Irish unity is not top of any immediate agenda
PERHAPS it's wrong to harp on about what a strong position unionism is in just now, but look at the facts. After 30 years of an IRA campaign for "Brits Out" and Irish unity, Sinn Fein's latest initiative is to launch a debate on the subject, centreing mainly on Irish America.
Last Saturday, Gerry Adams addressed an audience of 800 in Manhattan on how to achieve Irish unity. "I can't tell you how to do it. You know how to do it, and if you don't you'll find out." It wasn't exactly a clear agenda for anything but fundraising from American sympathisers, and the Sinn Fein president lowered expectation further by mentioning a possible 40 year timescale.
That was, Adams said, only the blink of an eye in history, but the point is that it stretches long beyond his political career and influence.
Readers of my vintage will remember the 70s when Sinn Fein and the IRA proclaimed every year the "year of victory" and vowed to continue the campaign of violence until the British Government agreed to withdraw within the lifetime of a single parliament.
Nobody raises that sort of timetable any more. Adams stressed the need "to engage in a way that makes unionists happy with a New Ireland".
The principle of northern consent to Irish unity has been denied by Sinn Fein since the foundation of the state; now it is re-iterated by the Sinn Fein president at a "Unite Ireland Forum" in New York.
Adams has no choice. Under the Good Friday Agreement, the border can be only be removed by simultaneous referenda both north and south. Both, not just one, must vote in favour of change or the status quo remains.
Southern consent to unity was once written into the Irish constitution, but it can't be taken for granted now. Dr Martin Mansergh, the Fianna Fail Minister of State who oversaw much of Albert Reynolds' secret diplomacy with republicans, spelt out the realities at the British Irish Studies Conference in Dublin last week. He pointed out that the arguments for a united Ireland are "a lot less compelling today than they were two or three years ago".
"The Republic is engaged in a major struggle to maintain, within the EU and indeed the euro zone, its economic viability and sovereignty. It is hardly the moment to press claims to the North which we have renounced," Mansergh said.
Who could blame the Republic? Despite the peace process Northern Ireland still can't pay its way as a region. We still require about 80 a week each in net subsidies from the UK exchequer.
Taking on that sort of burden would cripple Irish taxpayers, who are already struggling to come to terms with the recent abrupt end to their economic boom.
Dr Brendan O'Leary, another peace process veteran who is now a professor in Pennsylvania, spoke at both the Dublin and New York events. He used both occasions to gently lower expectations of immediate progress while still holding out the prospect that unity could happen some day.
O'Leary discounted the idea that Catholics would outbreed Protestants and use their numbers to vote for a united Ireland. The percentage of the Catholic population in Northern Ireland has now stabilised at 40-45 per cent and is likely to stay that way for 30 years or more, which is as far as anyone is prepared to predict.
He went on to say that the prospect of a 20 per cent fall in living standards in a united Ireland raised "legitimate fears", stressing that many northern Catholics would not vote for unity in a border poll. In fact, most opinion polls show that 20-25 per cent favour remaining in the UK, probably for economic reasons, even though they generally vote for nationalist parties. O'Leary argued that these people would have to be won over as would a considerable proportion of Protestants.
Unionists should be reassured by the direction of this ongoing debate within nationalism. The siege by nationalism has been lifted and replaced by a discussion. It is time to end the unionist siege mentality that went with it.
Nobody is going to push anyone into unity with the republic. Even if Northern Ireland did vote that way, there is no guarantee that the feeling would be reciprocal.
The constitutional question has been parked for at least a generation and it need not dominate day to day politics any longer. The important thing for our politicians to deal with now is "the economy, stupid".
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Weather for Belfast
Tuesday 14 February 2012
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