'The Unionists of Ulster: An ideological Analysis' by Feargal Cochrane[Key_Events] [KEY_ISSUES] [Conflict_Background] POLITICS: [Menu] [Reading] [Articles] [Government] [Political_Initiatives] [Political_Solutions] [Parties] [Elections] [Polls] [Sources] [Peace_Process] The following chapter has been contributed by the author Feargal Cochrane with the permission of the publisher, Cork University Press. The views expressed in this chaper do not necessarily reflect the views of the members of the CAIN Project. The CAIN Project would welcome other material which meets our guidelines for contributions. 
This chapter is from the book:
Unionist Politics and the Politics of Unionism since the Anglo-Irish
Agreement
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Unionist Politics and the Politics of Unionism since the Anglo-Irish Agreement
Unionist ideology contains diverse interest groups with little in common other than a commitment to the link with Britain. While this position remains relatively cohesive during periods of constitutional crisis when they can articulate what they do not want (namely a weakening of the link with Britain), the coherence of the ideology begins to disintegrate when unionists are forced to establish a consensus for political progress. The tensions created by conflicting perceptions of their political environment and how they should tackle these external forces were exacerbated by the realisation that many unionists were committed to the Union for different reasons. While some regarded it in isolationist terms, as a guarantor of Protestant religio-cultural hegemony, others saw Northern Ireland as simply another region of Britain which should be governed in precisely the same manner as the rest of the country. These conflicting perceptions of identity inevitably spilled over into alternative political objectives, with the former group demanding the restoration of legislative devolution based on majority rule, while the latter advocated full political integration with the rest of the United Kingdom. Between these two poles lay a number of other objectives such as power-sharing, administrative devolution and various schemes for regionalism which combined both legislative and administrative features. The nett result of this multiplicity of objectives was political stagnation. The emphasis placed on unionist unity precluded any one objective - over and above that elusive goal of securing the Union - being given priority. Although the DUP were unified behind a coherent policy - majority, rule - the UUP were not prepared to accept it. There were two main reasons for this: firstly, many in the party found majority rule an unpalatable philosophy and secondly, those who were not against it on principle realised - quite correctly - that it was no longer a practical option in terms of reaching a negotiated settlement with the SDLP and the British government.
This chapter presents a critical review of recent academic literature
on Ulster unionism. The various hypotheses presented are tested
against the first-hand responses of leading members of the unionist
political community The narrative seeks to explain the dynamics
of the unionist ideology and the complex motivations which underpin
unionist political behaviour. The seeds of modern Ulster unionism were sown after the 1798 rebellion, when the liberal Presbyterian merchants of Ulster began a process of rapprochement with the Protestant ascendancy and became estranged from the Catholic population. Before the Act of Union in 1800, the wealthy merchant class in the north-east of Ulster resented their exclusion from political power and were envious of the landed gentry who could instigate legislation detrimental to their interests. The Act of Union, however, together with rapid industrialisation and economic change in Ulster, especially the growth of Belfast's cotton industry, contributed to a shift in Presbyterian politics as their fortunes were now inextricably bound up with the British economy. The decline in liberal sentiment after 1798, due to the failure Of the rebellion, the anti-liberal excesses of the French revolution and the realities of Catholic political mobilisation, led to a shift in Presbyterian political thought. Economic self-interest was an underlying force (though not the only force) behind these changing political attitudes, facilitating and in some cases causing a revision of traditional allegiances. It is not an unusual law of political motion, nor is it an illegitimate one, for individuals or ethnic groups to follow what they perceive to be their own self-interest. Thus the Presbyterians, who had sympathised with their Catholic neighbours while they shared some of their legal and political difficulties, gradually drew closer to the conservative Anglicans once these had begun to dissipate. A good starting point for examining unionism's historical legacy and the extent to which environmental circumstances fashioned its ideological identity is provided by Jennifer Todd. She has commented that the unionist ideology is essentially an umbrella organisation under which two distinct groupings exist. The first, Ulster loyalism, sees itself primarily as a self-contained cultural community with a secondary political allegiance to the British state. The other strand is an Ulster British tradition which defines itself as being an integral part of Greater Britain with a secondary regional patriotism for Northern Ireland.[2] This group consider themselves to be as British as natives of London or Sunderland, with a fondness for their 'Irishness' which is akin to that felt by those on the 'mainland' for their own regional differences, such as the Cockneys in London or the Geordies on Tyneside. This perspective was illustrated by the response of UUP councillor, Michael McGimpsey, when he was asked to explain why he was a unionist. It was put to him that his political philosophy appeared to be a secular one based largely on a pragmatic assessment of the political environment, a perception of advantage which concluded that the Union was the best political vehicle to secure the economic prosperity of Northern Ireland. His response provides a perfect illustration of the Ulster British tradition, rejecting the subliminal belief of his more radical unionist colleagues that Northern Ireland is a self-contained nation.
Todd builds upon her previous work in an article published in 1988[4] by identifying three specific aspects of Ulster Britishness, the first being a cultural commonality and distinctive regional identity with the rest of the people in Northern Ireland. The second characteristic could be termed civic unionism, a celebration of and commitment to state structures such as Westminster, the monarchy, the health and education systems, even the physical infrastructure. The Irish-Canadian academic John Wilson Foster epitomises this strand within unionist thought in his contribution to The Idea of the Union, a publication which bills itself as 'a manifesto in favour of the constitutional link between Northern Ireland and Great Britain'.
The third element of Todd's findings has been defined as a 'supremacist aspect of some unionists' British identity',[6] a glorification of the history of Empire and British military adventures (however exaggerated or sanitised), and, as identified by David Ervine of the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP),a tendency at times to 'want to be more British than the British themselves'.[7] John McGarry and Brendan O'Leary have stylishly summarised this aspect with the comment.
The Ulster loyalist tradition, meanwhile, is firmly rooted in their Presbyterian ancestry, and the ideals and values which permeate radical loyalist behaviour are heavily influenced by this historical legacy. The environmental circumstances of the Presbyterian settler community left an indelible stamp on their collective psyche which has influenced their subsequent activity. Upon their arrival in Ireland, the Scottish Dissenters felt isolated and vulnerable, squeezed as they were between the orthodox Episcopalians in the Church of Ireland and the sheer numerical dominance of the Catholic Church, both of whom regarded Presbyterianism as heresy. In addition to this the settlers were in a minority even in the nine counties of Ulster, which created the feeling of physical and economic insecurity. These environmental factors were naturally exacerbated by political events such as the constitutional uncertainty which surrounded the accession to the British throne of James II, an occurrence which appeared to signal their downfall until William of Orange's victory at the Boyne. This insecurity produced a desire for independence and a siege mentality identified by Lyons when he commented that 'The settlers who struck their roots in the region, did so under conditions of maximum insecurity and this insecurity became a permanent part of their psychology.'[9] In later years, such insecurity proved to be a successful breeding ground for the Orange Order, evangelical religion and cultural isolationism within the Ulster loyalist community. Recent academic literature tends to reinforce this observation, with McGarry and O'Leary declaring that
While the authors are broadly correct in their analysis, this chapter will demonstrate that their sweeping generalisations about concepts such as loyalty to the Crown and the dynamics of Protestantism overlook important nuances within this section of the unionist community. Many contemporary observers, such as Garret FitzGerald, perceive political Protestantism to be a dichotomy between moderates and extremists. When asked to elaborate upon his Irish Identities Dimbleby Lecture of 1982 in which he argued that unionism was not a monolithic creed, he defined the difference in terms of two rival groupings.
FitzGerald's comments demonstrate an inability to appreciate the complexities of unionist ideology. As shall become apparent in the rest of this chapter, such a simplistic division hides a multilayered phenomenon which almost defies categorisation. Todd has emphasised that the competing political agendas of the Ulster loyalist and Ulster British traditions have been central to unionism's development as a reactive ideology, capable of describing what it is against - for example Home Rule, the Anglo-Irish Agreement or the Frameworks Document - but incapable of articulating a positive political programme without destroying the fragile coalition of separate interest groups contained within it. In Todd's analysis, therefore, the central anomaly of unionism is the group solidarity and political strength of unionists when faced by an external enemy and their corresponding weakness during periods of relative stability, witnessed by their inability to develop a consensus over core principles and political objectives. The Rev. Martin Smyth was asked whether the unionist protest against the Anglo-lrish Agreement was hampered by the multiplicity of objectives enshrined in the differing cultural perspectives of unionists such as Ian Paisley and John Taylor. Smyth conceded the point when asked if political progress was made difficult by the fact that every time unionism tried to move forward, everybody wanted to go in different directions.
The role of fundamentalist evangelical religion is a key feature of radical unionism and is central to its reactive nature, the political subtext of such Bible-Protestantism being that the enemies of today have remained unaltered from the enemies identified during the eighteenth century. Liberalism such as that represented by the ecumenist movement is regarded by this tradition within unionism as a movement designed to make Ulster Protestants compromise, not just in their political habits but in their spirituality as well. This fear of liberalism and compromise can again be seen in terms of unionism's historical legacy, in that the battle between the 'Old Light' and the 'New Light' dramatised in Belfast by Henry Cooke and Henry Montgomery in the nineteenth century is still being waged today. This was brought into sharp focus in December 1982 when a Presbyterian minister in Limavady, the Rev. David Armstrong, was attacked for allowing a Catholic priest to deliver Christmas greetings to his congregation. Wesley McDowell, Limavady's Free Presbyterian minister, castigated Armstrong upon his arrival for being 'a charismatic, a compromiser, and a Romaniser'.[13] This perspective has created a political and philosophical rigidity within radical unionism (a less problematic definition than 'royalism') where politics is seen as a struggle to maintain socio-cultural hegemony and religious liberty. As external political motivations have remained constant in this analysis, the way to achieve political success is seen in terms of what worked in the past. The following extract from a discussion between Clifford Smyth, a former DUP activist, and Dr Gordon Gray, a leading Presbyterian theologian, which took place outside a World Council of Churches conference in Geneva, illustrates the tendency for 'religion' to militate against unity within the Protestant community. It also presents an example of how radical Protestant thought is locked into its political position by an inflexibility derived from religious certainty. Pragmatism in the political sphere is rendered impossible, as this would only serve to dilute their distinctive cultural identity and, perhaps more importantly, would endanger the free exercise of their religion and thus imperil their chances of being granted eternal salvation.
It would be easy to sneer at this warped logic as evidence of a classic unionist Neanderthal man, a bigot in bigot's clothing to whom the word ,compromise' would appear to be anathema. To do so would be to misunderstand the integrity and serious implications represented by this strain of unionist thought. For many radical Protestants, such religious conviction lies at the centre of their political activity, with the battle for electoral support being merely an extension of the battle for souls. It should not be surprising to learn that such concrete religious beliefs produce a concrete political ideology which is unwieldy, inflexible and unadaptable to changing circumstances. journalists Ed Moloney and Andy Pollak quote a former member of the Free Presbyterian Church as an example of how politics and religion are inextricably linked within the DUP, with the church being the engine room of the party's electoral machine.
Religion also acts as a hindrance to unionist unity, as despite the increasing secularisation of the DUP during the 1980s it still plays an important role in policy formulation. This is not so much because of the doctrinal semantics of fundamentalist Protestantism, but because of the political aspects of dogmatic theology Radical unionism, such as that exhibited above by Clifford Smyth, has a much greater number of political absolutes which are non-negotiable than have the more secularly orientated Ulster Unionist Party. The DUP have to fit developments in their political environment into their existing matrix, or world view This leads to an extrapolation of events to the degree where their political vision descends into paranoid delusion. The Machiavellian intent of antagonistic world forces headed by the Vatican, the American government and the European Union are all continually conspiring against Ulster Protestantism. Consequently, any political movement by the British government is often seen as a product of these antagonistic forces and must therefore be resisted. This penchant within the DUP for conspiracy-theory politics was illustrated by Ian Paisley during an interview conducted several years after the signing of the AIA. When asked to explain why Margaret Thatcher changed her mind so dramatically from her response to the three options of the New Ireland Forum to endorsing the Agreement barely a year later, the DUP leader recited what has become a familiar litany.
The Ulster Unionist Party is generally less hysterical in its political analysis and is usually capable of determining where its best interests lie, even if being unable to achieve them. Michael McGimpsey's analysis of why the AIA was signed does not allude to the web of international intrigue outlined by Paisley, but regards it purely as a matter of British domestic policy-making: 'I think clearly Thatcher decided that something radical had to be done, and that is where the Agreement came from; it might have been partly the child of the Forum, but it was primarily the result of the Brighton bombing.'[17] In contrast to the radical unionist perspective, the Ulster British ideology (to use Todd's terminology) has a primary cultural identification with Great Britain and a secondary regional loyalty to Northern Ireland. This tradition is much less insular, viewing the British connection in terms of technological progress and the effects of the British welfare state on society's health and education. The cultural perspective of this strand of the ideology does not emphasise the mythical figures of the seventeenth century; rather its adherents see themselves bound up in and integrated into the 'British Family' through institutionalised linkages such as industrial connections, trade union organisations and British social welfare policies, which encourage them to view life from a British perspective. The historical legacy also plays an important part in the formation of the Northern Ireland British identity, as family and military connections have created a bond between Ulster and Britain, although this is increasingly becoming a one-way relationship. In addition, the emphasis on Britain's imperial history as taught in the state (de facto Protestant) school system and the importance placed on the part played by Ulstermen in Britain's imperial wars, especially at the Somme, have contributed to a cultural identification with those in the rest of the United Kingdom. This identity is reinforced by their view of the Republic of Ireland, as while they conceive of themselves as being progressive, liberal and democratic, they view the Southern Irish as being regressive, conservative and authoritarian. This strand of unionist philosophy was outlined by John Taylor when the Ulster Unionist MP for Strangford was asked whether his unionism revolved primarily around a political allegiance to Britain derived from a perception of potential economic advantage, or rather emanated from a cultural affinity with the people and institutions of the UK.
Edward Moxon-Browne proposes an economic hypothesis to account for the divisions within unionism between radicals and pragmatists. He argues that those who see themselves as British are likely to be upper-class Protestants, with the lower social orders being more attached to a regional 'Ulster' identity. This argument is based on the premise that middle- and upper-class Protestants have benefited from the Union in terms of economic and political power, whereas the lower socio-economic groups who have not prospered to the same degree would not feel the same cultural or institutional affinity In this analysis, the unionist identity is seen as being primarily based in economic materialism. 'For the Protestant, national identity is a pragmatic issue, it is based on perceptions of advantage.'[19] Moxon-Browne uses data from the 1978 Social Attitudes Survey to illustrate the division within the unionist ideology, as the results showed that two-thirds of the Protestant community viewed themselves as British while approximately 20 per cent favoured an Ulster identity. This does not explain, however, why large sections of the working class profess to having a British identity, or why the Democratic Unionist Party has become increasingly professionalised. These young, urban, upwardly mobile middle-class Protestants are not changing their political philosophies in line with the growth of their material prosperity. Evidence of this fact was provided by the DUP chief whip, Nigel Dodds, when asked to define the central principles of unionism from his point of view. Dodds, a lawyer and graduate of Cambridge University, emphasised not so much a cultural affinity with subjects in the rest of the UK as a desire to retain the link with Britain as a means of preserving the existing cultural ethos within Northern Ireland. The subtext of this rhetoric is that unionists have a strategic political allegiance to Britain for so long as it guarantees the existing Protestant hegemony and prevents the dilution of the region's specific cultural identity through an increase in Dublin's political influence in Northern Ireland.
In the past, socio-economic criteria such as those forwarded by Moxon-Browne functioned as a useful shorthand for an understanding of unionist motivations. However, time has moved on and the picture has become increasingly complex. Few of the activists and supporters of the Progressive Unionist Party, for example, are tax exiles from Northern Ireland, yet they display none of the 'little-Ulsterism' which materialist explanations might expect. When asked to define the central principles of unionism from his point of view, the Shankill Road community worker and PUP activist Billy Hutchinson provided a response which could just as easily have come from a prosperous businessman from Northern Ireland's 'gold coast' in North Down.
Moloney and Pollak support Moxon-Browne's class-based view up to a point, suggesting that the confessional element within the DUP (by 1981, 89 per cent of DUP councillors were also Free Presbyterians) illustrates a major difference between radical unionists and those of an Ulster British disposition. Their perception of the class difference within the unionist ideology may be more appropriately described as a conflict between materialism and anti-materialism. While many mainstream Ulster British unionists, such as those who inhabit the Ulster Unionist Party, support the Union for social and economic reasons and have a cultural affinity with the rest of the UK,
Moloney and Pollak emphasise the importance of the conditional loyalty exhibited by many Northern Ireland Protestants and argue that the professed willingness to rebel against Westminster is due to a deep-rooted independent sentiment fashioned by the conditions of their entry into Ulster in the seventeenth century Their examination of the DUP tends to negate the viability of the economic hypothesis proposed by Moxon-Browne, with the influx of young urban graduates being particularly significant. These articulate and ambitious 'Duppies' came to prominence after the 1982 Assembly elections, and '. . . their emergence has produced two distinct strands in the DUP'. [23] The old guard was largely rural and had a basic education, fundamental Protestantism and a belief in Ian Paisley, whilst the new guard, personified by Peter Robinson and Sammy Wilson, was mainly urban, well educated and less directly connected to the Free Presbyterian Church. The early 1980s witnessed the secularisation of the DUP under the careful stewardship of Peter Robinson, who, like Desmond Boal before him, had convinced Paisley that the party could not expand unless it transcended its Free Presbyterian base. Robinson made himself indispensable to Paisley through his organisational expertise, a fact recognised by the rank and file membership: 'Whatever else he is, Ian is not a great man for the details of organisation. It was Peter who was really responsible for making the DUP into what it is now.'[24] Robinson's political base is East Belfast, an urban constituency with a much smaller proportion of Free Presbyterian members than rural areas such as North Antrim. Built upon the employment centres of Harland and Wolff, and Shorts, East Belfast is predominantly composed of working-class Protestants who find the dogmatism of Free Presbyterianism less attractive than the lower middle classes and rural Protestants who populate its pews. Although their loyalism is equally virulent, it contains little of the restrictive puritanical fervour so apparent within Free Presbyterianism. The suggestion that the DUP can be separated into two groups, religious bigots and secular bigots, is itself something of a simplification. Ian Paisley Jnr contends that the significance of religion within the DUP is rather more complex.
Clearly, the changing social profile of the DUP has influenced the political significance of religion within the party. An example of this cultural gap was provided by Castlereagh Borough Council's decision to hold a referendum on the issue of whether the Dundonald Ice-Bowl should be allowed to open on a Sunday. The East Belfast DUP incurred the wrath of the Protestant fundamentalist group, The Lord's Day Observance Society, as under Peter Robinson's influence the council's main preoccupation was to keep the rates down through maximising the use of the amenity and reflect public wishes, rather than take a dogmatic and unpopular stand on religious grounds. This controversy was a testament to the success with which Robinson has separated the DUP from the Free Presbyterian Church in East Belfast.
Robinson's professionalisation of the DUP was accompanied by an influx of young articulate graduates into the party. Emerging during the Assembly elections of 1982, these Young Turks owed their primary allegiance to Robinson rather than Paisley and represented a new faction within the party. The traditional DUP members, those left over from its predecessor the Protestant Unionist Party, were often poorly educated, had a simple unquestioning faith in fundamentalist Protestantism and regarded Ian Paisley as a deity. By the early eighties the character of the membership was changing, with new supporters attracted by a more strident approach to politics, the increased prospects of advancement through the ranks of the party and the outlet for radical socio-economic opinions. This group contained a nursery of young talent including Nigel Dodds, Jim Wells, Jim Allister, Alan Kane and Sammy Wilson, and they appealed to people on secular grounds, with the religious metaphors and evangelical sentiment of the'old guard' being less evident within their political vocabulary. Gender imbalance in unionist politics One consistent feature of this influx of new blood into the DUP was its gender profile. The only women of any significance who came into the foreground of the party were those connected by either blood or marriage to more famous relatives. While the DUP has a number of female elected representatives in local government, few women have gained a substantial profile within this section of radical unionist politics. Iris Robinson is the partner of the DUP deputy leader and was elected to Castlereagh Borough Council as a DUP representative, eventually, due to her own ability, becoming leader of the council. Elizabeth Seawright was elected to Belfast City Council as an independent after the assassination of her husband George Seawright, a former DUP councillor who was expelled from the party for extreme remarks he made about 'incinerating' Catholics. Perhaps the most obvious and interesting example is provided by Rhonda Paisley, daughter of the party leader. As a Belfast City councillor during the late 1980s and early 1990s, she undoubtedly had the highest media profile of any woman within the DUP. This was only in part a consequence of her family ties and probably owed more to another genetic inheritance, namely her gift for staging publicity stunts, such as letting off a rape alarm in the council chamber when a Sinn Fein councillor was trying to speak. Rhonda Paisley personified the culture clash within the DUP between old and new, and this struggle, together with the adversarial nature of the debate in local government saw her leave active political life in 1992. Paisley was a young, well-educated ambitious woman, with impeccable contacts for political advancement. Though being for many years a practising Free Presbyterian,[27] her social attitudes may have seemed too modern, her lipstick too red and her skirts too short for some of those of a more traditional bent within the party. While nationalists may have perceived her as simply another anti-Catholic bigot and a chip off the old block, a radically different perspective between her and many of her colleagues became apparent when it came to women's issues. One example of this was a row in April 1989 over the siting of two statues in Amelia Street in Belfast city centre and Paisley's support of a motion in Belfast City Council to provide grant assistance of £1 5,000. The statues depicted two prostitutes in a commemoration of Belfast's local history, as in the past the street had been a thoroughfare for that particular trade in the city. While most of the DUP on Belfast City Council saw this proposal as an outrageous tribute to immoral practices, Paisley, as a feminist and practising artist herself, regarded it as an artistic expression of a contemporary social issue. Rev. Ivan Foster (who was not a member of the council) condemned the decision, claiming that God viewed prostitution as 'wickedness', while Paisley commented that her support for the work was 'a personal one'. Inevitably, the paradoxes inherent in simultaneously advocating dogmatic politics and personal liberalism could not be sustained. In February 1992, Rhonda Paisley announced that she did not intend to defend her seat on Belfast City Council at the district council elections the following year.
Aside from socio-cultural differences between the 'new women' in the party such as Rhonda Paisley and the 'Stepford wives' (the more traditional social profile of rural matronly housewives with good cooking skills but a basic education and limited independent careerism), the very nature of politics in Northern Ireland has produced a male-dominated environment. While politics is a profession where women are underrepresented generally, due to both anti-social working conditions and deliberate exclusion by the 'clubby' elite who often control candidate selection, this is a much more pronounced phenomenon in Northern Ireland than in either the Republic or Great Britain. The reasons for this are both historical and social. The main political organisations in contemporary Northern Ireland politics either evolved out of violence or were formed in reaction to that violence. As those engaged in the violence - either directly though republicanism and loyalism or peripherally in the peaceful protest of the civil rights demonstrations or the less peaceful counterdemonstrations - were largely male, it was they who dominated the political structures. In addition, political activism in Northern Ireland during the armed conflict between 1969 and 1994 carried a much greater personal risk for those involved than is normally the case in more stable societies and this did little to encourage women to enter the political arena. Because the political debate has taken place in an atmosphere of violence and has rarely deviated from the central issue of the region's constitutional future, such 'debate' has exuded machismo and testosterone, as anyone who has attended Belfast City Council during the period could attest to. While it would be unreasonable to assume that women are any less concerned about the constitutional issue, it would be fair to suggest that the democratic deficit which has existed since the introduction of direct rule in 1972 (with power over socio-economic issues resting not with local politicians but with unelected officials and various quangos) has acted as a disincentive to female involvement in the political life of the region.
In social terms Northern Ireland is a very patriarchal and conservative society where 'family values' is one concept which unites both Catholic and Protestant and the woman's role in society is seen in more traditional terms than in Great Britain. One of the few issues which unites 'the two communities' concerns legislation on moral issues such as abortion (which remains illegal in Northern Ireland despite being legal in the rest of the UK), divorce and sex education. There was, for instance, common opposition from the SDLP, UUP and DUP to the opening of the Brook Clinic in Belfast in September 1992.[30] Despite such 'official' opposition, the clinic had a considerable amount of cross-community support among women in the North and has developed a successful service in the region. 'On the opening day, the Reverend Ian Paisley arrived to preach his message of damnation, but he beat a hasty retreat after a number of women outside the entrance started dancing to the hymn "Rock of Ages" when it came blaring over his sound system.'[31] Given this propensity for social conservatism, there is nonetheless a noticeable underrepresentation of women in unionist politics as compared with their nationalist counterparts.[32] One historical reason for this was that in the struggle to resist Home Rule in Ulster at the beginning of the century, unionism was formed as a political movement dedicated to resisting this legislation through extraparliamentary means. The formation of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and signing of Ulster's 'Solemn League and Covenant' were not considered activities suitable for women. Many of those who signed the covenant did so in their own blood and pledged to fight to the death over the issue. As few people thought that women should give such a pledge, a separate register was opened, in which the female population could record their support for the cause. Other organisations within unionism which provide a link between the past and the present exhibit a similar patriarchal if not patronising culture. The Orange Order is an obvious example with its pseudo-military regalia and structure, where the vast majority of the membership is male. The widespread presence of Freemasonry (a less visible and less vulgar organisation than Orangeism but perhaps a more powerful one) within the Protestant middle and upper classes is another bastion of male exclusivity within the unionist community. Evangelical religion has also done little to encourage women to come forward into the political arena. While there are few overt examples where women candidates have been discriminated against because of their gender, the fact that one of the major unionist parties is led by the moderator of the Free Presbyterian Church has been reflected in the political culture. Ian Paisley commented during one of his early battles with a particularly troublesome female parishioner that; 'when you meet a devil wearing trousers it's bad, but a devil wearing a skirt is ten times worse'.[33] While Rhonda Paisley was able to enter the fast-track to advancement within the party, she was the exception rather than the rule. Within this culture, women are rarely seen as equals who deserve access to the same levers in society as their male counterparts, but as inherently different 'creatures' whose function in society should reflect that fact. They should be home-makers rather than house-builders, nurses rather than mechanics, whose God-given function is to look after their husbands and rear their children rather than build independent careers. Those women who subscribe to this agenda (and obviously many do not) are unlikely to build profiles within unionist politics. Clearly something is fundamentally wrong with a society where over 50 per cent of the population is composed of women, yet which has no female MPs or MEPs and in which only 11 per cent of local government councillors are female.[34] However, while women are underrepresented generally (and particularly so within unionist politics) at the top level, their influence permeates grass-roots politics and community work to a much greater degree,
In view of the present level of political debate within Northern Ireland, it is clearly time for both unionist and nationalist parties to develop inclusive mechanisms which provide an outlet for women to participate in the mainstream political process. The debate has already begun. At a conference in September 1995, May Blood of the Shankill Women's Forum indicated that the old attitudes would have to change. 'This isn't good enough. We invited seven councillors from the area to explain their views on women's rights and the lack of women in politics and only one has bothered to turn up.'[36] The UUP's Chris McGimpsey, the lone councillor who did turn up, recognised the difficulties which women faced in gaining a voice in the political system in general and within unionist politics in particular. Irish Times journalist Suzanne Breen reported McGimpsey's account of the problems encountered by women in the UUP.
Evidence of the dissatisfaction at the traditional parties' response to the lack of women in mainstream politics was apparent with the formation of the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition to contest the Forum elections held on 30 May 1996. This cross-party body was more a single-issue interest group than political party, taking advantage of the unique electoral arrangements of 30 May[38] to highlight the gender imbalance in Northern Ireland politics and do something to remedy the situation, while bringing a more pragmatic perspective to the hackneyed debate of the more traditional parties. In comparison to the sterile dialogue going on between unionism and nationalism, separate political structures such as the Women's Coalition may be an effective way, not just of augmenting female representation in the political process, but of redressing the male-dominated cultures prevalent within the existing political organisations in Northern Ireland. Social diversity within the DUP Evidence of the tensions within the DUP - between the young, urban, politically secular element, and the older, predominantly rural, overtly evangelical/Free Presbyterian contingent which had originally formed the backbone of the DUP (especially in its former manifestation as the Protestant Unionist Party) - is provided by a comparison of the alternative cultural identities expressed by Sammy Wilson and former DUP member Rev. Ivan Foster. It was suggested to Wilson that there were those within the DUP who would claim to be a Protestant first, and a unionist only for as long as this advanced Protestantism in Northern Ireland. When asked if he would accept the hypothetical situation where the monarch was removed as constitutional head of state in Britain and replaced by an elected president who was not a Protestant, Wilson replied that this would not be sufficient cause for him to withdraw his loyalty from the state.
Wilson's rhetoric contrasts sharply with that of the Rev. Ivan Foster, whose language abounds with religious metaphors and whose primary motivation is evidently the preservation of a fundamentalist-orientated Protestant culture within Northern Ireland. This was brought sharply into focus when he denounced proposed education reforms (what later became the Education Reform [Nl] Order 1990) and specifically the emphasis upon cultural heritage studies and education for mutual understanding on the grounds that these represented an attempt by the British government to indoctrinate Protestant children. In describing Dr Brian Mawhinney (the then Education Minister for Northern Ireland) as 'a latter-day Pharaoh' who sought, with the 'stealth of the assassin' and under the 'guise of the educator', to compromise the teaching of true Protestant Christianity, Foster highlighted the strong isolationist element within the DUP.
When it was suggested to Foster that these reforms sought to encourage understanding and tolerance of opposing cultures and were aimed at dispelling myths and folklore which fed the sectarian strife in Northern Ireland, his response exhibited the inherent insecurity and fear within some sections of the unionist community. Here we have a classic exposition of a defensive, reactionary ideology, battling against what it perceived to be an aggressive external community. In this analysis, the ultimate aggressor was considered to be the Catholic Church, with the Vatican controlling the European political actors, including of course the policies of the British government. The Machiavellian world which people such as Foster inhabited determined that Northern Ireland was at the top of the Vatican's agenda, and thus the subtext of political reforms introduced by the British government was to eradicate Bible-Christianity in Northern Ireland and thereby reduce the religious and political liberty of the Protestant community. The extent to which Foster's political opinion was informed by his theological critique was demonstrated by his reply to the suggestion that debunking traditional attitudes to opposing religious faiths would lead to greater social harmony. His political opposition to this education reform was the direct result of his religious belief that Catholicism was heresy and was therefore unlikely to be truthful in its interpretation of itself:
Foster's attitude to political progress again demonstrates the tendency for rigidity to flow from theological certainty, making this strand of the ideology inflexible, unwieldy and incapable of changing its strategy to cope with altered political circumstances. Foster disagreed with the contention that peace could only be achieved when all sections of the community agreed to respect the beliefs and aspirations of their political opponents. His reply to the suggestion that the classroom was a suitable place to begin this process of rapprochement between the two sectarian blocs illustrates once again the negative dynamic produced by dogmatic theology. The application of these strict criteria to the political arena tends to vitiate the possibility for moderation because compromise is seen not as a diplomatic solution to an intractable problem, but rather as a way of ensuring that everyone ends up in the wrong.
Any comparative analysis of Foster's rhetoric and that of his former colleague Sammy Wilson would suggest that even within the DUP respective legitimations of the Union differed greatly. It should be noted here that Foster's subsequent resignation from the DUP in protest against the slow pace of the anti-Agreement campaign provides further evidence to support the contention that the DUP's increasing urbanisation and secularisation was being reflected in its policy-making. A testimony to this change was provided by the pact with the UUP, a strategic compromise which created internal tensions between the rural Free Presbyterian grass-roots element and the urban working/middle-class contingent who regarded this arrangement as a necessary evil for political progress. Another complicating factor within the DUP was provided by class divisions between the party's urban working-class heartlands and the increasingly middle-class composition of the leadership and, more importantly, the conflicting political agendas of the rural middle-class Free Presbyterian voters and their urban working-class secular brethren. Clifford Smyth argues that the extent to which the DUP became a working-class party is a matter for conjecture, commenting that it is impossible to prove Paul Arthur's hypothesis that 'Political Paisleyism was proletarian, but religious Paisleyism attracted lower middle-class congregations which crammed the ample car park with their Cortinas.'[43] While recognising that a distinction does exist between Paisley's church supporters and his political supporters, Smyth contends that '. . . it is a topic which defies statistical quantification and remains therefore a matter of observation'.[44] While the influx of young blood was initially encouraged by Paisley as he needed to broaden the base of the party, the long-term benefits for his own position were questionable. The professionalisation of the DUP augmented the power base of Robinson and diminished Paisley's authority within the party, hitherto insulated through his leadership of the Free Presbyterian Church. The dangers of creating the overmighty subject were to become apparent after the signing of the Anglo-lrish Agreement, as Paisley found it increasingly difficult to control the party and recognised with mounting frustration that it was often Peter Robinson who was setting the political agenda of the DUP. The conflict within the DUP between secular and fundamentalist factions hampered the party's development as disagreements began to erupt over tactics such as civil disobedience. This was to become particularly obvious after the Hillsborough Agreement, when the inconsistency of party policy suggested that it emanated from more than one source. Although there is a deep-rooted independent sentiment in radical unionism which has grown out of the conditions of their entry into Ulster in the seventeenth century, it does not follow that Moloney and Pollak's summary of this strand of the ideology accurately reflects the reality of unionist political motivation.
While this could certainly be said to be representative of the DUP in their former manifestation as the Protestant Unionist Party, the changes in personnel and the increasing urbanisation of the party base have complicated the picture. As Sammy Wilson's testimony concerning the basis of the Union would suggest, a degree of secularisation has taken place which has been reflected in DUP policy-making. Ironically perhaps, Ian Paisley Jnr displays attitudes more similar to the secular modernisers than to those traditionally associated with his father. Paisley Jnr, a well-educated, Belfast-born young professional, was asked about the importance of religion in the equation of allegiance. While stressing the importance of the Protestant religion in his personal life and moral code, he differentiates between private ethics and public political manifesto.
When asked if the hypothetical scenario whereby the British monarchy were abolished and replaced with an elected president who was not a Protestant would present grounds for leaving the Union, Paisley Jnr gave the same response as his party colleague Sammy Wilson.
When Peter Robinson was asked to outline the central principles of his cultural identity, his response suggested that there is more to the DUP than simply being the 'political wing of evangelical Protestantism'. Asked the same question as Paisley Jnr about the importance of Protestantism and the monarchy to his allegiance to the Union, Robinson commented that such a scenario 'may not in itself, automatically cause one to recoil from being within the United Kingdom, but it removes one of the pegs that holds down our unionism'.[48] Those politicians who style themselves as representing the views of former loyalist paramilitaries and those who have traditionally been seen as a more insular, intolerant and religiously bigoted element within the unionist community appear to be more flexible on questions such as the monarchy and religion than Peter Robinson. When Gary McMichael, the leader of the Ulster Democratic Party, was asked to define the central principles of unionism from a personal perspective, he replied that 'My unionism is not based upon a protection of my Protestant identity, it's based upon the practical needs of the people of Northern Ireland - all the people.'[49] When asked specifically about his attitude to the replacement of the British monarch with an elected president who was not a Protestant, he exhibited a pragmatic, secular attitude: 'I don't believe that we maintain the Union for as long as the Union retains its Protestant character. That doesn't come into my thinking because I want to see religion taken out of politics.'[50] David Ervine took a similarly prosaic approach: 'I'd be interested in his politics rather than his religion. I'm not interested.'[51] Attitudes to the monarchy as an essential ingredient of their political allegiance are by no means fixed within the unionist population. Apart from the above testimony, there are elements of the Protestant working class which take an ambivalent view. It should be said that in general terms a devotion to the monarchy (as opposed to the extended royal family) is still strong within urban Protestant communities. However, although the Progressive Unionist Party has a picture of the Queen hanging on the wall of their party headquarters on the Shankill Road in Belfast (it is not a recent likeness), Billy Hutchinson was able to say that '[personally], I would have to say that I'm not even sure that I'm a monarchist. I'm not loyal to any monarchy. What I'm loyal to is my class and also my political beliefs.'[52] David Ervine espouses a similar view, emphasising that his unionism was based more in present-day membership of a liberal democracy (albeit an imperfect one) than in any romantic attachment to a historical figurehead. 'My definition of unionism is very simple . . . and it is merely that I am a citizen of the United Kingdom - no more no less.'[53] He went on:
It is clear that to simply define unionism as being a dichotomy between moderates and extremists, as Garret FitzGerald has done, is little more than a caricature of the ideology which does not address the nuances within it. Many of those whose extremism has in the past resulted in their engaging in political violence are in some instances more open-minded than those within the DUP who have pursued more moderate forms of political behaviour. Consider the following responses of David Ervine of the PUP and Peter Robinson of the DUP when questioned about their cultural identity. Though anxious to differentiate between his geographical situation and cultural iconography, Ervine stated that, as far as he was concerned,
The deputy leader of the DUP takes a much more defensive and absolutist position than Ervine, indicating that his cultural identity is a product of what he considers to be an antagonistic counterculture and malign irredentist nationalist project on the other part of the island.
The complexity of this issue was illustrated when Ian Paisley was asked a similar question. The DUP leader, whom we might expect would be the embodiment of old-style Ulster loyalist sentiment, exhibited a different perspective than that expressed by his deputy leader. 'I was born in the island of Ireland. I have Irish traits in me - we don't all have the traits of what came from Scotland, there is the Celtic factor . . . and I am an Irishman because you cannot be an Ulsterman without being an Irishman.'[57] One of the most eloquent explanations of the apparent conundrum for working-class Protestants in defining their identity within the context of being British while living within an Irish cultural inheritance was provided by Patricia Anderson of Ballybeen Community Theatre. Commenting on her participation in a seminar on the Protestant cultural identity in Northern Ireland organised by the Ulster People's College in Belfast, Ms Anderson illustrates the extent to which some people in the unionist community have come to terms with their dual identity.
The pundit's view: a critical assessment of the academic literature This should be taken to mean a definition of unionist political behaviour which is primarily motivated from a sense of belonging to an ethnic and/or national community within Northern Ireland, with a consequent right to exercise self-determination autonomously. Such Unionists are liable to emphasise local/regional characteristics such as religion, culture and historical experience over merely a political allegiance specifically to the Union with Great Britain or, more broadly, the liberal-democratic ideals and principles which that regime is held to represent. Casting a sociologist's eye on the subject, Steve Bruce attempts to explain the differences between nationalist and unionist political behaviour by contending that Catholic nationalists in Northern Ireland form part of a nation, while Protestant unionists are essentially an ethnic group. This assumption provides the basis for an identity crisis thesis, with Bruce arguing that, devoid of the cultural richness and diversity available to . Catholic nationalists, Protestant unionists are forced to articulate their identity in terms of religious exclusivity. In this analysis, nationalist security about their cultural identity has allowed them to secularise their ideology and decouple their Catholicism from their nationalism (for example, marxist republicanism), whereas unionists, by virtue of being a smaller and more vulnerable ethnic group, have not been able to do likewise. According to Bruce, no secure cultural identity is available to unionists outside the confines of evangelical Protestantism. As unionism in this analysis is seen as being primarily concerned with avoiding absorption into the Irish Republic and thereby becoming an even more vulnerable minority, there is a gravitational pull within the unionist community during periods of constitutional uncertainty towards the most vivid expressions of Protestantism. For Bruce, therefore, it is this inability to perceive a common identity outside the boundaries of their religious observance which explains the importance of Protestantism in unionist politics.
There are a number of reasons why Bruce's arguments are ultimately unsatisfactory, not least of which is that he appears to suggest that the terms evangelical Protestant and unionist are synonymous. His assertion that this strand of Protestantism is the most natural constituency from which the unionist ideology is composed is highly contentious. One could ask why it is then, if this is the case, that the Ulster Unionist Party enjoys a significantly greater amount of electoral support from the Protestant community (even during times of crisis such as the post-AIA period) than does the DUP. Secondly, Bruce's equation of evangelical Protestantism with Ian Paisley and the DUP does not take account of that party's increasing secularisation. Nor does it explain why Ian Paisley, the personification of the politician motivated by religious conviction, has steadily lost control of his party, to the point that in the mid-1990s he is merely the dominant presence within it, rather than having the omnipotent influence he enjoyed in the late 1970s. If Bruce's thesis was correct, we should have seen a rapid and dramatic increase in support for the DUP after the signing of the AIA, as frightened unionists rushed to hide behind the skirts of this shared religious identity The fact that this did not occur brings us to the most important problem with Bruce's argument, namely his analysis of Protestantism and unionism. For his thesis to work, Bruce is forced to adopt reductionist criteria in his definition of these terms. Although he astutely points out that the democratic nature of Protestantism fosters political disputes, due to the absence of an ultimate moral authority other than the Bible, individually interpreted,[60] he does not explain how the heterogeneous nature of Protestantism has produced conflicting cultural identities. Bruce has suggested that the conflict within unionism was due to a two-pronged suspicion of the Protestant middle class. On the one hand, the working-class element was wary of the elite nature of the Ulster Unionist Party leadership, and argued on populist grounds for higher wages, better housing and more welfare provisions. The second group were suspicious of the UUP's lack of evangelical piety, and they wanted to bring a greater theological aspect to unionism. However, Bruce's depiction of Protestants as an ethnic group, sharing common historical experiences, traditions, values, beliefs and symbols, creates a one-dimensional view of unionism which does not correspond with reality. It is clear that unionists do not all share a common cultural language, but are split in religious terms along denominational lines, are divided over their support for Protestant institutions such as the Orange Order and the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), and, more fundamentally, are divided over whether Northern Ireland is a nation with the right to self-determination or merely another region of the United Kingdom. Clearly there are problems with this. Bruce proposes that the central organising principle of unionism is provided by the unifying force of evangelical Protestantism. certainly this is a factor but only one of many and hardly the dominant one. Bruce pursues his own argument to self-destruction and reduces what is a complicated and multifaceted community to a caricature of itself. Fellow sociologist Colin Coulter does not overstate the case against Bruce:
John McGarry and Brendan O'Leary are less charitable. Giving him the rather unflattering 'handle' of 'sociologist of religion', these carnivores of the political science jungle charge Bruce with an 'unprofessional use of data' over his argument that Protestant resistance to a united Ireland was motivated primarily by religious reasons.[62] His psephological endeavours are equally patronised. Bruce is implicitly accused of academic bias over his use of untypical election results (a concentration on personality-driven European rather than Westminster elections) to explain DUP popularity. To sustain his thesis Professor Bruce seems intent on exaggerating the DUP's support . . . The lesson is simple: sociologists of religion, over-ambitious to apply their insights, should be more cautious with electoral data.'[63]To be fair to Bruce, his more recent work has tip-toed away from his bald assertion in 1986 that 'the Northern Ireland conflict is a religious conflict' and that it was people's adherence to 'competing religious traditions which has given the conflict its enduring and intractable quality.'[64] In his 1994 book on Protestant paramilitary attitudes, Bruce returns to the above statement to add the caveat that the connection between politics and religion in Northern Ireland is 'complex'.[65] However, impaled on a 'cleft-stick' of his own whittling, he continues to overemphasise the importance of what is in reality a minor branch in the unionist political tree.
My evidence would suggest that the obverse is the case. it is clear from the testimony of former loyalist paramilitaries and members of the DUP that, although religion plays an important part in their personal lives and cultural iconography, it forms a more complex component of their political calculations. Other concepts in Bruce's recent work are even more problematic. His assertion that 'for many Protestants in Northern Ireland, Ulster loyalism has displaced the Ulster Britishness which was common prior to the present conflict'[67] does not stand up to empirical examination. In fact the reverse is true. The Social Attitudes Survey (1990) compared responses to the question of whether people in Northern Ireland felt themselves to be British, Irish, Ulster or Northern Irish over a time-span of twenty-one years. In 1968, 39 per cent of Protestants regarded themselves as British while 32 per cent opted for an Ulster identity. In 1978 the figures were 67 per cent and 20 per cent respectively In 1986, the numbers describing themselves as British stood at 65 per cent (amazingly, in spite of the introduction of the AIA the previous year) while only a mere 14 per cent described themselves as having an Ulster identity and 11 per cent opted for the more neutral 'Northern Ireland'. In 1989, those Protestants describing themselves as British had risen to 68 per cent with only 10 per cent defining themselves as 'Ulster' and 16 per cent as 'Northern Irish', a total of 26 per cent for a regional identity.[68] An accompanying note for Bruce's conclusion that an Ulster identity is gaining ground at the expense of the British variant within Protestant politics displays an alarming methodology:
Apart from the obvious point that conclusions are arrived at by virtue of personal whim rather than empirical evidence, Bruce seems to confuse the cultural concept of an Ulster versus British identity with the political will to consider independence in a doomsday situation. As this chapter has illustrated, these concepts overlap, with members of the DUP and UUP who espouse a commitment to essentially British identities also being willing to consider independence as a last resort. The bar-room bravado in which such sentiments are often uttered may dissipate when the practical realities become obvious, but if it came to it, this alternative would be undertaken by most unionists with a heavy heart. Few would look positively upon it as the achievement of a cultural objective. Unionism as Secular Rationalism This should be understood as defining those unionists whose politics are motivated by easily quantifiable criteria, for example an identification with the institutions and declared philosophy of British parliamentary democracy, an assessment of the most beneficial economic model for Northern Ireland, or a cultural empathy with British sport, arts and media. Such unionists rarely carry around the same amount of weighty historical, religious or cultural baggage as their ethno-nationalist colleagues and generally place their regional identity within a Greater British context. An alternative explanation to Bruce's religious reductionism has been provided by Sarah Nelson with the suggestion that the dynamic within unionism in the 1970s was class based.. 'Class tensions and resentment within the Protestant community began to be openly expressed, and the Civil Rights slogan "Fifty years of unionist misrule" was increasingly heard from the lips of working class loyalists.[70] Clifford Smyth has pointed out that opposition to the Ulster Unionist Party could not be explained in class terms alone, as illustrated by Ernest Baird and Reg Empey, former members of the pseudo-paramilitary Vanguard Party,[71] both of whom were vigorous in their criticisms of mainstream unionism but were also prosperous businessmen.[72] In more recent times David Trimble, now the leader of the UUP and formerly a founder member of the Ulster Clubs[73] and the Vanguard Party, embodies the capacity of radical unionism to cross class barriers. When questioned, for example, about what he regarded as being the central principles of unionism, his response intimated that the Union was a strategic political allegiance (by definition conditional) of Ulster Protestants to a community with which they shared a psychological and cultural affinity.
When pressed as to whether he saw the Union in terms of a political rather than a cultural allegiance, Trimble replied that, while there was a strong cultural cohesion which sustained the Union, this could not be relied upon indefinitely and thus other political structures may have to be contemplated outside the present constitutional arrangements to preserve the politico-cultural hegemony of the unionist community.
Again we can observe in Trimble's definition of unionism a defensive mentality which emanates from the realisation that the state to which he gives his allegiance, the UK, is at best ambivalent about its desire to maintain the relationship. The fear that the state to which they express a loyalty (with varying degrees of conditionality) does not accept them as wholly legitimate members of that state has encouraged a separatist culture within the unionist community. Perhaps the ultimate example of secular rationalism is to be found within the cross-community Alliance Party, where the concerns of an ethno-Ulster nationalist culture are clearly of little relevance. Alliance is at the outer limits of the ideology and the opposite pole to those who inhabit the most extreme recesses of unionist ethno-nationalism. Recognising this fact I asked the party leader, Dr John Alderdice, if he would define Alliance as being a unionist party in the traditional sense.
When Alderdice was asked if he would distinguish Alliance from the other unionist parties on the basis that, while they would have, to varying degrees, a cultural identification with the Union, his party made a purely pragmatic assessment which was devoid of sentiment, he ironically used a historical analogy to clarify his position.
Notwithstanding the assertions of Alderdice that his party was temperamentally neutral on the Union, many within the nationalist community in Northern Ireland would view them as 'unionists with breeding', those people whom the wife of the former Cabinet minister Alan Clark referred to, in a separate context entirely, as coming 'from above stairs'. While this may be an unfair assessment and an inaccurate caricature of the party, it would not be the first time that communal stereotyping fashioned political attitudes within Northern Ireland. In a final attempt to get to the bottom of the precise position of Alliance within the secular-rationalist strand of unionism, Alderdice was asked if his party had a particular cultural outlook on the Union as opposed to the political definition he had provided. Aside from adhering for the moment to the political institutions of the British state, did Alliance have any cultural position on the Union which would exhibit a bond not reflected in their attitudes towards the Southern Irish state?
This response is important. Here we have the distinction between those on the periphery of the ideology and those at the centre. While members of the Alliance Party may define their loyalty as the exercise of real politik, a formal addendum to the political reality they happen to find themselves in, unionists who are wholly a part of the ideology see this as central. Which state they belong to is the starting point from which all else is to be understood and synthesised rather than a footnote. Unlike Alderdice, their loyalty is non-transferable, and the feeling that they are going to be delivered from one state to another state has, in extreme cases, led to violent confrontations with the state to which they claim to be loyal. Contractarianism and Statehood Contractarianism defines unionism as an ethnic group whose relationship with the rest of the United Kingdom is a quirk of historical development and has become a cold legalistic agreement where loyalty to the state is conditional upon adequate behaviour by the executive. Statehood is a definition of unionism which rejects the idea that its adherents are motivated by narrow criteria of nationhood such as identity, religion, colour, race and cultural symbolism; rather they are organised around a commitment to the preservation and enhancement of liberal democratic structures and values, which only states can provide and nations destroy. David Miller's account of the dynamics of unionism is rooted in a historical perspective and remains one of the most provocative (if rather outdated) works on the ideology to date.[79] The propensity within radical Protestant politics to illustrate the conditional nature of their loyalty is central to Miller's thesis and requires detailed examination as this provides further evidence of the regressive nature of the unionist ideology. Miller prefaces Queen's Rebels by quoting Robert Bradford as presumably the personification of conditional loyalty: 'The time might come when Ulstermen would have to become Queen's rebels in order to remain citizens of any kind.'[80] While being a convenient means of defying state authority yet remaining at least nominally loyal to that state, the phenomenon of conditional loyalty has concrete historical foundations. These stretch back to the sixteenth-century tradition of public banding, i.e. entering into 'bands' for mutual protection, which was originally a response by the gentry to a prolonged spell of weak central government. The Scottish Kirk entered into such an arrangement in an attempt to combat the anti-Presbyterian tendencies of the monarchy. Bands such as the National Covenant of 1638, organised in opposition to the new prayer book, came to be regarded as tripartite contracts between God, his people, and the King.[81] It has some relationship to the democratising nature of the Reformation, the emphasis on individualism which this engendered, and the liberalism of the time which stressed man's inherent rationality (as this would be required to determine when a covenant had been breached). Miller suggests that loyalty is reduced to a matter of private ethics, with political obligation being no more than a business arrangement. in the event, therefore, of the ruler breaking his side of the bargain, the ruled are absolved of their duty to comply with his wishes.[82] One of the earliest examples of conditional loyalty was provided in 1689, when the fortified town of Derry issued a resolution declaring that the Catholic troops of James II would not be allowed into the city. As the following statement indicates, despite blatantly defying the king's authority, they still viewed him as their legitimate sovereign.
This emphasis on religious distinction is of central importance to the conditional nature of radical Protestant politics, and provides evidence to support the argument that 'loyalty' to Britain is given for so long as it sanctions the existence of the 'Protestant nation'. The cultural heritage of many radical unionists is not therefore seen in terms of their position as a colony of the British Empire, or as a member of the Commonwealth. Theirs is a separatist culture, reminiscent (in their eyes) of the value system of nineteenth-century Britain, but one which in reality bears little relation to the secular Britain of today. In Miller's analysis, one of the key elements of this culture is the Protestant religion, as it serves to identify those who subscribe to the group and provides a useful regenerative function. For those who understand their culture in terms of their religion, any hint of a threat to the dominance of the latter amounts to an attack upon their cultural identity. An interesting corollary may be observed between this view and the emphasis placed by Patrick Pearse upon the Gaelic revival. Pearse argued that the cultural struggle was pre-eminent in the fight for national independence, as without the Irish language and Irish customs it would be impossible to identify a separate nation and this would reduce the need for separate political structures. In the same way, many unionists have argued that a dilution of Protestantism will reduce Northern Ireland's claim to be culturally distinct from the rest of Ireland. This is why many unionists emphasise their religion when discussing their cultural identity, and point out that loyalty is dependent upon the preservation of Protestantism in Britain, as only then can it be guaranteed in Northern Ireland. This sentiment was expressed in 1976 by George Graham, a former DUP Assemblyman, when he declared that:
From Miller's perspective, therefore, the conditional aspect of Ulster loyalism is the greatest paradox within the ideology. He argues that their interpretation of Britishness was not a patriotic nationalistic sentiment, nor a sense of community with the people of Great Britain. In essence it was a loyalty to the monarch and constitution for as long as they guarded the rights of the loyal Ulster people. Paul Arthur and Keith Jeffery largely concur with Miller's analysis, commenting that the powerful loyalist tradition of 'public banding' is based in a lack of confidence in Britain's determination to sustain the Union.[85] It was precisely this belief, for instance, which led William Craig, a former unionist Cabinet minister, to comment after the demise of Stormont in 1972 that the Ulster loyalists were an 'old and historic community' for whom the Union with Britain had never been an end in itself but '. . . was always a means of preserving Ulster's British tradition and the identity of her Loyalist people'.[86] Loyalty therefore to this tradition in unionism meant a primary identification with the people and territory of Northern Ireland, rather than with those within the United Kingdom as a whole. As a consequence of this isolationist perspective, some radical unionists tend to embrace the cultural identity of the Ulster Protestant in its rawest and most mythical form, namely through the Orange Order and fundamentalist religion. The folk heros within this band of radical unionism are the defenders of the faith and the preservers of the culture such as William of Orange, Rev. George Walker, and Rev. Henry Cooke. The isolationism within this strand of unionism has produced a curious mixture of insecurity and complacency, which has generally resulted in political stagnation. The eternal fear of being abandoned by Britain and delivered into the joint clutches of Dublin and Rome has been accompanied within radical unionism by the belief that the nature of the forces ranged against them have remained constant. The certainties provided by doctrinaire theology were translated into the political sphere, the result being that traditional assumptions were not questioned, changing political circumstances were not recognised, and the unionist ideology did not learn to adapt or innovate to meet the volatile political environment of twentieth-century Britain. John Taylor, deputy leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, commented upon this weakness within unionism, arguing that the assumption of his more radical colleagues within the DUP that the Union was a one-way relationship had been detrimental to unionist political fortunes as their behaviour had alienated the other partner in the relationship. When Taylor was asked if he shared Miller's view that a social contract existed between Britain and Northern Ireland, he disagreed, preferring the more organic analogy of both communities being contained within the same family than the cold legalistic one of an arrangement between separate parties.
From this perspective, the tendency within radical sections of the unionist community has been not only to misread the basis of the relationship between Britain and 'Ulster', but also to fail to understand the antipathy felt towards them in the rest of the UK and to look to the past when dealing with crises of the present. The political tactics of Ian Paisley, for example, have often mirrored those of Sir Edward Carson (though with less success) in the latter's opposition to Home Rule, with the repetition of the 'Carson Trail Rallies', the establishment of the 'Third Force' mimicking the formation of the 'Ulster Volunteer Force' and, after the AIA, a repeat of Carson's 'Solemn League and Covenant' of 1912. In essence, therefore, the unionist identity crisis is derived from their unilateral declaration of 'love' for the 'mother country' which has never been fully reciprocated. Commenting retrospectively on the period, Garret FitzGerald argued that this 'sense of being besieged', the fear of their external environment, led to a culture of political irrationality within the unionist community, which was emphasised in the aftermath of the Anglo-Irish Agreement.
It was realisation of the fact that they were 'unwanted children' which diminished the trust of the unionist community in the country to which they gave their allegiance. David Trimble personifies this belief that the Britishness of Northern Ireland is not an objective reality but is subject to the whim of fickle politicians in Westminster.
This statement ties in with Miller's perception that the unionism of Protestant Ulster was never a feeling of cultural 'oneness' with the Greater British community, but a tactical political alliance. This was not however an allegiance to the British state, to its parliament, or even to its monarch, but to those constitutional arrangements which were vital to the maintenance of the Ulster Protestant way of life. The basis of the Union, therefore, was a contract between two separate parties, and not an internal agreement between members of the one family. In essence, this definition of the Union was supported by David Trimble, who emphasised not that unionists were simply a section of the United Kingdom separated by geography, but rather that they were a specific cultural community where loyalty to Britain was granted on a de facto basis, rather than Northern Ireland belonging in a de jure manner to the UK.
As Miller has pointed out, the problem with perceiving loyalty to the state in contractarian terms lay in its subjective interpretations. The forces of modernisation had resulted in political change to the extent that sovereignty was no longer vested in a single person, the monarch, but was now replaced by a parliament responsible to the people. Ironically therefore the liberal-democratic institutions which Ulster Protestants placed so much emphasis upon augmented their feelings of insecurity and contributed to their isolationist political culture.
The endemic (and not unjustified) paranoia of the unionist community which emanates from constitutional uncertainty has highlighted the conditional nature of their loyalty, as their obedience is based upon a two-way relationship, a social contract or covenant with the government. The following statement by Ian Paisley in the Protestant Telegraph could be cited in support of the contractarian thesis: 'Government is not a one-way street. It is a civil contract in which each party has a duty.'[92] The belief that the Union is founded upon a contract (at least from the unionist perspective) rather than mutual trust and cultural commonality has fed the virus of political insecurity within unionism. It has produced frequent declarations that the actions of the 'mother country' have jeopardised the position of the Ulster Protestant community and so broken the contract between the rulers and the ruled, thus legitimating unconstitutional behaviour. However, though intellectually more diverting than Bruce's one-dimensional characterisation of Ulster unionism, this theoretical edifice is built upon foundations which are just as shaky. The main problem with Miller's contractarian theory is its negation of unionism's cultural identification with Britain, even if this is largely a one-way unreciprocated relationship to a mythical British community which owes more to Kipling's Britishness than to the multicultural Britain of the late twentieth century. It is rather too mechanistic to simply interpret the dynamics of unionism as the autonomous exercise of political self-interest grounded in pseudo-legality. Ian Paisley Jnr's response when asked about the central principles of unionism provides a classic example and demonstrates the complex pattern within the unionist fabric of allegiance.
It is undoubtedly the case that many unionists, especially (to use Todd's classification) in the Ulster British tradition, do regard themselves as having a close social and cultural affinity with the rest of Britain. Many unionists would regard themselves as being British in the manner of the Scottish or Welsh, with a subordinate regional loyalty to Northern Ireland, and they feel hurt that this is not accepted by the ruling elite at Westminster. Sammy Wilson, for instance, sees no reason why constitutional arrangements cannot be established in Northern Ireland similar to those in other regions of the UK, taking account of the regional differences between Northern Ireland and the 'mainland' while allowing for the devolution of specific responsibilities.
However, it is clear that the status of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom is not the same as that of Scotland or Wales. This has nothing to do with the legal niceties of the situation or any ceding of sovereignty occasioned by Britain's signing of the Anglo-lrish Agreement, but is rooted in cultural and historical factors. Miller has pointed out that Northern Ireland's position within the UK is not comparable with that of Scotland or Wales, due to its isolationist political culture. The Ulster Protestant community 'has evoked a kind of group loyalty incompatible with acceptance of the full implications of British nationality'.[95] Miller determined that it was the forces of modernisation and economic progress which were the root cause of the differences between Northern Ireland's relationship with England, and that of Scotland and Wales. Despite its many advantages as a political theory of unionism, Miller's thesis presents hypotheses which do not always correlate with the reality of unionist Motivations. In his examination of the Home Rule period, for example, he States that unionists did not feel a cultural affinity with the rest of the UK.
In his contention that unionists lacked 'a genuine feeling of co-nationality with the British people', Miller seems to be confusing objective fact with the perceived reality of the situation from the unionist point of view. He may be correct in his assertion that a common culture did not exist between the unionists and the English; however this was not reflected in contemporary unionist feelings (however irrationally such feelings were arrived at). The fact was that unionists did feel as much a part of the empire (and thus by extension part of a mythical British nation) as did the English during the Home Rule period and they still do to a large degree. It is unlikely for instance that they would have volunteered for slaughter at the Somme had they not felt themselves to be an intrinsic part of the empire, or not felt a strong cultural affinity with the 'mother country'. The unionist perception of the First World War was that it was a fight to preserve civilisation and the British Empire, their empire. This does not presuppose, of course, that their perception was an accurate one, or that they were accepted as being an integral part of the empire by its other constituent parts or within the 'mother country' itself. Tom Hennessey, writing about Ulster unioniist identity at the end of the nineteenth century, substantiates this point.
Coulter casts a healthily sceptical eye over Miller's thesis and finds it wanting in several respects. He challenges Miller's claim that the contractarian element within unionist political thought is anachronistic in the modern liberal-democratic polity. Western society has not, in Coulter's analysis,
Miller is seen as putting the theoretical cart before the horse. The oddity about the unionist-British relationship is not that Ulster unionists have erected conditions to their loyalty which find expression in periodic demonstrations of defiance against state authority. The anomaly is instead presented to be the conditional loyalty of successive British governments to the concept of the Union and to the unionist community in Northern Ireland. The kernel of Coulter's argument is that it was Britain's historic inability to provide an unequivocal definition of Northern Ireland's constitutional status which fashioned the supposed deviance of unionist political behaviour.
For Coulter, therefore, the contractarian element in modern unionism is a rational and salient political tactic, a behavioural trait fashioned out of an antagonistic political environment, whereas for Miller it is a structural residue of unionism's historical evolution and 'Ulster's' unique economic development, which has served ever since to poison their relationship with the 'mother country'. A full-scale assault on Miller's assumptions was launched by Arthur Aughey, who declared that his interpretation
Aughey's critique of Miller asserts that the crisis within unionism does not revolve around the anomaly of conflicting identities, but is rather a consequence of the British government's insistence on denying them the democratic rights of statehood and the basic right to participate in the political process. What Miller sees as an identity crisis fashioned out of cultural confusion, Aughey represents as a product of stunted political development born out of the Government of Ireland Act and the establishment of a regional administration in Northern Ireland. Aughey takes issue with Miller's articulation of conditional loyalty, arguing that it is the definition of a political absolute which does not exist.
Of course the point Aughey is making here, namely that nobody's loyalty to the state is unconditional, is a valid one,[102] and he cites the example of militant republicanism as evidence of this fact. The IRA in this analysis are manifestly not loyal to the existing Irish nation, but to an idealised version of it which does not yet exist. However, Aughey's use of this example to support his argument illustrates a misunderstanding of Irish republicanism, as unlike the unionists, they do not accept the Government of Ireland Act, republicans do not accept the partition of Ireland and they do not accept what is legally termed the Republic of Ireland to be the 'Irish nation'. This belief that the state is not a complete manifestation of the Irish nation is recognised by the constitution and thus, in theory at least, by the state itself. It is not a case therefore, as Aughey suggests, of militant republicans giving conditional loyalty to the government of the twenty-six counties; they do not give any loyalty to it at all, although they do accept it as a de facto if not de jure reality. It could perhaps be said in Aughey's defence that regardless of a nation-state's cultural homogeneity, there comes a point when citizens will decide either individually or collectively to withdraw their loyalty to the government or sovereign.
Thomas Hobbes did not design this covenant with the unionists in mind, but commented that everyone had the right to withdraw their loyalty to the state in the last resort (in this case during a period of life-threatening political instability). Aughey is therefore correct in his assertion that the observation of social contracts and covenants between the rulers and the ruled was not the unique preoccupation of the unionist community. The riots which occurred in Britain's inner cities in the early 1980s would testify to the fact that unionists were not alone in their propensity to exhibit conditional loyalty to the state should sufficient alienation occur between the government and the governed. However, despite Aughey's objections to Miller's thesis and his declaration that unionism 'is no more conditional in its loyalty than any other rational political doctrine',[104] it could justifiably be claimed that the ambiguity of unionist loyalty to the state is pronounced to an unusual degree. Aughey's view that the loyalty of everyone is conditional is not shared by Enoch Powell for example, who points out the anomaly of seeking to belong to a particular state while refusing to obey the laws of that state. When asked to comment upon the legitimacy of the unionist campaign of civil disobedience against the AIA, Powell declared that a prerequisite of citizenship of a particular state was the acceptance of and obedience to the legitimately made laws of that state, regardless of how unpalatable these laws were considered to be. Powell argued that whilst a case could be made for unlawful protest action against legislation which had been influenced by the Dublin government through the AIA,
Powell's contention that the individual owed a loyalty to the legislative institutions of the state to which they gave allegiance stands at variance, however, with more radical sentiments within the Ulster Unionist Party. David Trimble, for instance, rejects the dictum of parliamentary sovereignty, arguing that such fundamental concepts could not be institutionalised in such a manner.
When it was put to him that the loyalty of some unionists to Britain was dependent upon the monarch remaining Protestant, Trimble went on to assert that conditional loyalty was not an anachronism, but evidence of a liberal-democratic polity:
Aughey's dismissal of Miller's conditional loyalty thesis as the product of a false premise, a concern with the nation rather than the state, was accompanied by an attempt to provide unionism with a new coherence. The starting point for his more positive critique came with the suggestion that the central dynamics of the ideology have been misinterpreted by academics who mistakenly understand unionism in terms of nationalist criteria. Aughey rejects Terence Brown's assertion that unionism suffers from an impoverished identity, lacking the 'complex, rich, emotional identity' of nationalism.[108] His point is that to measure unionism against nationalism will inevitably result in misunderstanding as the two ideologies are fundamentally different in nature: '. . . the point is that unionism does not claim to be an entire philosophy of life but a rational political idea. To criticise it in such terms is to do so according to the assumptions of nationalism.[109] What Aughey does not mention is that unionist demands for the preservation of the Union have been substantially based (in recent years at least) on the argument that they are a culturally distinct community from the rest of Ireland. As Garret FitzGerald remarked, '. . . they try to have it both ways, both in and out of the UK'.[110] Unionists do not simply declare that they have a political allegiance to Britain, but maintain that this is based on the desire to preserve the distinctive cultural and religious heritage of unionism. 'The average Loyalist today would state without hesitation that his first loyalty was to Ulster rather than to the United Kingdom parliament.'[111] In a similar vein, Sarah Nelson quotes a former unionist councillor as saying that unionism for him was about preserving the distinctness of Northern Ireland, rather than integrating it into the UK.
It could of course be pointed out that this speaker totally misunderstands both the political philosophy of Edward Carson and the balance of power between London and Belfast. Carson in fact disliked many of Ulster's local characteristics and particularly the culture of Orangeism, their speeches reminding him of 'the unrolling of a mummy. All old bones and rotten rags.' The point is, however, this is a perception of identity widely held within the unionist community. As there is no law of political motion which declares that the depth of a person's beliefs is directly related to the rationality by which they are reached, the important factor to consider when discussing perceptions of identity is not intellectual coherence so much as the degree of consensus. Aughey rejects the contemporary orthodoxy that the unionist ideology is handicapped by a crisis of identity, this too being the product of nationalist misrepresentation. He quotes the following response of a loyalist bandsman, questioned by New Society about his identity, but reinterprets the message to deny the identity crisis thesis.
Rather than accept the apparently obvious explanation that this individual is profoundly confused about his identity, Aughey chooses to depict the bandsman as a latter-day Platonic philosopher-king, who exhibits
Aughey concludes that unionists are more interested in statehood than in nationhood. Their preoccupation is not to psychoanalyse themselves as nationalists do, in terms of cultural 'oneness' or diversity using the cultural totems of language, religion, etc.; the concern of unionists is primarily to integrate themselves into the modern British state. 'The identity of unionism has little to do with the idea of the nation and everything to do with the idea of the state.'[115] Having established that the unionist community is more interested in belonging to a state than a nation (despite evidence to the contrary as expressed through the Orange Order et al.), Aughey goes on to argue that states are not based on concepts of nationhood and do not, in fact, 'depend upon any form of substantive identity at all'. The modern state, he says, 'has transcended its dependence on extrinsic legitimations such as race, nation or religion, and is grounded in the political universals of right and the rule of law'.[116] Historian James Loughlin correctly points to the practical deficiencies in Aughey's theoretical conception of the state as an underpinning dynamic within unionist politics.
In his desire to rationalise the equal citizenship argument, Aughey rather misses the point that states and nations are intrinsically linked to one another and in a time of crisis the nation will prove to be a much stronger social coagulant than the state. The break-up of the Soviet Union could be cited as supporting evidence here, as the various factions which previously made up that political unit are not organising around the 'Holy Grail' of liberal democracy instead, old nationalities which had been submerged within the state for seventy years have re-emerged in their original form, dusted themselves down, and are prepared to protect the interests of what they define as their nation. The war in the former Yugoslavia is another obvious example. Here, ethno-nationalist antagonism, which had remained relatively dormant during the Cold War and under Tito, has re-emerged from hibernation, and the Serbs, Croats and Muslims continue to define themselves and their enemies in terms of their ethnicity and how this interacts with their shared history. While Aughey is correct to point out that states are political rather than cultural arrangements, he fails to mention that more often than not it is the forces of nationality, language, colour, religion, history and social cohesion due to threat from external enemies which bind the state together. In other words, are states not simply the political manifestations of nations, groups of nations, or parts of nations? As Emerson noted, the nation '. . . has in fact become the body which legitimises the state'.[118] States certainly do not exist (as Aughey suggests) as a result of liberal democracy - indeed, a significant number of these geographical units known as states studiously ignore concepts such as the 'political universals of right and the rule of law'. In reality, many unionists exhibit a concern with identity/culture rather than merely an abstract desire for citizenship and liberal-democratic principles. Regardless of how benign the Irish Republic becomes or the extent to which it liberalises its social policies, unionists are unlikely to seek citizenship of it. As this chapter has demonstrated, unionism is not based solely upon rationalism, or on political, social and economic self-interest. At its most fundamental, it is based on a sense of belonging. In addition to seeing the Union as a protector of civil liberties, religious expression and economic well-being, there is a complex web of historical, emotional and psychological bonds (though these are largely unreciprocated) which underpin the dynamics of unionist political behaviour. Two examples will suffice to demonstrate that many unionists are motivated by exactly the same symbolic forces which drive Irish nationalism. Consider the reaction to the decision by Queen's University of Belfast in 1994 to abandon the playing of the British national anthem at its graduation ceremonies, thus bringing the institution into line with the practice in the rest of the United Kingdom. The letters column of the Belfast Telegraph was dominated by this issue for months afterwards, while a unionist rally was organised and attended by several leading politicians in an attempt to pressurise the university to reverse its decision. Obviously this example of integration with the 'mainland' was not one which they found to their taste. Consider also the events in Portadown during the Protestant marching season in July 1995 and specifically the 'Siege of Drumcree'. The picture of unionists chasing the RUC across fields was more reminiscent of old-style triumphalism than democratic citizenship and is difficult to square with the claim that unionism is essentially motivated by a desire to adhere to the liberal values enshrined within the British state. Aughey's concern to differentiate between statehood and nationhood, illustrated in the following two statements, is motivated out of a desire to demonstrate that unionists are entitled to equal citizenship with the rest of the freedom-loving residents of the United Kingdom.
Whether or not Aughey's various hypotheses carry any validity (his explanation of the unionist identity crisis, denial of the peculiarities of unionist conditional loyalty, and differentiation of nation and state, are not totally convincing), the fact is that his thesis concerning the dynamics of unionist politics is not reflected in the political reality of Northern Ireland. Coulter arrives at a reasonable conclusion.
As Coulter rightly points out, whilst Aughey's unionism may be more about equal citizenship within the UK than the preservation of some cultural heritage, this could not be said of many others within the unionist community. For them, intangible concepts such as 'citizenship' are of secondary importance to the preservation of their cultural heritage and religion. The Republic of Ireland, for example, believes in the pantheon of western liberalism, in citizenship and natural justice, as much as does Britain (for example, its single transferable vote electoral system is more democratic in terms of the correlation between votes cast and seats won than its British counterpart). Yet some unionists are violently opposed to joining it and this is not simply as a result of the 1937 constitution and failed efforts to reform it. The political allegiance of unionism to Britain is not, therefore, solely based upon a desire to live in a western democracy (when given the opportunity from 1921 to 1972 unionists built a political system which was anathema to modern liberal-democratic theory) but is founded variously upon a wide range of assumptions, from being the best means of preserving their cultural distinctiveness from the rest of Ireland to being the optimal strategy for maintaining the region's economic prosperity. Aughey defines his own unionism as if it is representative of the ideology as a whole. It is not. It may be a vision of unionism, it may be a more effective or legitimate expression of unionism, but it is not the reality of present experience. The majority of unionists are concerned about their identity, their culture, their religion, and their history, as of course are nationalists. They are not concerned with fitting into the multicultural multiracial Britain of the late twentieth century. It is not sufficient to condemn the majority of such unionists as ideological interlopers who merely hijacked unionism for their own ends. It is too trite to suggest that the devolution experiment which lasted from the beginning of the state until 1972 was '. . . not a victory for unionism., it was a victory for unionists'.[122] In other words it was led by a small group of sectional interests unable to take the longer view, aided and abetted by successive British governments. More recently Aughey has shown signs of a more considered, less dogmatic, approach, although he comes to similar conclusions.
As this chapter has sought to indicate, there is a significant degree of 'doubt' that separatist sentiment within the unionist community was simply the product of the Government of Ireland Act and the Stormont administration. This strain in unionism, which Aughey rightly identifies, can be traced much further back than 1920. The Orange Order, for instance, was established long before Northern Ireland came into existence and it was not set up to lobby for liberal-democratic constitutional reform, or as a sister organisation to anything on the British 'mainland'. The nearest corollary in fact to the Orange Order in Britain would be the Freemasons, hardly an example of the British liberal-democratic polity much alluded to by the equal citizenship lobby. Similarly, the political by-product of evangelical Protestantism in the nineteenth century was separatist. The Great Revival of the 1850s fostered the notion that Ulster Presbyterians were a distinct community from both Catholic Ireland and Anglican Britain, a notion which, as we have already seen in this chapter, still prevails today. John Whyte summed up the weakness of Aughey's critique and the equal citizenship case as a whole with his comment that the communal tensions in Northern Ireland transcend political institutions such as the party structure, and lie rather in the unique cocktail of its history.
A similar line to Aughey has been taken by Patrick Roche and Brian Barton, who suggest that unionism has been maligned by the devious agenda of nationalist ideologues. They condemn Joe Lee's study (Ireland 1912-1985) as a one-dimensional analysis which fails to understand the wider complexities of the ideology.
Roche and Barton seek to redress what they regard as an imbalance in Irish historiography in favour of the nationalist critique. 'Nationalist ideologues have propagated, with virtual complete success since the late 1960s, an image of Northern Ireland as a "failed political entity".[126] The problem with this analysis is that it suffers from the very disease it ascribes to nationalist commentaries. The Roche and Barton critique is littered with phrases such as 'the nationalist argument' and the 'nationalist story', as if there was simply one monolithic perspective articulated by Irish nationalists. Indeed after one such sweep of their broad ideological brush, concerning the rationale of discrimination during the 1920-72 period, they commented that 'according to the nationalist story' discrimination was a conspiracy to subjugate Catholics, and promptly juxtaposed this with the views of Michael Farrell on the subject. While Farrell's contribution to an understanding of the Stormont period should not be underestimated, it would be fair to say that he occupies one particular strand of Irish nationalist opinion. Roche and Barton attempt to refute Farrell's analysis by suggesting that allegations of discrimination have been grossly exaggerated by nationalist historians. They cite the comment of the pro-Union economist Tom Wilson that because no one complained about discrimination the level cannot have been as high as 'the nationalist story' has subsequently alleged.
This is clearly an absurd argument to propagate. Could the same criteria be used to argue that, as nationalists made little use of the Police Complaints Board, little opposition existed within the Catholic community towards the security forces? The existence of institutional structures such as a housing ombudsman is not of itself going to provide reliable empirical evidence with which we can accurately determine the extent of discrimination during the Stormont regime. It could be argued, for example, that the low level of complaints from the Catholic community over housing allocation cited by Wilson demonstrates that alienation amongst the minority community had reached such a level that they had lost all faith in the system and were not even availing of the opportunities which did exist to air their grievances. Notwithstanding the claims of Wilson, Roche and Barton, and Arthur Aughey that unionism has been falsely ascribed an identity crisis by nationalist historians, this is a conspiracy theory which holds little credibility. It is clear that politico-cultural identity within unionism is diverse to the point that it defies categorisation. There is a crisis of identity within the ideology, derived from the historical inheritance of unionism and the overriding sense of insecurity which this experience has engendered. The existence of an antagonistic state on the other part of the island (at times imagined, at times real) has been gradually accompanied by hostility to the unionist cause within the country to which unionists express an allegiance and from the rest of the world. As this chapter has sought to demonstrate, the desire for unity fashioned from such insecurity constantly precluded progressive political behaviour, as the complex assortment of diverse interest groups and individuals which existed under the ideological canopy of unionism were unable to develop a coherent political programme. The fact is that the Union means different things to different people. Whilst one unionist may regard it, in accordance with Miller's characterisation, as a contract with Britain to protect the religio-cultural heritage of Ulster Protestantism, another might see it as simply another region of the United Kingdom, separated merely by geography and the unwillingness of successive British governments to incorporate what Wilfred Spender termed 'North West Britain' into the rest of the kingdom. These different perceptions of cultural identity had obvious political consequences, resulting in conflicting notions about where unionism should be going, and how its political strategy should develop. The lack of cultural homogeneity, when combined with the self-imposed structural partition within unionism and the conflict which accompanies the idiosyncrasies of human nature, led to intellectual incoherence and political stagnation. The next chapter will demonstrate the way in which the diversity of cultural identities in the unionist community has been reflected in diverging political analyses and conflicting political strategies within the ideology.
[1] S. Nelson, Ulster's Uncertain Defenders: Protestant Paramilitary
and Community Groups and the Northern Ireland Conflict (Belfast,
1984), p. 9.
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CAIN
contains information and source material on the conflict
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