Delusional and naive thinking from bankrupt unionism

Smith talks about unionism being ‘once again at a crossroads’; one wonders was that the same crossroads that Terence O’Neill talked about in December 1968 just before Paisley and loyalist bombs forced him from office?

If it is the same crossroads, then it confirms what many suspect: unionism has been going round in circles for fifty years, every so often coming back to the same crossroads, scratching their heads, before being dragged off once more down another blind alley.

Contrary to the naive belief of many unionists, including Philip Smith, the future of Northern Ireland has never been decided by the electorate here and unionism has never produced a single initiative in all those fifty years.

So it is unlikely to do so now.

Because of unionism’s now traditional bankruptcy of thinking our future has always been decided by others behind closed doors in places like London, Washington, Brussels and Dublin with the locals being presented with a fait accompli.

This time unionism is not at the proverbial ‘crossroads’, it’s at a dead-end. Whatever thinkers unionism ever had have long since departed the scene.

The game is up. One hundred years after partition, the union created by Big House Unionism, is crippling the once prosperous north of Ireland economically, politically and socially.

The Ulster covenant of 1912 demanded the retention of the union with Britain because it guaranteed ‘material well-being’. That has not been the case for many years.

We now have the lowest levels of household income in the UK, the highest male suicide rates and youth unemployment and the highest levels of fuel poverty. The list is endless.

In the new year it’s time for unionism to accept its day is done.

Willie Methven, Fermanagh