back up and either make a new bigger deal to secure it, or hobble on to the next breakdown.

But crucially, if the protestant majority was the prop that secured the Union for a century, cross community support is the only prop that can sustain it further, and that means that the de facto unionists in the catholic community have to be kept onside.

Recognising that Catholic community support from now on must be a cornerstone of the Union, or there will be no Union,  requires an appeal to the northern catholic sense of identity in a future that may not include a British economy that is stronger than an Irish one.

Who can say our butter won’t be on the other side of the piece in a decade from now?

Victory on abortion does not necessarily remove it as a contentious issue. It will be hard for political parties now to take up pro life positions. Any that argue for tighter legislation than proposed will be viewed as ultra conservative. But the abortion question did not die in US politics after Roe v Wade. So what happens next in Ireland? We may presume that those who passionately believe that abortion is murder will continue to oppose it. They will see themselves as meeting a moral responsibility with courage. The may see Northern Ireland as the last defensible bastion of human decency and organise to preserve it as such.
Already I have seen Catholics campaigning for the DUP because of their abortion position.
Yet I foresee abortion rights in Northern Ireland becoming a focus for reform, much more important than an Irish Language Act. Now the secular liberal minded young will be more averse to seeing the return of devolution if it involves the DUP having its continued veto on social reform.

There will inevitably be some payback for the dismissal of the NI vote to Remain. At the extreme end of what that might be is the possibility of a border poll and a united Ireland resulting from that. At the other end is just a lingering dissatisfaction at England having made a decision for us over our heads.
The understanding of our position enshrined in the GFA is that we are not as British as Finchley, we have Irish and therefore EU citizenship, should we chose to exercise that ‘birthright’, and that we have the right to vote ourselves out of the UK – Nixit? Norxit?
The presumption then that our vote just goes into the bigger pool and has negligible meaning is a reversal of that trend and is wounding.
But how might we respond to that?
Many of us are likely to want to change the terms on which we relate to GB, much as Scotland wanted to drive ahead for Devo Max after the failed referendum on independence. Of course this was promised and reneged of, but two countries of the UK being treated like vassals brings the same question into sharper focus.
We would have been saved this insult if we had been members of the UK on similar terms to those in which the UK is a member of the EU, that is with a veto. Germany and France can act jointly as the big beast in the EU, overshadowing the others, yet even Lithuania has a veto on major decisions.
I suggest that after Brexit we seek to renegotiate the terms of the Union, holding out the threat of scuppering it altogether – Nixit/Norxit – if this demand is ignored. Simply, it is wrong that we would leave ourselves vulnerable to having decisions made for us, against our interests, by English nationalists.
Of course we would be in a much stronger position if we could be self sustaining, and we can’t.
But I foresee the possibility that if Brexit goes badly and Britain is humiliated, it is England that will take the blame. The Remain factions in Scotland, NI and London will be in a position to say to England, We told you so!
That won’t be much good, however morally satisfying, yet England too will feel the need of a political leadership untainted by Brexit if it turns out to be a disaster.
Another possibility is that English Nationalism will then blame Ireland for its problems and that the demand for Nixit/Norxit will come from them.

Power-sharing was devised as a system to ensure representation of a minority community in the governing of Northern Ireland. It was needed by the ‘catholic/nationalist’ community which was otherwise put upon and disadvantaged. The system did not work for most of the time between its being devised and the time at which ‘catholics/nationalists’ ceased to be a minority, but that was because the context of political violence made government here impossible. Essentially the IRA vetoed power-sharing through its campaign and its demand for full Irish unity.
Power-sharing may also become necessary in the future to protect a ‘protestant/unionist’ community. But it may be no coincidence that the period in which it fails to function is when these communities are almost equally balanced.
In circumstances in which competing ideologies approach balance, as in GB through most of my life, the system which works best, or at least well enough to avert the threat of revolution, is majority rule. The competing forces battle it out in debate and the result is decided by the vacillating minority or middle ground.
But for us being locked into a power-sharing system now, this might work here better than it ever has before. Neither SF nor the DUP would be able to govern alone and would have to form coalitions with each other or with other parties. This would force both to compromise on hard principle – which would be a good thing. A system of majority rule, which produced conflict when it was ossified for fifty years, might now be the system that would work for the erosion of sectarian blocs.
Yet both of these blocs would have to agree to it and neither, it seems would be able to consent to being governed, if only for periods, by the other. However much Labour and the Tories hate each other in England and Wales, they do consent to being governed by each other, do agree to that being better than not being governed at all.
We, unfortunately, are free to exercise that option of not being governed at all.

In the 1990s there were several people who advanced the idea of a ‘civic unionism’. Norman Porter, Stephen King and Robert McCartney and others developed these ideas. They had a strong influence over David Trimble. Their argument was that Unionism could be a link into a multi cultural Britain that was far more interesting a context to be part of than a narrow Catholic Ireland.
And this is a potentially appealing idea.
But where was the Unionist with a multicultural perspective, who was British in that way?
Unionists knew they had to enlarge their conception of what they were about because the world was looking in and thought a united Ireland was obviously a decent aspiration to work for; that it would even be better for unionists.
And demography was working against the unionist majority, so nationalists had to be given a sense of belonging here. There were hundreds of thousands of people from the catholic community who were not especially interested in a united Ireland but they weren’t voting for unionist parties. If unionism could present itself as culturally inclusive it could win these people over and rely on their support for the Union through the coming years in which the Protestant community would be in a minority.
But no one made the move. And the GFA prompted the consolidation of communal blocs – not their intermingling.
Arlene helped bring Trimble down and went with the DUP, though perhaps liberalising the DUP at the same time as destroying the Ulster Unionist Party which was exploring the civic unionism idea.
At the same time, Ireland became more liberal and less Catholic and the ‘better off with us even though we don’t like you very much’ argument of Unionism lost appeal.
This is a big problem for the DUP.
If they take the view that they are safe within the Union because catholics who don’t vote for them, and who they don’t seek to include, will not dump them out of the Union – because that’s what the polls say – then they are taking a big risk.
If Catholics only stay within the Union while they expect to be economically better off there – that can change with the next recession; it offers unionists no guarantee.
I was on Nolan yesterday with Jim Wells who smugly assumes that the ‘moderate nationalists’ are in the bag – Unionism having done nothing to cultivate their interest in the Union. The man’s a geg!
So Arlene wants us to see her as culturally inclusive while she is leader of an almost totally white and Protestant political party. [Thanks to Davy Crockett for correction.]
She is certainly not culturally inclusive in any sense that would be understood in the rest of Britain, where her party’s traditional distaste for gays makes it contemptible.
But if she is signalling that she wants to be inclusive and to change the character or her party, let her get on with it.
Sinn Fein and the SDLP have the same problem – all white, monocultural parties – though both have tried to seek a broader international context, through Europe and America, through links to the Palestinians (and Colombians!!) for SF, through celebration of the EU for the SDLP.
Neither has done enough to absorb people from the Protestant community who might be tempted by some of their thinking. SF continues to celebrate murder. The SDLP is coming late to the idea of supporting abortion in limited circumstances, SF having just squeezed themselves into that growing consensus ahead of them.
And each doubts that its dependable support base would let it move anyway.