Last week marked the centenary of the agreement that fixed the border between the United Kingdom and the Irish Free State. Despite Irish nationalist hopes that the Boundary Commission would take large chunks of territory out of Northern Ireland — leading to its collapse — the border finally agreed by the governments was the six-county one that was created in 1921 by the Government of Ireland Act.
Irish nationalists since have liked to talk as though Northern Ireland is temporary, its existence a historical anomaly awaiting eschatological erasure. They suppose that the island is in some sense a natural political unit. This means that while there have been two political entities on the island since 1921, “Ireland” is currently partitioned. On this view, partition was not an event that happened in the past but an enduring reality. Ireland is Ireland and that’s that.
The traditionalist thinks this means there is always sufficient justification for “ending partition”. Northern Ireland is always a wrong to be righted. If the politics of achieving this are a practical matter, this does not touch on the ideology itself. The consent principle in the Belfast Agreement is merely an impasse reflecting an inability to put things right.
For others of a supposedly more moderate disposition, Northern Ireland’s creation was a temporary accommodation to the nature of the dispute between Irish nationalists and Ulster unionists. Partition recognised a division that existed in Ireland. The Ulster unionist refusal to go quietly into an Irish nationalist state may have been for good reasons then but a good case can be made that those reasons are gone. The reasonable thing to do now would be to “unite Ireland”. All’s well that ends well.
Irish nationalists are of course entitled to believe whatever they want. One can even take the aspiration so conceived as a ‘legitimate’ goal. It is a free country despite what some might say.
Unionists have always denied this Irish nationalist picture of Ireland, but they have done so haphazardly, inconsistently and often by conceding too much and contesting too little.
Famously, the late David Trimble when asked what unionists wanted responded “to be left alone”. This is admirable anti-politics but when confronted by the need to explain themselves it often has meant unionism reaching for what is to hand.
The result has been that unionists have adopted an apologetic posture towards Northern Ireland that seems to accept the burden of justification. That explaining themselves really means explaining themselves. This suits Irish nationalism well enough because it makes Northern Ireland seem like the anomaly in contrast to the Irish republic with its all-island “aspirations”, which does not share the same burden.
Worse still, what typically has come to hand when providing explanation is the same kind of nationalist and identitarian arguments used by Irish nationalists. These no doubt had and have a utility in exposing hypocrisy but when taken seriously and sincerely in themselves unionism becomes stuck in a contest that perpetuates constitutional and sectarian divisions.
Unionism, however, has no need for imitation. The Irish nationalist position is not just wrong in some specific details, it is fundamentally incoherent. There are no natural states. All are contingent, temporary and fading. The island we call ‘Ireland’ is not a country. There is no all island political unit — not in fact, not in the sky. Ireland is not partitioned. There is no “Irish nation” coextensive with the island. Unionism and nationalism are not equal-but-opposites but two entirely different ways of thinking about politics.
For unionism there is no foundationalist appeal to be made, neither is one needed. There is nothing essential about Northern Ireland and its existence is neither provisional nor conditional. All political entities are contingent but once they come into existence they have inertia. The arguments unionists made in 1921 need not remain true and new ones do not need to be found today. A hundred years on, Northern Ireland requires no reasons to exist. It does exist.
Unionism is a commitment to the civil and institutional order of the United Kingdom and the various goods it provides, where political authority emerges from convention and is preserved through habitual cooperation amid human fallibility. All states are bonds of imperfection. Politics is about the peaceful management of competing and common interests. Constitutional division that threatens to overturn contingent goods is not to be reified but dissolved through the enlargement of convention and the habits of cooperation.
Enjoyment, not salvation, is the unionist creed
Unionism has been mired in its historical justification, as though its present and its future depended on its past. It has been too reactive and, like the unprofitable servant who buried his talent in the ground, too afraid of losing what it gained. Things move on or they do not. Irish nationalism must necessarily remain in 1921, unionism does not have to. Northern Ireland exists.
Enjoyment, not salvation, is the unionist creed.
