UNIONISM has two choices as the conversation about a new Ireland gathers pace and as the head of the Alliance Party demands clarity on the conditions for a border poll.
It can get serious about making this place work for all its people, as it constantly claims it wants to. Or it can continue to engage in divisive culture wars sensationalism aimed at ensuring the loyalty of its staunchest voters.
No party can look with anything approaching equanimity at the prospect of discomfiting its base, but the simple fact is that the unionist faithful alone aren’t going to cut it when it comes to assembling the numbers required for unionism to maintain its ‘precious union’. New blood needs injected into Loyal Ulster’s thickening veins, and while precious few republicans are likely to switch their allegiance to the crown if unionism replaces the grimace with a grin, poll after poll identifies a hefty cohort of undecideds whose support would at least loosen the rope tightening around the neck of the union if they were to be convinced that the future doesn’t lie in angry daily rants about threat and loss and fear.
At a recent unionist think-in, everybody’s favourite seaside lawyer man-child urged the DUP to “use every tool at its disposal” to “ratchet up the culture wars”. He added: “If we can’t walk Drumcree or the Crumlin Road, then they can’t have Irish language signage.”
Here’s a person rattling towards middle-age who just celebrated the completion of the first step on his epic journey to the law library by getting slapped down for writing a letter to the judge in a live trial murder trial. Here’s a person whose already lengthy public career has been littered with toe-curlingly embarrassing wrong calls and wince-inducing social media gaffes. Here’s a person advocating for the taunting politics of the playground at a time when unionism requires the politics of a statesman.
And yet it appears that unionism is taking on board his advice to crank up the sneering and whingeing. It appears that the hand of friendship which unionism has so often promised but failed to offer has been withdrawn completely in a new vein-poppingly furious assault on the Irish language. It appears they have agreed with the baby barrister that street signs and letterheads are the next hill to die on.
There’s no point in denying it and we’re not going to: There’s a significant appetite with unionism and loyalism for angry opposition to the Irish language. But in turn we invite senior unionists to consider the reality that there aren’t enough of those cheering when angle-grinders are taken to Irish streets to ward off the existential threat.
For some time there’s been intra-unionist tension between the long-term need to win friends and the short-term desire to keep the true-blues happy. For now, the culture warriors have the upper hand and they’re happy assailing the Irish language. But wiser voices will have to prevail or that border poll is going to be one hell of an oirdéal.
Or perhaps quare gunk might be better understood.
