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Tuesday 22 May 2018

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The rioters shouldn’t worry – Ulster is safe

As the census shows, a united Ireland has become an outdated nationalist fantasy

A Union flag flies on a lamp post beside a loyalist paramilitary mural on the Shankill Road area of west Belfast
A Union flag flies on a lamp post beside a loyalist paramilitary mural on the Shankill Road area of west Belfast Photo: Reuters

It seems like a return to the bad old days: Belfast convulsed by eight days of vicious rioting, in which 32 police officers have been injured. For this we can credit the province’s politicians, who wound up the most volatile, fearful and angry elements of Northern Irish Unionism – and are now desperately trying to stuff the genie back in its Orange bottle.

The trouble started when Sinn Fein, who take every opportunity to chip away at the visible symbols of Britishness, triggered a vote to have the Union flag removed from Belfast City Council’s offices. The Alliance Party, the well-meaning anti-sectarian centrists who hold the balance of power, pushed through a compromise that allowed the flag to be flown on designated days. Members of the Unionist parties, who see Alliance as an electoral threat, promptly disseminated leaflets accusing it of treachery – and tut-tutted when mobs began attacking its offices, threatening its representatives and pelting the police with any missiles to hand.

The result was that when Hillary Clinton arrived for the Belfast leg of her lap of honour as Secretary of State, the TV cameras showed threatening mobs and wanton destruction. Hard-line Republicans, still practising the violence that Sinn Fein ultimately abandoned, made their own contribution, in the shape of a pipe bomb in Londonderry.

For her part, Mrs Clinton greeted both Peter Robinson, the DUP First Minister, and Martin McGuinness, his Sinn Fein deputy, with kisses. All made grave statements about violence having no place in today’s Northern Ireland. In London, Theresa Villiers, the Northern Ireland Secretary, gravely informed the Commons that: “There is nothing British about what [the rioters] are doing; they are dishonouring and shaming the flag of our country.”

The truth is that, as long as the DUP and Sinn Fein continue to divide power and patronage, and do nothing to tackle sectarian sentiment, Northern Ireland will always be a powder keg vulnerable to a lit rag. Yet the irony here is that the Unionists’ great fear – of being submerged within a united, Catholic Ireland – is a more distant prospect than ever.

To understand why, one only has to look at this week’s census data. For years, pernicious sectarian propaganda has urged Unionists to “Count the Catholics”: any day now, it was claimed, they would outnumber the Protestants, and a referendum would whisk Northern Ireland into the Republic.

Sure enough, the new census shows that, since 2001, the number who are or who were brought up as Protestant has dropped by 5 per cent to a total of 48 per cent – making them a minority for the first time. Meanwhile, the equivalent figure for Catholics is up 1 per cent, to 45 per cent.

The key point, however, is that being a Catholic no longer dictates your political allegiance. Asked to select one or more identities, 48 per cent of Northern Ireland’s inhabitants chose British, 29 per cent Northern Irish and only 28 per cent Irish. Anyone born in Northern Ireland has the right to opt for an Irish passport, yet only a fifth do: by contrast, three fifths hold a UK passport. Last year, a survey showed that, while only 4 per cent of Protestants want a united Ireland, more than half of Catholics prefer to stay in the UK.

When the Celtic Tiger acquired its terminal illness five years ago, it took the idea of a united Ireland with it. Until then, the Republic was an option. Now, young job-hunting Catholics look east rather than south. Nor are there many inhabitants of the Republic who still harbour aspirations towards Irish unity – not least because, even when Dublin was riding high, the merger would have been far too expensive to afford. Gerry Adams keeps calling for a referendum to wind up the Unionists, but everyone knows that it would be voted down as heavily in the south as in the north.

Indeed, despite the violence of recent days, the census offers grounds for optimism that the province can put such bigotry behind it. Northern Ireland is a far more sophisticated and diverse place than it was even a decade ago, not least because there has been substantial immigration: a 10th of the population was born outside its borders. Although bands of unhappy and alienated youths still enjoy recreational rioting, the extent to which a large minority are developing a sense of Northern Irishness offers hope.

Rory McIlroy, that extraordinary 23-year-old golfing genius from County Down, is a particular role model. Brought up Catholic, but nurtured in a largely Protestant area, McIlroy deftly dodged the Irish tricolour thrown to him after he won the US Open. He hasn’t yet made up his mind whether he will compete for the UK or Ireland in the 2016 Olympics, but his decision will not affect his sense of contented identity as a Northern Irishman.

In the end, the rows over flags and parades and sectarian songs are the culture wars of a bitter and exhausted generation that inflicted and endured enough suffering to make – in Yeats’s words – “a stone of the heart”. The level of segregation is still a disgrace, but with modern communications it is no longer easy to keep the young brainwashed and tribal like their parents and grandparents.

Eventually, the sixtysomethings will be prised from the top of their greasy poles. For now, Unionist politicians must spell out in simple language that, whatever the Republicans allege, the census reflects reality: Northern Ireland is safe, unification is an outdated nationalist fantasy, and any Unionist who resorts to violence is doing exactly what Sinn Fein wants.

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