WHEN UK prime minister Boris Johnson flew into Belfast to announce plans marking 100 years since the creation of Northern Ireland, he called it an ‘obvious cause for celebration’. ‘I love and believe in the union that makes up the United Kingdom’, he said, calling it ‘the most successful political partnership anywhere in the world’. ‘Success’ and ‘celebration’ are words not normally associated with the creation of Northern Ireland. After all, what is there to celebrate about a state forged in sectarianism and anti-Catholicism? Because there is no doubt that is precisely what it was. James Craig, Northern Ireland’s first prime minister, called it ‘a Protestant state and parliament for a Protestant people’. Basil Brooke, one of Craig’s successors, encouraged Unionists to follow his lead and not employ Catholics, bragging ‘I have not one about my place’.
