‘Beware those branding unionists a bunch of backwards bigots’

It was first run on Monday, June 27, 2016, and re-tweeted from the archives on last week’s five-year anniversary of this ill-fated and highly-consequential referendum.

Prior to seeing this, I had re-shared my own simple Facebook post of five years ago: “Going out to vote REMAIN now” – adding a contemporary barb related to the backfiring of Brexiteering ardour for many in Northern Ireland.

The Irish Times headline, as intended, brought to mind the narrative of decades of anti-European “grooming” by the English media.

I recalled one example that tied neatly into the current NI Protocol ‘sausage’ debacle.

In the ‘Euro Sausage’ episode of the classic BBC comedy Yes Minister, minister Hacker gives off about new EU regulations that will see Britons “forced to accept some foreign muck” and give up the “good old British sausage” in favour of the “emulsified high fat offal tube”.

Some decades ago, when I first watched it, it seemed funny and I didn’t over-read into it. Nowadays, with the benefit of hindsight, it slots neatly in as an example of this “grooming”.

With the united Ireland starting to move nearer to the political horizon, it would be sad to think that there is a similar “grooming” going on within the nationalist community on the island in respect of their Protestant / unionist fellow citizens.

Grooming for a warm reception, with minority rights and recognition in a united Ireland?

No – the grooming of negative stereotypes: “bigots,” “Catholic haters,” and “supremacists” unable to treat Catholics as “equals”.

Going back decades, multitudes of people – including many who should know better – have indulged in this “grooming”.

Former Republic of Ireland president Mary McAlesse in 2005 made her infamous “children were taught to hate Catholics” remarks.

Former British PM Tony Blair made his “Protestant bigots” remarks the following year.

A common nationalist / republican response to any unionist deviation from their sense of orthodoxy is a wielding of the “aversion to equality” and “feelings of supremacy” cudgels. The so-called “Shinner-bots” push this even further.

Mainstream media commentators also wield emotive terminology like “supremacy”, putting intransigence over the Irish Language Act down to their failure to acknowledge Catholics as “equals”, a theme revisited in recent days with respect to Jeffrey Donaldson.

The “grooming” turns up in academic papers with titles commonly juxtaposing ideas of “loyalism” and “hatred”, “loyalism” and “sectarianism”.

But pulling unionism through the “equality” hedge is often little more than simplistic populism that deflects from an immensely complicated set of circumstances. More often than not, the labels do not link to the actual people on the ground.

Nationalists should examine their own consciences in respect of this “grooming” and budge over on the equality bed.

“Equality” is not a fiefdom of nationalism nor, as Gerry Adams’ famed “grooming” quote goes, a tool for breaking unionism.

“Supremacy” is not a demonic brand to be seared into the public identity of any member of the Protestant-unionist-loyalist British or Ulster-Scots communities who deviates from the brander’s nationalist script.

Both unionists and nationalists need to adopt a new shared script on the subject of equality.

One unionist commentator recently made a tweet expressing his concerns for the future, reacting to Leo Varadkar’s “united Ireland” remarks at the recent Fine Gael Ard Fheis.

A huge thread developed, with not one comment that I saw mentioning minority rights and protections.

In reality no “grooming” narrative yet exists, but nationalists should remember that if their cherished dream of a united Ireland is realised, the focus will be squarely on how they treat their new minority.

They wouldn’t want the “grooming” narrative to emerge, citing examples going back decades, in the wake of an explosion of an intolerance time-bomb, now would they?

Should we not be trying to avoid a majority population “groomed” to confuse multi-faceted, legitimate expressions of collective otherness as “supremacy” and a failure to be “equal”? How would it go down if a host of English poets and writers called out Ireland for “grooming”?

– Originally from Donegal, Alan Millar is a journalist in north Antrim. He is 2021 winner of the Scots Language Society’s Hugh MacDiarmid Tassie for his poem ‘Wee Weaver Birdie’, and has a long-standing interest in Scots writing in Ulster. This article first appeared on www.Sluggerotoole.com