There is something profoundly anachronistic about a strain of backward-looking unionism that continues to measure the present against an imagined golden age of singular political and cultural dominance. It is a politics that too often regards equality not as the natural condition of democracy but as a loss of status. Beneath it lies an assumption and a fear that Irish cultural identity, coupled with its constitutional aspiration, must first pass through an acceptance prism established by such unionism before it can be considered legitimate. That idea is not merely outdated. It runs directly against a democratic tradition born in Ulster’s own ‘Athens of the North’ a tradition that has existed in Ireland for more than two centuries.
The historical irony is compelling. In 1791 Belfast became the birthplace of Irish republican democracy with the rise of the ‘Society of United Irishmen’. Henry Joy McCracken, Samuel Neilson, Thomas Russell and their contemporaries were transformed by the Enlightenment and by the political revolutions in America and France. Wolfe Tone would famously seek to replace the sectarian divisions of Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter with the “common name of Irishman.” Behind the rhetoric was a powerful democratic proposition: political authority derives ultimately from the people — not from an ascendancy. That principle challenged a society structured around inherited privilege. Citizenship was not supposed to depend upon belonging to the correct religion, class or political tradition. Government could not legitimately remain the permanent possession of a particular caste.
That is why the democratic inheritance of the United Irish movement remains relevant today. Strip away the romance of pikes, rebellion and song and one encounters a fundamental argument about sovereignty: does political authority belong to an established ruling group, or to the people? Equality means precisely this neither community is master and neither is supplicant.
Yet some political attitudes towards the others remain acceptable only when sufficiently moderated to satisfy a dominant tradition. The ghost of ascendancy has not been laid to rest. At its most extreme, this recalls what I describe as Herrenvolk democracy, democratic institutions may formally exist, but one community nevertheless imagines itself the natural custodian of the polity, its hidden hand possessing a belief of greater entitlement to determine its character and political future.
Modern democracy cannot and does not function on that basis. Nor, however, should this criticism be confined to irredentist unionism. There are partitionist voices within southern Irish politics equally uncomfortable with the full democratic implications of constitutional change in the six counties. Some appear prepared to defend the constitutional settlement only for as long as the existing outcome suits them.
That misunderstands the democratic bargain at the heart of the Good Friday Agreement (an international treaty I successfully defended in the High Court of Belfast in 2021). The GFA did not establish Northern Ireland’s position within the United Kingdom as an eternal constitutional settlement, nor did it render Irish unity an improper or illegitimate ambitionthat came in second. It established consent as the governing principle. The six counties remain within the United Kingdom for as long as a majority wishes it; constitutional change through peaceful democratic means remains equally legitimate if a majority chooses another future. The GFA is the operative constitution in the north. It must be implemented as agreed, not deliberately filibustered to the cows come home.
That principle cuts in both directions. Irish unity cannot democratically be imposed upon a population that does not consent to it. But neither can unionism, Westminster, or politicians in Dublin declare that peacefully pursuing Irish unity is somehow illegitimate, merely because they fear the democratic outcome.
Meanwhile Dublin erects fresh barriers and hurdles, reaching for new buzzwords and bureaucratic money schemes which sound fine, but who’s real intention is to slow momentum, another filibuster with bells. We have arrived at the absurd position where the current Taoiseach, leader of the so-called Republican Party, Fianna Fáil considers the idea of Irish unity “bananas.” Les perfides partitionnistes!
Liam Mellows foresaw precisely this in 1922: “Men will get into positions, men will hold power, and men who hold power will desire to remain undisturbed and will not want to be removed.” As was ever thus, yet modernity is catching up fast and the partitionnistes know it.
Democracy is destiny. It means accepting the possibility of change. Demographics shift. Political ideas, attitudes and identities evolve and constitutional preferences may pivot with them. A democratic system cannot freeze history at the moment most convenient to whichever group once held political predominance. The political continuum never stops and never sleeps but always evolves.
Equality can feel unsettling to those accustomed to dominance. But the loss of privilege must never be confused with the loss of rights. Unionists are entitled to advocate passionately and peacefully for the Union. Nationalists are equally entitled to advocate for a united Ireland. Those identifying as British, Irish or both are entitled to have those identities fully respected.
In that sense, 1798 and 1998 speak to one another across time. Those enlightened radicals of the 1790s posed a fundamental question: should Ireland be governed according to the permanent interests of an ascendancy or according to the political will of its citizens? The Good Friday Agreement translated that democratic principle into a modern constitutional framework grounded in equality, peaceful politics and consent. Neither unreconstructed unionism yearning for a vanished hegemony, nor southern political gatekeepers uncomfortable with those nordy Irish aspirations, can determine in advance what democratic choices citizens are permitted to make.
“No man has a right to fix the boundary to the march of a nation; no man has a right to say to his country — thus far shalt thou go and no further.” — Charles Stewart Parnell
There should be no ascendancy, no permanent hegemony, no superior community and no inherited political veto. No coercion from nationalism; no permanent veto from not-an-inch unionism, Downing Street or Dublin and certainly no expectation that Irish identity or constitutional aspiration must first obtain the approval of another tradition or interest before it becomes legitimate. There has always been a peculiar political exceptionalism at work in the north, in that fifty per cent plus one is considered perfectly sufficient to maintain the Union,yet somehow inadequate when that same democratic majority chooses to end it or even given the chance to test the bone fides that the union has democratic legitimacy.
After all, we’ve never been asked! There’s the rub. Who fears to speak of 1998 and the Good Friday Agreement?
More than two hundred and thirty years later the Belfast’s United Irishmen and women are rising once again and challenging the politics of modern day shameless ascendancy of powerand bigotry with a yearning for real democracy, their demand for Irish self-determination should no longer be considered revolutionary and outdated. It is now mainstream. Be part of it and …‘Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend’
Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter. British, Irish or both.
Political equals, citizens together and ultimately the people sovereign.
Huzza! Huzza! Up the Republic!
There is something profoundly anachronistic about a strain of backward-looking unionism that continues to measure the present against an imagined golden age of singular political and cultural dominance. It is a politics that too often regards equality not as the natural condition of democracy but as a loss of status. Beneath it lies an assumption and a fear that Irish cultural identity, coupled with its constitutional aspiration, must first pass through an acceptance prism established by such unionism before it can be considered legitimate. That idea is not merely outdated. It runs directly against a democratic tradition born in Ulster’s own ‘Athens of the North’ a tradition that has existed in Ireland for more than two centuries.
The historical irony is compelling. In 1791 Belfast became the birthplace of Irish republican democracy with the rise of the ‘Society of United Irishmen’. Henry Joy McCracken, Samuel Neilson, Thomas Russell and their contemporaries were transformed by the Enlightenment and by the political revolutions in America and France. Wolfe Tone would famously seek to replace the sectarian divisions of Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter with the “common name of Irishman.” Behind the rhetoric was a powerful democratic proposition: political authority derives ultimately from the people — not from an ascendancy. That principle challenged a society structured around inherited privilege. Citizenship was not supposed to depend upon belonging to the correct religion, class or political tradition. Government could not legitimately remain the permanent possession of a particular caste.
That is why the democratic inheritance of the United Irish movement remains relevant today. Strip away the romance of pikes, rebellion and song and one encounters a fundamental argument about sovereignty: does political authority belong to an established ruling group, or to the people? Equality means precisely this neither community is master and neither is supplicant.
Yet some political attitudes towards the others remain acceptable only when sufficiently moderated to satisfy a dominant tradition. The ghost of ascendancy has not been laid to rest. At its most extreme, this recalls what I describe as Herrenvolk democracy, democratic institutions may formally exist, but one community nevertheless imagines itself the natural custodian of the polity, its hidden hand possessing a belief of greater entitlement to determine its character and political future.
Modern democracy cannot and does not function on that basis. Nor, however, should this criticism be confined to irredentist unionism. There are partitionist voices within southern Irish politics equally uncomfortable with the full democratic implications of constitutional change in the six counties. Some appear prepared to defend the constitutional settlement only for as long as the existing outcome suits them.
That misunderstands the democratic bargain at the heart of the Good Friday Agreement (an international treaty I successfully defended in the High Court of Belfast in 2021). The GFA did not establish Northern Ireland’s position within the United Kingdom as an eternal constitutional settlement, nor did it render Irish unity an improper or illegitimate ambitionthat came in second. It established consent as the governing principle. The six counties remain within the United Kingdom for as long as a majority wishes it; constitutional change through peaceful democratic means remains equally legitimate if a majority chooses another future. The GFA is the operative constitution in the north. It must be implemented as agreed, not deliberately filibustered to the cows come home.
That principle cuts in both directions. Irish unity cannot democratically be imposed upon a population that does not consent to it. But neither can unionism, Westminster, or politicians in Dublin declare that peacefully pursuing Irish unity is somehow illegitimate, merely because they fear the democratic outcome.
Meanwhile Dublin erects fresh barriers and hurdles, reaching for new buzzwords and bureaucratic money schemes which sound fine, but who’s real intention is to slow momentum, another filibuster with bells. We have arrived at the absurd position where the current Taoiseach, leader of the so-called Republican Party, Fianna Fáil considers the idea of Irish unity “bananas.” Les perfides partitionnistes!
Liam Mellows foresaw precisely this in 1922: “Men will get into positions, men will hold power, and men who hold power will desire to remain undisturbed and will not want to be removed.” As was ever thus, yet modernity is catching up fast and the partitionnistes know it.
Democracy is destiny. It means accepting the possibility of change. Demographics shift. Political ideas, attitudes and identities evolve and constitutional preferences may pivot with them. A democratic system cannot freeze history at the moment most convenient to whichever group once held political predominance. The political continuum never stops and never sleeps but always evolves.
Equality can feel unsettling to those accustomed to dominance. But the loss of privilege must never be confused with the loss of rights. Unionists are entitled to advocate passionately and peacefully for the Union. Nationalists are equally entitled to advocate for a united Ireland. Those identifying as British, Irish or both are entitled to have those identities fully respected.
In that sense, 1798 and 1998 speak to one another across time. Those enlightened radicals of the 1790s posed a fundamental question: should Ireland be governed according to the permanent interests of an ascendancy or according to the political will of its citizens? The Good Friday Agreement translated that democratic principle into a modern constitutional framework grounded in equality, peaceful politics and consent. Neither unreconstructed unionism yearning for a vanished hegemony, nor southern political gatekeepers uncomfortable with those nordy Irish aspirations, can determine in advance what democratic choices citizens are permitted to make.
There should be no ascendancy, no permanent hegemony, no superior community and no inherited political veto. No coercion from nationalism; no permanent veto from not-an-inch unionism, Downing Street or Dublin and certainly no expectation that Irish identity or constitutional aspiration must first obtain the approval of another tradition or interest before it becomes legitimate. There has always been a peculiar political exceptionalism at work in the north, in that fifty per cent plus one is considered perfectly sufficient to maintain the Union,yet somehow inadequate when that same democratic majority chooses to end it or even given the chance to test the bone fides that the union has democratic legitimacy.
After all, we’ve never been asked! There’s the rub. Who fears to speak of 1998 and the Good Friday Agreement?
More than two hundred and thirty years later the Belfast’s United Irishmen and women are rising once again and challenging the politics of modern day shameless ascendancy of powerand bigotry with a yearning for real democracy, their demand for Irish self-determination should no longer be considered revolutionary and outdated. It is now mainstream. Be part of it and …‘Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend’
Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter. British, Irish or both.
Political equals, citizens together and ultimately the people sovereign.
Huzza! Huzza! Up the Republic!