Where do the DUP go?
To be a unionist politician in Northern Ireland in 2021 is to face the question posed in Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, “Is it better to shout and thereby hasten the end, or to keep silent and gain thereby a slower death?”
The demographic trends are inexorable. In the 2011 Census, Protestants were 48% of the population and 45% were Catholics, but the Protestant population was ageing. In the 2016 Labour Force Survey, 44% of the working population were Catholic, 40% Protestant and 16% other. More starkly for unionism, in 2018, 51% of the school population was Catholic, 37% Protestant and 12-13% other.
How does the DUP respond does it shout and hasten the end or keep silent in the hope of gaining a slower end? Does it respond with militancy or passivity? There are no clues from the past upon which to draw.
Pondering militancy or passivity in the history of his own country, Kundera, who wrote The Unbearable Lightness of Being, in 1984, saw history as providing no lessons for the Czechs in 1968:
And again he thought the thought we already know: Human life occurs only once, and the reason we cannot determine which of our decisions are good and which bad is that in a given situation we can make only one decision; we are not granted a second, third, or fourth life in which to compare various decisions.
History is similar to individual lives in this respect. There is only one history of the Czechs. One day it will come to an end as surely as Tomas’s life, never to be repeated.
In 1618, the Czech estates took courage and vented their ire on the emperor reigning in Vienna by pitching two of his high officials out of a window in the Prague Castle. Their defiance led to the Thirty Years War, which in turn led to the almost complete destruction of the Czech nation. Should the Czechs have shown more caution than courage? The answer may seem simple; it is not.
Three hundred and twenty years later, after the Munich Conference of 1938, the entire world decided to sacrifice the Czechs’ country to Hitler. Should the Czechs have tried to stand up to a power eight times their size? In contrast to 1618, they opted for caution. Their capitulation led to the Second World War, which in turn led to the forfeit of their nation’s freedom for many decades or even centuries. Should they have shown more courage than caution? What should they have done?
If Czech history could be repeated, we should of course find it desirable to test the other possibility each time and compare the results. Without such an experiment, all considerations of this kind remain a game of hypotheses.
Einmal ist keinmal. What happens but once might as well not have happened at all. The history of the Czechs will not be repeated, nor will the history of Europe. The history of the Czechs and of Europe is a pair of sketches from the pen of mankind’s fateful inexperience. History is as light as individual human life, unbearably light, light as a feather, as dust swirling into the air, as whatever will no longer exist tomorrow.
Kundera’s anticipation of the future is based on a history where both resistance and submission had proved futile for the Czechs. In Northern Ireland, the DUP may find both active resistance and passive submission are paths to the end of unionism.
Yet Kundera’s anticipation that the Czechs had suffered “the forfeit of their nation’s freedom for many decades or even centuries” simply confirms his maxim that “what happens but once might as well not have happened at all.” History did not turn out as anticipated. No reading of the past gave any clues that Communism would simply crumble away in the extraordinary months of 1989.
If unionism is to survive, the DUP need to detach themselves from historical processes, particularly inexorable ones, and need to discern a middle way that is neither militancy nor submission.
The DUP is incapable of detaching itself from its history; a sign of this is that the favourite to replace Arlene Foster as leader is Edwin Poots, a young-earth creationist whose views are closer to the Paisleyites in the party than to any other. The move against Foster seems to have been prompted by the EU-UK-NI protocol and her failure to vote against legislation to ban Gay Conversion Therapy. Those who wanted her out are also concerned that the DUP was losing votes to the Traditional Unionist Voice party, a group that makes the DUP seem moderate. It appears that, in reality, the DUP was losing three votes to Alliance for every one lost to TUV. Of course, the DUP is in the unique position of actually believeing Boris Johnson when he said that there would never be a border down the Irish Sea – did they not think of his record?
The recent outbreak of violence is worrying, especially in the absence of calming political leadership.
The decline seems to have been long and inexorable. The question now is how the endgame is played out.
My optimistic scenario is that, at last, the communities in Northern Ireland will realise how much they have in common and work together to build a society that works for everyone and if a united Ireland results in the medium to long term it will be based on a shared sense of community. My pessimistic scenario is that a triumphalist Sinn Féin in government in the Republic and the largest party in NI will see no need for reconciliation and push successfully for a border poll with all the divisiveness that will result. The regular reference to demographic change (more RCs than Prods) suggests that some groups including SF and Ireland’s Future see a 50%+1 result in a border poll as enough without the need to build better relationships in NI and across the island. At least Micheál Martin sees the danger in this approach.
Unless they can deliver a body blow against Fianna Fail, it is hard to imagine Sinn Fein reaching the 60-70 seats they would need to be within touching distance of forming a government, and even then they would probably have mopped up the seats of small Left-wing parties and have few options for coalition.
It is hard to see a way forward in the North if the 50%+1 was applicable. Economically, it is unsustainable. Once the potential bill for Irish taxpayers became apparent, enthusiasm for unity would evaporate. There would be a state of constitutional limbo, the North unwanted by both jurisdictions.
Many Fianna Fáil TDs would be happy to go into coalition with Sinn Féin so they could get a majority even without the smaller parties. After all, who would have expected Fianna Fáil in government with Fine Gael. The Greens would join in too (especially if they were promised cycle lanes everywhere).
I’m not convinced that economic arguments would stop a vote for unity in the Republic; the economic consequences of Brexit didn’t stop it.
As a junior partner, Fianna Fail would disappear in a subsequent election – look at the experience of the PDs in 2007, the Greens in 2011, and Labour in 2016.
I think the threat of Loyalist violence and the spelling out of the actual tax implications would inhibit a vote for unity.