Letter: Divisions within unionism have ailed us more than Irish nationalists have done

One of the more difficult aspects of local politics is that out of fear of attacks from other unionists, we never acknowledge when ‘the other side’ is successfully pursuing a goal. The best example is the current liberal/republican/Marxist/nationalist push for a ‘referendum on Irish unity’. Some fear that unionist infighting could lead to the demise of our Union.

Now truth be told the problem dates back to 25th March 1963 when Terence O’Neill was drafted in as the unionist prime minister who would placate the emerging ‘civil rights’ movement. Nowadays this writer believes that O’Neill’s appointment was a strategic error because the real threat to unionist rule came from the rapid growth of the Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP) whose vote share of 15.77% in the 1958 Stormont election had risen to 25.39% in 1962; and O’Neill knew that it was only the first past the post system that saved unionism from serious setbacks in working class areas.

The problem was that like O’Neill, too many unionist politicians thought that mollifying the ‘civil rights’ movement would neutralise the NILP challenge, and that led to 60 years of resisting a republican/nationalist threat that was virtually non-existent in 1963.

In 1949 the NILP had endorsed the Union and that opened the door to progress in Protestant working class areas. As de-facto unionists the NILP could and should have been welcomed into the fold, but mainstream unionism was riven by class based differences that prevented it from breaking bread with the manual workers.

Instead senior unionists choose to focus minds on the republican/nationalist community and that undermined the unionist position as well as needlessly raising community tensions.

In the end the question of how to deal with ‘civil rights’ morphed into how to do business with the republican/nationalist community, and that split unionism in ways that consensus with the NILP could never have done.

Eventually the split became a fragmentation inside political unionism and that meant a plethora of different unionist parties emerged in the 1963-98 period. Each one splintered the pro-Union vote but that did not matter because unionists dominated the demographics in Northern Ireland. But now the republican/nationalist population is on a par with their unionist counterparts and it’s not so simple.

Ask yourself how many times have we seen newly elected unionist politicians waving Union flags in celebration of beating another unionist in an election?

I think too many is the answer and it happens because our politicians have become accustomed to fighting each other. The results speak for themselves. In 1998 unionists won 53 from 108 seats in the first election to the Northern Ireland Assembly, whilst in 2022 they only won 38 out of 90. In 1973 unionists won 27 out of 51 seats on Belfast City Council, whilst in 2023 they only won 16 out of 60. And in 1966 unionists won 11 out of 12 seats at Westminster, whilst in 2024 they only won eight out of 18.

By any measure these results demonstrate a precipitous decline and that means the days of unionist division must end; which begs the question of how to overcome the slump? This writer believes the answer is for unionists to bury their differences and learn from the 1892 Ulster Convention that created unionism as we know it today.

Held in Botanic Gardens Belfast, the original convention was attended by 12,000 democratically elected delegates from every constituency in Ulster and every one of them left their egos at the front door. It began with a unifying moment when the Anglican Archbishop of Armagh led the convention in prayer and this was followed by the reading of Scripture by a former Presbyterian moderator. After that they sang a Psalm together and whilst the Land Question in late 19th-century Ulster cannot be under-estimated, landlords and tenant farmers sat side by side; as did representatives of Ulster’s industrial and commercial elite and their employees.

Able to overcome the normal divisions of denomination and class in 19th century Ulster, the convention enabled the birth of the unified unionism and thus Ulster navigated both the Home Rule crisis (1886 to 1914) and World War One (1914 to 1918), both of which contributed to the birth of Northern Ireland on the 3rd May 1921. Thus the challenge to modern unionism is to learn the lesson and:

1. Call a second Ulster convention based on the first.

2. Invite every unionist stakeholder group to elect representatives who can attend with voting rights.

And 3. Use the event to bury the past and launch a unified unionist party that can reclaim our electoral legacy.

And throughout, unionists might remember that division ails us far more than liberalism, republicanism, Marxism or nationalism ever has or will.

David Rose, Ex Progressive Unionist Party Activist (1996-2011), Bangor