Discussion on a United or re-partitioned Ireland

[DannyInvincible]

I've just finished reading Kevin Meagher's book 'Why a United Ireland is inevitable'. It's well-argued on British disinterest and NI's structural economic weaknesses, less so on how scrapping the border will end the latter, and most significantly of all how you sell the idea to Unionists and others prepared to tolerate staying in the UK. He does point out that the NI party keenest on equal business tax rates across Ireland is actually the DUP, before describing Arlene Foster as an 'archpragmatist'

Meagher wrote the following complementary piece a few days ago; 'Northern Ireland is leaving the union - it's only a question of when': http://www.politics.co.uk/comment-an...ving-the-union

There was a telling exchange in the House of Commons recently. The Democratic Unionists' Nigel Dodds blamed Sinn Fein's call for a border poll for "uncertainty and division" in Northern Ireland. But it was Theresa May’s response and the manner in which she delivered it that was revealing. Tentative, hesitant even, she agreed that it was not right to have a referendum "at this stage".

There was no hearty commitment to the Union. No flourish thanking Dodds for his remarks, confirming how she cherishes Northern Ireland among our family of nations. No attempt at something perfunctory, even if just to butter-up the DUP and its eight crucial Westminster votes.

All Dodds received was a homily about the importance of "bringing the parties together" to restore power-sharing.

Welcome to Northern Ireland's endgame.

A perfect storm of interconnected issues is gathering: Brexit. The possibility of Scottish independence. Population change in Northern Ireland itself. All this is heaped over decades of British indifference about the place. It is a matter of when, not if, Northern Ireland leaves the Union.

We already do our best to pretend it doesn't exist. Team GB is the name given to our home Olympians. But it's the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Team GB&NI doesn't have the same ring, I guess. But all this is now starting to matter.

The pace of change in Northern Ireland is quickening. The implications of Brexit are already showing-up all its grisly flaws. The £600 million the province will lose when we quit the EU is bad enough. Never mind the existential drama about future border arrangements between Northern and Southern Ireland, one of those esoteric issues that is managing to outfox Whitehall's best brains.

It is simply no longer tenable for Westminster to maintain a self-denying ordinance about what all this now means. British parties need a policy on Northern Ireland's long-term future.

Let me help.

Northern Ireland doesn't have one. The recent assembly elections and the decline of the unionist vote serve to remind us that population change will deliver a majority for Irish unity in a few years' time anyway.

Sinn Fein was 1,100 votes off beating the Democratic Unionists into second place. When you add up the votes for parties supporting the Union and those who want a united Ireland, the gap was just 37,000 votes.

The last census showed 45% of the population is now Catholic (and, given the symbiotic connection with political allegiance, nationalist). Catholic children outnumber Protestants at every level of the education system. This is a waiting game.

Northern Ireland was, notoriously, created as a Protestant-Unionist fief. Discrimination against Catholic-Nationalists was hard-wired into the settlement. Borders were gerrymandered to keep Unionists in control. The electoral franchise for local elections was contingent on property and business ownership. Poorer Catholics were second-class citizens.

Northern Ireland was Britain's dirty little secret. MPs in the House of Commons could not ask questions about what went on there. Northern Ireland was a 'reserved matter'.

Then the civil rights movement sprung up, demanding equality and fair treatment. They were literally beaten off the streets by the Royal Ulster Constabulary and their notorious reservists, the so-called 'B-Specials'.

The really unlucky ones were shot dead by the paras on 'Bloody Sunday'.

Then came the Troubles, that terrible euphemism for a secessionist guerrilla war between armed republicans, the British state and its loyalist lackeys.

So much British decency was squandered in the process.

We let 'securocrats' and the post-colonial military run rampant. Assassinations. Water-boarding. Indiscriminate killings. Collusion with loyalist death gangs. We went off a cliff edge in terms of what a democratic state should ever be allowed to do and keep the description.

That's why there will never be a reconciliation process in Northern Ireland. Britain's legacy is too black-hearted. The truth seeps out in long-forgotten official documents, or through the myriad of smaller enquiries that have taken place. It serves to eviscerate our sense of ourselves as a nation that upholds the rule of law and fair play.

So for the past two decades, British politicians have been mightily relieved to mouth platitudes about supporting the Good Friday Agreement, wallowing in the sheer relief that the bombings have stopped.

But that same agreement ensured Northern Ireland's very existence is time-limited. It placed Northern Ireland in an ante-chamber. Once there is majority support for Irish reunification, then the British government will facilitate that desire.

In reality, it has been government policy for much longer. As far back as 1989 when Margaret Thatcher's Northern Ireland secretary, Peter Brooke, proclaimed that Britain had no "selfish strategic or economic interest" in Northern Ireland.

What are unionists supposed to make of this? Britain is just marking time until that 51% of voters who want a united Ireland resolves the problem for us. It is simply not fair to leave them unprepared for this eventuality. It is a shaming abdication of political leadership.

The question of Irish reunification has become too big to ignore any longer. It is time for Westminster to be honest with unionists.



We might be prepared to die in a ditch keeping Scotland, but MPs will not be changing their holiday plans to trudge the highways and byways of North Antrim of South Armagh making the case for Northern Ireland to remain. There will be an audible sigh of relief when it is gone.

Moreover, Irish reunification is now on the table as a realistic scenario for the first time since partition. It is now an evidence-based proposition, not an emotional spasm. A major international study shows the clear economic benefits of unity. The Irish media is currently abuzz with commentary about the question of reunification. The main Irish opposition party, Fianna Fail, is even preparing a white paper on the mechanics of achieving it.

This debate is taking place. We cannot let our peculiarly British hypocrisy continue.

We're just not that into Northern Ireland. Perhaps it's time we said so.

Kevin Meagher was special adviser to former Labour Northern Ireland secretary, Shaun Woodward. He is author of A United Ireland: Why unification is inevitable and how it will come about published by Biteback.

[backstothewall]

It's sure to be quite the week. No end of questions which will be answered on way or the other. first and foremost over the funeral

Will there be any IRA symbols? Beret and gloves on the coffin?
Is he to be buried in the republican plot?
Do the unionists go? Ian Paisley almost certainly will which puts his colleagues under pressure.
Does the British govt send someone. It would be unthinkable that the Theresa May wouldn't go to the funeral of a Scottish or Welsh FM.

The IFA have a big problem on their hands. How do they not have a minutes silence/applause on Sunday? But how likely is it to be respected...

And there is surely no possibility of getting a deal all Stormont this week with all this going on. Between them they will have to come up with a mechanism to buy more time

All bumps on the road between now and starting again next Monday morning

[CraftyToePoke]

Ruth Dudley-Edwards on BBC saying unity had never been further away due to him and his ilk and that unity would have to have grown organically through business links etc. Also she fully expects SF to now dwindle away particularly south of the border.

Of course, yes RDE, the Unionists would have coughed up gerrymandered supremacy after a few more civil rights marches, and SF vote share is evaporating election on election.

Jesus Christ, BBC finally give some time to NI and that's who they wheel out, absolutely woejus. Some dude from the Uni of Manchester or Liverpool (can't remember which) absolutely put her to shame.

[Charlie Darwin]

What show was that on, CTP?

Ruth Dudley-Edwards is a special class of troll. Her brand of nonsense will always have a receptive audience on both sides of the Irish Sea, unfortunately, and there'll always be people outraged enough to keep clicking.

[DannyInvincible]

She was on Newsnight.

Ruth is as partisan as they come; a charlatan professing to be an historian. It is disappointing that she was given such a prominent platform and was presented to a British audience - who, as you say, CTP, get very little serious or in-depth insight into Irish affairs through their media - as a neutral or reasonable voice representing the Irish journalistic realm, but, of course, it's not as if she was chosen by the BBC at random.

Most serious pundits acknowledge that Sinn Féin are a growing force in the south and will be in government in the near future. Upper-class anglophiles like Ruth may find it a bitter pill to swallow, but Sinn Féin are increasingly the party of the younger voting generations. To suggest Sinn Féin's rise will just peter out in the south because Martin McGuinness has passed away is genuinely outlandish and lacks coherence as a point. Why would his death negatively affect Sinn Féin's southern momentum? What's the supposed link?

She also claimed there was no desire for unity in Ireland, north or south, right now. Where has she been? Recent polls in the south indicate majority support for unity.

Analyse controversial aspects of McGuinness' past, certainly - there's plenty in his more distant past that is worthy of critical reflection and the Coshquin "human proxy bomb" was a particularly troubling incident that occurred within hearing distance of my house and for which Martin almost certainly gave the go-ahead (or at least would have had the authority to stop, yet didn't) - but when, say, Tony Blair passes, I wonder will the BBC be interviewing surviving family members of Iraqis killed by the bombs and military actions sanctioned by Blair? Hardly. The hypocrisy and rank double standards of the British establishment media are hard to stomach.

Also, any analysis of McGuinness' life and past that omits mention of the repressive and impoverished circumstances that directly moulded him and led to him joining the IRA in the first place - unionist oppression and discrimination buttressed by the jackboots and guns of the British army - is sorely lacking in credibility. The primary motivating factor for most IRA volunteers joining up was simply a wish - in desperate circumstances - to defend and protect their families, friends, streets and communities against violent intrusions by sectarian state forces and against pogroms by belligerent loyalist mobs as the state stood idly by. As Eamonn McCann put it:

Most who joined or came to support the IRA did so not out of a sacred duty to “free Ireland” or in pursuit of a historic mission to vindicate the Republic but because they wanted the bigot’s boot off their necks and the British Army off their backs. If these grievances could be remedied short of the achievement of the Republic, then there was the basis of a settlement within existing constitutional structures.

The appeal and sense of purpose, belonging, protection and solution presented by joining the IRA was greater for hundreds of young men and women in nationalist communities than what an inhospitable statelet and bent status quo had to offer them, which was poverty, alienation, insecurity, vulnerability, pain, frustration, anger, paranoia and panic. Joining the IRA was a rational response to their immediate material and structural conditions; it was a symptom of lived experience within a system that was, at best, neglectful or suspicious of the nationalist community and, at worst, hostile towards it on account of contrasting political, social, cultural and national outlooks.

Norman Tebbit made the claim earlier that the only reason the British army decided to pay the north of Ireland a visit was in order to protect people from the IRA. This was utter baloney. The British army were sent in with what Fintan O'Toole described as a "colonial mentality" to buttress the unionist status quo after the nationalist community revolted (through civil disobedience and rioting) against their condition en masse in the Bogside and elsewhere around the north in 1969. Operation Banner commenced in August of 1969 to quell the Battle of the Bogside. There was no seriously organised IRA at the time; just a few lads, organised in a ramshackle fashion, manning barricades around areas like Free Derry for defensive purposes. The Provos emerged months later in December of 1969 as an organisation initially focused on the more concerted defence of nationalist areas and only went on a higher-intensity offensive against what they and many within the nationalist community regarded as the occupying British army after 1971 and 1972 when incidents like the Ballymurphy massacre and Bloody Sunday, along with the British state's failed policy of internment without trial, considerably boosted support for and recruitment into the organisation. Norman Tebbit could do with some reading up on his history.

By the way, the other guest on Newsnight with Dudley-Edwards was Jonathan Tonge from the University of Liverpool. He provided a welcome antidote to Dudley-Edwards' drivel.

[Gather round]

Meagher wrote the following complementary piece a few days ago; 'Northern Ireland is leaving the union - it's only a question of when': http://www.politics.co.uk/comment-an...ving-the-union

Which largely ignores the same big issues that the book does. To be fair to Meagher, he says in the introduction that it's a polemic more than a work of political science. He sees unionists largely as ciphers and grotesques and uses that as justification to avoid talking to them.

To be less fair, he isn't just a jobbing journo but ex-SPAD to Shaun Woodward as NI SoS. Potentially quite influential, but in practice the pair of them did basically nothing to achieve what KM says is inevitable. As I mentioned upthread, it's 100% certain in the same way as Labour leading a majority government or Liverpool (who KM supports) winning the EPL

Why would his death negatively affect Sinn Féin's southern momentum?

Agreed, that doesn't make much sense. In a separate BBC interview this morning, RDE claimed that MMG was the brains of the outfit and with Adams as main/ sole front guy it will flounder. As if SF was just the two of them

Also, any analysis of McGuinness' life that omits mention of the repressive and impoverished circumstances that directly moulded him and led to him joining the IRA in the first place

This is pretty overblown, history as Hovis advert. Violent protest against discrimination and intimidation was rational; a shooting war for 25 years after specific grievances (housing, electoral etc.) were addressed clearly something else.

The IFA have a big problem on their hands. How do they not have a minutes silence/applause on Sunday? But how likely is it to be respected...

There'll be a minute for Ryan McBride. They should justify not extending it to Marty because quite clearly it wouldn't be respected . I will probably be in the toilets or concourse at the time; my grudging respect for ex-paramilitaries doesn't extend to applauding them.

I expect P O'Neill will manage more shots than M O'Neill junior does on Sunday.

Also she fully expects SF to now dwindle away particularly south of the border

Wishful thinking probably. I suppose it depends largely on when/ whether they join or lead a government and then start getting blamed for running the country

SF vote share is evaporating election on election

It fell successively in the 2014, 2015 and 2016 NI elections...

[Wolfman]

Hmm, more factual inaccuracies. There's a surprise.

[Gather round]

Hmm, more factual inaccuracies. There's a surprise

Name them.

[DannyInvincible]

Do the unionists go? Ian Paisley almost certainly will which puts his colleagues under pressure.

Foster is reported to be "undecided" on attending: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/ne...-35554737.html

It would be exceptionally poor form if she refused to attend the funeral of her deputy and it would rightly be perceived as another snub of the nationalist/republican community. It's unfortunate that she appears more concerned by losing some votes to hardliners than paying respect to a colleague - her deputy - and seems completely oblivious to the massive amount of respect that a gesture such as her mere attendance at the funeral would win in return from broader society. It might actually help the DUP blossom into a party that is seen as fit for dealing with the realities of the modern day. Clearly, she has learned very little from the election if she has to mull over whether or not it would be right for her to attend.

The IFA have a big problem on their hands. How do they not have a minutes silence/applause on Sunday? But how likely is it to be respected...

But I thought Windsor Park was now supposed to be a model beacon for this shared future they keep telling us about...

[DannyInvincible]

[Meagher] sees unionists largely as ciphers and grotesques and uses that as justification to avoid talking to them.

He actually used those words?

This is pretty overblown, history as Hovis advert. Violent protest against discrimination and intimidation was rational; a shooting war for 25 years after specific grievances (housing, electoral etc.) were addressed clearly something else.

The two-tiered unionist statelet was explicitly discriminatory of nationalists for decades. You can't change prejudiced mindsets and corresponding senses of grievance overnight. Besides, unionism later rejected the possibility of power-sharing. The statelet's infrastructure was effectively discriminatory up until the Good Friday Agreement was agreed and safeguards against potential discrimination became enshrined in law. Even still, the concept of parity of esteem isn't being properly implemented. Sadly, the deep-rooted hostility of unreconstructed unionism towards Irish nationalism remains even today.

Addressing housing and electoral grievances didn't make life rosy for nationalists all of a sudden, and especially not for those in impoverished working-class areas like west Belfast and Derry's Bogside. There was still much to endure and resist. Throughout that quarter of a decade you mention, the British state and its agents were still killing and massacring innocent civilians. There was extensive state collusion with supposedly-illegal loyalist paramilitaries, there were extra-judicial killings emanating from a shoot-to-kill policy. Legalised death-squads were operating from within the British army in the form of the the Military Reaction Force, the Special Reconnaissance Unit and the Force Research Unit. There were false-flag operations, there was torture and abuse (including waterboarding) of detainees, there was mass internment of "suspects" (who ended up being overwhelmingly nationalist by an approximate ratio of 19:1) without trial, curfew tactics were employed against the nationalist community, there was widespread use of potentially-lethal rubber and plastic bullets (such use would never ever have been tolerated by the powers that be upon communities in Britain), there was the (ab)use of civilians and communities as "human shields", we had widespread intimidation and harassment of nationalist individuals and communities and there was the blowing up of border roads and bridges (thus depriving many communities of their social and economic potential). Weirdly, even black propaganda was utilised by the British state as a weapon against the local population. And so on... And all this within a supposed modern liberal democracy.

The mutually-agreed compromises negotiated and secured via a long and hard-won peace-process culminating in the 1998 Agreement included power-sharing and all-island institutions, equality, inclusivity, human and minority rights protections, recognition for the differing cultural identities and of the validity of the contrasting political aspirations of the people in the north of Ireland, parity-of-esteem, the demilitarisation of the region, the release of paramilitary prisoners, a constitutional blue-print for Irish unity whilst recognising the principle of consent and a new 50-50 cross-community police force. It's of little surprise that only then did armed resistance cease.

There'll be a minute for Ryan McBride. They should justify not extending it to Marty because quite clearly it wouldn't be respected . I will probably be in the toilets or concourse at the time; my grudging respect for ex-paramilitaries doesn't extend to applauding them.

No time for reconciliation?

[DannyInvincible]

I'll post this here seeing as we've been discussing McGuinness and the circumstances that made him who he was. It's a really excellent piece by Philip O'Connor looking at the Irish media's response to his death: http://ourmaninstockholm.com/2017/03...in-mcguinness/

In the rush to eulogise Martin McGuinness on his passing, it is fascinating to observe the discomfort as Ireland’s media outlets wrestle with how to remember a man they despised for the most part, but who ultimately brought peace to our island.

The laziest, yet most common knee-jerk reaction is to suggest that there were two Martin McGuinnesses – the post-ceasefire peacemaker and politician on one side, and the IRA leader on the other.

It is the conclusion drawn by those who still, almost 20 years after the Good Friday Agreement, cannot even begin to understand why a young man like McGuinness would become a high-ranking IRA man and wage a guerrilla war against the British for so long and in such a bloody fashion.

It says more about the writer than it does about their subject.

It says that they have never really addressed the root cause of violent republicanism – that is, the state violence perpetrated on a minority whose human rights were constantly suspended, ignored and denied.

It says that they haven’t looked into the Bogside – or, for that matter, The Diamond – and tried to understand the political forces that spilt the community in Derry and turned them against one another.

It says that what they want is a clinical, road-to-Damascus-style conversion where the savage learns to speak and thus realises his potential, becoming acceptable to polite society in the process.

Because in Ireland, that makes us feel better about how we abandoned our brothers and sisters in the North – Catholic and Protestant, unionist and Nationalist – for so long.

In Britain, it allows our neighbours to ignore their role in the disaster of their rule.

McGuinness was undoubtedly a violent man in command of a group of violent men.

His opponents on the battlefield – the streets of Derry – were equally violent, but their violence was backed by the Crown and made them all but immune from prosecution or consequence.

When both sides had enough, much was made of the conversion of the “men of violence”, a term exclusively employed to describe the IRA, the INLA, the LVF, the UVF and other armed groups.

Little or nothing was said about the complicity of the state forces of the United Kingdom (and to a lesser extent the Republic of Ireland), and their role in the tragedy of those decades.

In our islands we wish to consign the Troubles to history, blithely ignoring that we continue to visit injustices – sometimes violently – on sections of our populations.

Whether it be the economic violence of austerity or the physical violence of state brutality, we still divide into “us” and “them”.

The reason we try to make this distinction is that we cannot countenance the fact that the “men of violence” were exactly like us – mostly fathers, brothers and sons, but also mothers, sisters and daughters who reached a point where they believed that peaceful protest was no longer effective.

We abhor their actions, but then we turn on the news to hear of a wedding bombed in Afghanistan and we feel nothing.

Beware the commentary that would simplify and attempt to remove Martin McGuinness from his context, and that would somehow suggest that he had a monopoly on violence, or that the violence of the state is automatically justified and justifiable.

There was never two Martin McGuinnesses – he was both a violent man and a skilled political operator.

So too was Nelson Mandela, another man once considered a terrorist only to be all but absolved of his sins in peace and, ultimately, in death.

Eventually the time came when both of them realised that the ballot box was indeed more useful than the Armalite.

But it is probably fair to say that, if either of them were ever again faced with the same level of cruelty or injustice being visited on their people, they would not have hesitated for one second to take up their arms again.

Nelson Mandela didn’t change.

Martin McGuinness didn’t change.

We did.

[Wolfman]

Name them.

Re-read your last post!

Two glaring errors.

[DannyInvincible]

Will there be any IRA symbols? Beret and gloves on the coffin?

It seems not: http://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/no-...eral-1-7879517

A church spokesman said that while a flag draped coffin was to be expected, there would be no other visual reminders of the senior Sinn Fein figure’s IRA past.

The service is due to take place at St Columba’s, Long Tower at 2pm. It is expected to be one of the biggest funerals ever held in the city.

...

However, the church spokesman said on Wednesday that assurances had been sought by the church and had been given by those organising the funeral.

“I can assure you there are no paramilitary trappings,” he told the News Letter.

“I am told that if there is a guard of honour it will be MLAs and there are no other trappings that I am aware of.

“We have asked about that and have been assured.”

[BonnieShels]

A church spokesman said that while a flag draped coffin was to be expected, there would be no other visual reminders of the senior Sinn Fein figure’s IRA past.

Hmmmm...

[DannyInvincible]

Hmmmm...

The Irish tricolour is a paramilitary trapping, don't you know?...

Subtle; it hadn't even struck me when I first scanned through the piece, but hardly surprising considering it's the Newsletter.

[BonnieShels]

I saw it instantly. I have a sixth (county) sense for unionist underhandedness.

[Gather round]

The Irish tricolour is a paramilitary trapping, don't you know?...

Subtle; it hadn't even struck me when I first scanned through the piece, but hardly surprising considering it's the Newsletter

If I didn't know better I'd say you boys were a wee bit paranoid

[gastric]

Loving the discussion on here even respecting gather round's opinions!. I have been living away from Ireland a long time, so I am not always au fait with present sentiments on Northern Ireland. Whilst polls suggest a majority in the ROI would support a united Ireland, would that not drop dramatically due to economic factors and potential violence? I ask because if I had the opportunity to vote, whilst emotionally committed to a united Ireland, practically I could not vote for something that might derail the south and economically compromise my family's future and safety. Am I completely out of touch or is this a sentiment shared by others?

[DannyInvincible]

Loving the discussion on here even respecting gather round's opinions!. I have been living away from Ireland a long time, so I am not always au fait with present sentiments on Northern Ireland. Whilst polls suggest a majority in the ROI would support a united Ireland, would that not drop dramatically due to economic factors and potential violence? I ask because if I had the opportunity to vote, whilst emotionally committed to a united Ireland, practically I could not vote for something that might derail the south and economically compromise my family's future and safety. Am I completely out of touch or is this a sentiment shared by others?

Your fears are valid, sure, and don't be afraid to express them because it's good and important to have the debate. Unity-proponents have to be prepared for challenges and criticisms. Nevertheless, I'm confident that proponents can win the economic argument convincingly. I posted the following up-thread, which may be of interest:

David McWilliams soundly dismantled the economic case for partition/unionism in a prospective piece he wrote just before the Brexit referendum: http://www.davidmcwilliams.ie/2016/0...t-write-it-off

An in-depth analysis by another economist, Michael Burke*, found that unity could benefit the island by €35.6 billion over eight years: http://prcg.com/wp-content/uploads/2...ion-Report.pdf

^{(*The study in the second link there, which was peer-reviewed, was actually by Professor Kurt Huebner from Vancouver University; not Michael Burke. My mistake.)}

In a recent poll, a slight majority of those who gave either a positive or negative response to the proposal posed still said they'd back unity even if it cost €9 billion a year: http://foot.ie/threads/219060-2017-N...=1#post1910038

NeverFeltBetter also posted the following a while back, which is relevant:

I recall that cross-border survey done in 2015 asked the "Do you support Irish unification?" question and then "Do you support Irish unification if it would result in increased taxation?" and there was a noticeable drop between answers that's telling. When dealing with reunification as a distant abstract ideas Irish people take a romantic course and are all for it, but if it every was seriously put to a vote, it wouldn't take all that much for many people to be put off, especially if fears of an economic horror show or violent Unionist resistance became part of the narrative.

I still think it would pass in the south, and wouldn't even be especially close. The SSM vote showed the electorate can decisively ignore negative campaigning on occasion. But I doubt it would be a 60+% landslide affair.

I suspect he was referring to these surveys: http://www.rte.ie/news/primetime/201...oll-test-page/

I posted details up-thread a while back of another interesting poll conducted in the south post-Brexit that saw two thirds of those surveyed say they'd back unity tomorrow:

I'd imagine most people in the south are knowledgeable and well-educated enough to know that unity will entail merging with another two million or so people presently residing in another jurisdiction, just over half of whom would identify as British/unionist and may not be too keen on the idea of unity right now. That's just basic Irish history/knowledge, no?

For what it's worth, there's further info on the poll and the question posed here: http://www.redcresearch.ie/wp-conten...oll-Report.pdf



I think the significant thing about this poll is that a very considerable majority would support unity right now; usually when people express positive sentiment for unity in these types of polls, it's a distant desire for a vague emotional or romantic concept. That's why I think Brexit is a game-changer. The above poll was conducted shortly after the Brexit referendum and people in the south have clearly reacted to the abrupt change of situation and mood in the north. Southerners and nationalists in the north are now taking the idea of unity in the short-term, as an antidote to Brexit, very seriously.

With regard to potential violence arising from loyalist objection, unity will also likely entail making constitutional changes that will hopefully reassure unionists/loyalists and help them feel at home in the new Ireland rather than have them feel like aliens in a nationalist-centric state.

Interestingly, the UK's Brexit decision has actually led to some unionists in the north of Ireland feeling a bit alienated now within a UK that is set to leave the EU (within which they wish to remain); some are now openly discussing and genuinely considering potential Irish unity (and remaining within the EU that way) as a solution to their woes. See:

This was an email sent by a (former?) unionist to Ian Paisley: https://twitter.com/LyraMcKee/status/746821465601900545



Some other examples of unionists declaring themselves open to a border poll:
https://twitter.com/minxycats/status/746268093379403776
https://twitter.com/mauricerkelly/st...22113926205440
https://twitter.com/belfastbarman/st...07972477403139
https://twitter.com/ihiccupalot/stat...05738524020736
http://sluggerotoole.com/2016/06/25/...ent-2749803344
http://sluggerotoole.com/2016/06/25/...ent-2750382612

The prospect of Scotland leaving the UK has also increased unionist uncertainty within the present arrangement. Unionists' strongest cultural ties are to Scotland really - they're Ulster-Scots, after all - rather than to England and/or Wales.

[DannyInvincible]

Sam McBride, political editor of the Newsletter, attempts to explain why Arlene has been unsure about attending Martin's funeral: https://twitter.com/SJAMcBride/statu...32379557863437 and https://twitter.com/SJAMcBride/statu...33247992762368

Arlene Foster's uncertainty is likely due to both political & theological debate. Politically, many DUP supporters loathe McGuinness (1/2)

Theologically, a swathe of DUP oppose any attendance at Mass. For that reason, Mrs Foster paid respect to Cardinal Daly before funeral (2/2)

As another tweeter says there, a leader's gotta lead though, right?

Meanwhile, McBride's article on how unionist leaders may soon experience nostalgia for McGuinness makes for interesting reading: http://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/sam...ness-1-7876915

It once would have been unthinkable, and even today virtually no unionist politician will publicly say it, but there may very soon come a time when unionism’s political leaders look back on Martin McGuinness’s final years with something approaching nostalgia.

Just as such a suggestion about Ian Paisley would have seemed absurd for most of his life, yet Sinn Fein now holds up his time in office as a model of harmonious government, so an IRA commander who for most of his life embodied what unionists feared and hated may in death be remembered more fondly.

IRA victims will certainly feel no warmth for what went before – McGuinness’s time on the IRA Army Council coincided with some of the Troubles’ worst atrocities.

And even after they accepted that Mr McGuinness was no longer involved in terrorism, unionists profoundly disagreed with his republican politics which in later years attempted to take Northern Ireland out of the UK via a political route.

But over almost a decade in Stormont Castle the former IRA commander demonstrated a commitment to devolution which is not shared by everyone in Sinn Fein.

His sudden illness has coincided with an abandonment of the strategy over which he presided.

That McGuinness philosophy viewed the institutions of the 1998 Agreement as sacrosanct; they were not a bargaining chip, no matter how great the political crisis.

It was the clarity of that stance, at least in part, which caused Arlene Foster to so confidently, yet so disastrously, misread the republican mood three months ago when she suggested that Mr McGuinness may be “playing a game of chicken” with his calls for her to step aside over the RHI scandal.

Within hours of Mrs Foster’s comment, a gaunt and visibly ill Mr McGuinness announced his resignation.

With that decision to collapse Stormont – made while battling terminal illness and at a time when Gerry Adams (who had earlier allegedly overruled Mr McGuinness when he struck a deal with the DUP on welfare reform) was increasingly involving himself in the minutiae of the situation – the decade-long McGuinness strategy was abandoned overnight.

Electorally, the move was spectacularly vindicated, with Sinn Fein coming within a seat of the DUP and depriving unionism of its Stormont majority for the first time in the history of the state.

That election, along with Brexit and the push for an independence referendum in Scotland, have awakened dormant nationalists and made the Union appear less secure than it did a year ago.

Struggling to react to the new reality, a complacent unionism – and in particular Arlene Foster – has struck the wrong tone, contributing to the growth of Sinn Fein’s vote.

Having played a key role in stabilising Northern Ireland over the last decade, suddenly Mr McGuinness’s final political act has contributed to the sort of political and constitutional uncertainty for which he strove during his earlier years in the IRA.

On the day of Mr McGuinness’s death, Sinn Fein was negotiating over whether it will even return to Stormont. If it does not, then a return to direct rule from Westminster appears inevitable.

While that may build resentment within nationalism and thus increase support for Irish unity, it is an abandonment of Sinn Fein’s 20-year-old strategy of transferring as much power as possible back from London to the island of Ireland.

In having placed such store in Stormont and skilfully worked the system, Mr McGuinness became a lynchpin of the new Northern Ireland establishment.

That is an extraordinary thing for a man born into a working-class Catholic family in the Bogside in 1950.

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