https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/columnists/sam-mcbride/a-dup-founder-and-an-ex-uda-man-are-both-thinking-the-previously-unthinkable-irish-unity-might-work/a1415353827.html
Sectarianism must be dismantled but many politicians in Northern Ireland cling to it because their power rests on it
In the undergrowth of unionism, something is stirring. It’s still only a few rustling leaves rather than a stampede, but it’s a movement which just a few years ago would have been unthinkable.
Last week I talked to David Adams, a former UDA man who went on to become a senior loyalist politician. He was heavily involved in the loyalist ceasefire and the Good Friday Agreement but a quarter of a century after the heady hope of 1998, he’s worried by much of what he sees around him.
Adams is thinking radical thoughts; thoughts which would baffle those whose only comprehension of loyalism is of tattooed thugs with bad grammar and intimidating biceps. Adams is, in short, open to Irish unity. But he’s no more willing to blindly vote to end the union than he’s willing to blindly support the status quo.
Referring to “the divisive and insulting language” that some republicans direct at unionists, he said it seemed that some of those most loudly in favour of a united Ireland either aren’t terribly interested in winning a Border poll or don’t care what any “new” Ireland will deliver.
Depending on the outcome of a Border poll, he said that as things stand “we will either shift our unreconciled population on to a larger stage and begin poisoning the social and political fabric of the entire island”, or will continue as “the UK’s problem child”.
He said he wanted to see a society at ease with itself, where every citizen is made to feel they belong, and where the various differences of the population are irrelevant to others.
“Let us strive to create a future worth having. If we can travel some way down the road towards that goal, then I for one couldn’t care less what constitutional arrangements we live under,” he added.
For a former loyalist paramilitary to say he’s open to Irish unity if nationalists can convince him it would improve his life is extraordinary.
Adams is highly atypical. He left loyalist politics two decades ago and moved to Dublin for several years, working for a development charity and as a columnist.
Nevertheless, he’s not alone in thinking the once unthinkable. Just over a week ago, I was in Dublin to interview DUP founding member Wallace Thompson at the Royal Irish Academy. Thompson is a thoroughbred Paisleyite: Politically, religiously, and in his personal friendship with Ian Paisley right up until his death. He served as a DUP special adviser in Stormont and is a member of the loyal orders.
But now Thompson is pondering something which once would have appalled him. Looking toward London, he’s dismayed by the dishonesty and betrayal he’s observed from British governments. Looking around him in unionism, he’s perturbed by the substitution of things like Ulster Scots culture for Protestant Christianity.
He says that the Ulster Protestants who fought at the Somme were fighting “for an Empire which is gone, for a nation which was essentially Protestant in its essence which is gone, and against absorption into an Irish Catholic state which is gone. Much of what our forefathers were fighting for and against has gone.”
Thinking of his grandchildren, he said that he feels a duty not to leave them trapped in the fearful and defensive position of their ancestors. I asked him why he’d come to Dublin to say things that he knew would get him grief from some old friends.
Thompson replied that he wanted a southern audience to know that people like him are “genuine… we’re not motivated by sectarianism… we’re motivated by a love for the people of this island”.
Thompson is conservative and religious where Adams is liberal and secular. But both agree that reconciliation within Northern Ireland is crucial, regardless of what its future is to be. Republicans have traditionally dismissed this analysis, arguing simplistically that sectarianism is a product of the British influence and once unity happens it will be largely resolved.
If republicans were to genuinely buy into this view, it could transform how a restored Stormont functions. If Sinn Féin believes that a reconciled Northern Ireland makes a united Ireland more likely, the party would act very differently.
Adams highlighted that most large housing estates remain segregated, that many whole towns and villages are segregated, that of more than 1,000 schools only 71 are fully integrated — and that even Catholic and Protestant teachers are still trained apart. The former politician said he believed many Northern Ireland politicians cling to sectarianism because their power rests on it.
But it’s not just the North that’s changing in this regard; the south is continuing to change. Last Wednesday a bust of David Trimble was unveiled in Leinster House, with Dáil Ceann Comhairle Seán Ó Fearghaíl saying of the late Ulster Unionist leader: “We are honouring a great Ulsterman, a courageous politician, and a dedicated peacemaker.”
This was the man who was involved in the Ulster Workers’ Council strike which brought down Northern Ireland’s first power-sharing government, the man who held Ian Paisley’s arm aloft after the Orange parade passed Drumcree, and the man who once bristled and corrected an interviewer who described him as “Northern Irish”.
It would long have been inconceivable that such a man would be recognised — let alone recognised with such warmth and sincere respect — by the Irish political establishment. Irish unity is no more inevitable than overeating on Christmas Day; it will depend on the choices people make.
Adams and Thompson are not representative of tens of thousands of unionists. They are the exceptions which prove the tribal rule. But the fact they now exist shows how people can change. If the Border is ever removed, it won’t be easy — but it would be far easier to remove in circumstances where there is respect rather than fear between those the Border divided, and between those divided by invisible borders.
by Ah_here_like