Owen Polley: Unionists had to listen to a chorus of patronising rubbish during the Belfast Agreement 25th anniversary celebrations

Have you taken down your Good Friday Agreement decorations yet? Is the Spring lamb from your ‘Irish Accords’ dinner gone? Or maybe you celebrated with turkey. ‘Twas certainly the season to lecture and talk down to unionists. The festivities started on Easter Tuesday, when Joe Biden gave a rambling speech that at least avoided hectoring opponents of the Irish Sea border. Last week, at Queen’s University’s ‘Agreement 25’ conference, though, the condescension reached full volume.

We should start with Chris Heaton-Harris, the latest Conservative minister sent to Northern Ireland with a reputation for independence, only to be assimilated into the ‘hive mind’ of the NIO. It’s difficult to exaggerate how misjudged Mr Heaton-Harris’s comments were on the Belfast Agreement and his attempts to link 1998 to current difficulties at Stormont. “Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams,” he said, “will be remembered for the courage and leadership they showed, in persuading the republican movement for peace.”

It was sickening enough, particularly for the victims of terrorism, to hear these two characterised as peacemakers. But to ignore the fact that this supposedly peaceful movement kept its army council, retained weapons, spied and even committed murders after the agreement was wilfully negligent from a self-declared unionist minister. Perhaps worse, Heaton-Harris then praised Lord Trimble and the PUP’s David Ervine for persuading unionism and loyalism to say ‘yes, to peace’. Now, Ervine may have helped stop the UVF’s murderous activities, but the idea that unionists needed cajoled into peacefulness is both inaccurate and offensive. The only people who had to be persuaded to embrace peace were the terrorist thugs who perpetrated violence. Should we really need to point that out to a Conservative secretary of state?

The argument that Mr Heaton-Harris was making so crassly was that “real leaders know when to say yes”. I.e. The DUP should accept the Windsor Framework, and, by implication, the full implementation of the Irish Sea border, thought by leading hauliers to be deeper and more permanent than the one we know today. According to Heaton-Harris, people who are proud of Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom, should ‘put the Union first’ and restore power-sharing. “The biggest threat to Northern Ireland’s place in the Union is failing to deliver on these priorities,” he said.

Admittedly, boycotting Stormont could begin to erode support for our place in the UK over time. But it would have work to do to become as big a threat as a Conservative administration that repeatedly agreed to a legal and commercial border in the Irish Sea: a government so determined to deliver Brexit for the rest of the country, that it was prepared to flatten anything in its path, including the Union between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

A theme of Heaton-Harris’s comments, which was common to many speeches delivered last week, was that unionists should ‘compromise’ to secure a hopeful future. That idea was developed too by Bertie Ahern, a leader who was usually fair in his treatment of pro-Union politicians. Some of Mr Ahern’s comments at Queen’s, though, were slapdash and baffling. “There’s too many big things to be dealing with,” mused the former Taoiseach, “to be arguing about some detail that was caused over something or another, which I’m not sure what it is even.”

This may read like dialogue from a drunk trying to end a row in a pub, but the ‘detail’ that unionists are concerned with is a trade border that cuts them off from the rest of the UK’s economy. They’re against the imposition of EU law in Northern Ireland, diverging ever further from the British mainstream and a framework that entrenches a sea border. Mr Ahern really should remember those details, if he intends to comment on the current impasse at Stormont with authority.

As for the idea that unionists should ‘compromise’, that was voiced by Ahern, Tony Blair, Bill Clinton and others, it was expressed in a way that suggested unionism was unaccustomed to accommodating nationalists. In fact, unionists in Northern Ireland have choked down some of the most unpalatable concessions over the decades, in order to secure stability. The Belfast Agreement involved the release of paramilitary prisoners, terrorists in government, a role for Dublin and, eventually, the abolition of the RUC. Since then, we’ve had to swallow letters of comfort for on-the-runs, attempts to placate republicans on legacy and the continued activity of the IRA, none of which toppled Stormont permanently.

Only three years ago, the DUP agreed a deal that promised, effectively, official status and legislation for the Irish language. Unionism compromised repeatedly, with little reciprocation, and, even now, some unionists want to concede fundamental aspects of our UK status, to satisfy the demands of nationalism and stop the lectures of statesmen who just want our problems to go away.

Of course, unionists will struggle to devise a strategy that both recognises that the protocol and framework are a constitutional demotion, and causes no new damage to what’s left of the Union. The idea, though, that any of this was inevitable, or self-inflicted, or even that it presents a wonderful opportunity, is the most patronising rubbish. If the speakers at QUB hoped to persuade unionists back into Stormont, rather than gaining applause from a very particular kind of audience, many of them could not have done a worse job.