Owen Polley: Unionists want to be in UK, not just have their culture recognised

In Moygashel, the eleventh night bonfire builders made a protest against the Irish Sea border that captured a lot of attention.

They placed a boat on top of their construction, painted with the words, ‘Good Friday Agreement… That ship has sailed’. The message was clear. The Northern Ireland Protocol, and its offspring, the Windsor Framework, have driven a “coach and horses” through the principle of consent, to quote the architect of the 1998 deal, David Trimble.

Rather than dwell upon this political point, many commentators concentrated on the late addition to the fire of a Republic of Ireland flag and an election poster featuring Leo Varadkar. A lot of unionists still detest the Taoiseach for his aggressive attitude to the UK during the Brexit negotiations and hold him, and his sidekick Simon Coveney, at least partly responsible for the Irish Sea border.

This view is perfectly valid, but the addition of posters and flags to bonfires, as well as occasional examples of boorish, drunken or criminal behaviour, give some people an excuse to attack the whole Twelfth celebration. That is unfair to the Orange Order, which is not generally involved in organising the pyres, but it is even more harmful to unionism, which gets caricatured as hate-filled and negative as a result.

The really extraordinary story about the Twelfth, of course, is just how uncontentious it has become in recent years, thanks mainly to painstaking work and concessions from Orangemen. This fact was not, to be fair, ignored entirely in the run up to the parades.

There were the usual stereotypes and tribal responses, but there were some examples of better faith. There was the suggestion, for example, by the southern Green Party spokesman, Patrick Costello TD, who is in the Dail’s Good Friday Agreement committee, that the day should become a holiday in the Republic. A number of commentators have also written about including Orangeism in their aspirations to create an all-Ireland republic.

There’s really nothing wrong with nationalists exploring these kinds of ideas. And it’s incomparably better than ridiculing aspects of British culture or treating them with hostility. But unionists should be clear in their own minds, at least, that these notions are usually based on misunderstandings of unionism.

Sometimes proposals like these are well-meaning, like Mr Costello’s intervention, while others are entirely cynical, like Sinn Fein’s occasional hints that Orangeism could be accommodated in a ‘new Ireland’. They’re almost all at some level based on the idea that unionism is a culture or tradition within a so-called Irish ‘nation’, rather than a genuinely and deeply felt political allegiance to the United Kingdom.

The loyal orders are clearly a significant part of British and unionist culture in Northern Ireland, but it’s worth remembering that they are not its essence and they don’t appeal to all unionists. Many have just a passing interest in the parades and associated events, while others jet away on holiday or ignore the Twelfth entirely. Some are even pretty hostile to Orangeism.

That’s not a criticism of the Order, because I’ve come to appreciate more the role of institutions like the Orange in binding people together around a shared identity: it’s just a statement of fact.

It’s important for unionists not to fall into the nationalist trap of implying that their concerns are primarily cultural rather than political. Apart from anything else, the Orange Order, and other elements of British culture, would not retain the same significance if Northern Ireland were no longer in the United Kingdom. It’s the constitutional context that largely gives them their meaning. In the rest of the UK, people do not generally mark the Glorious Revolution, the Bill of Rights and the Williamite wars, as we do on the Twelfth of July. These events, though, shaped our national story and formed the bedrock of our modern political system, by entrenching the world’s first genuine parliamentary democracy in London.

There’s nothing outdated or anachronistic about remembering important landmarks in our history. Unless, of course, the parades, banners and music do not reflect our current place in the UK, our participation in the Westminster parliament and the monarchy’s role in our constitutional system, but instead draw on a memory of something that existed in the past.

In Northern Ireland, as in the rest of the country, unionists are a diverse, argumentative bunch, who sometimes disagree sharply and value different things about their shared nation state. It’s that diversity that makes them so difficult to corral into a single party, but it’s also a defining characteristic, a strength and a mark of difference with Irish nationalism.

Without exception, we can say, though, that unionists want to remain in the UK. That may appear simplistic, or to go without saying, but it is the very meaning of unionism, and sometimes that seems to be misrepresented or forgotten.

It’s nice to be offered, when the overtures are serious, recognition or cultural trinkets, and it’s always desirable to have good relations with one’s neighbours. But what unionists really want and need is the freedom to play a full, unrestricted role in their own nation state: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.