By Kevin Meaghar
‘You can’t always get what you want,’ the Rolling Stones insisted. ‘But if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.’ If we struggle to divine what unionists might like from a reunited Ireland (because they won’t tell us), can we at least offer them what they need?
The thought occurred to me after reading a recent piece by Andy Pollak on the Slugger O’Toole website. I always find him worth reading for a liberal unionist perspective but found myself scratching my head on this occasion.
‘What they want is actually quite straightforward,’ he wrote. They want their ‘British and Protestant identity and culture to be respected and protected in a future united state.’ Especially urban working class and rural unionists ‘for whom the Orange Order, parades, bands and bonfires are important.’
But what does that mean in practical terms? ‘There are many ways of doing this,’ he elides ‘but three possibles immediately come to mind. Change the flag; change the anthem; change the constitution.’ As I wrote the other day, starting the conversation with cultural issues is a road to nowhere and merely invites impasse.
On the Irish constitution, Pollak suggests ‘insert[ing] a clause recognising and pledging legally to protect the loyalty of a significant minority of the Irish people to the British monarch’. I’m not sure how that works in practice. Is there any other state with similar guarantees in its constitution? It feels like it would be open season for vexatious legal cases. (‘I’m British and there’s Irish music in the pub, so I’m being discriminated against…’). Anyway, Ireland’s written constitution is already pretty sound on protecting minorities, but okay, tightening-up safeguards around individual liberty should not worry anyone. (It bears saying that the Orange Order in the south has few complaints).
Pollak also mentions Ireland rejoining the Commonwealth. Some will be instinctively hostile to this, but the Taoiseach attending a few meetings a year with other heads of state, thus affording unionists an umbilical link to the auld country, is a concession worth considering. What else has he got? Er, that’s pretty much it. But what do unionists need? There was nothing about protecting agriculture. Or the number of seats the north might get in the Dáil. Or what local decision-making model might fit in unionist areas. Or regeneration guarantees for east Belfast. Or more frequent air and sea links to Britain. Or even ongoing access to the BBC iplayer.
I accept its tricky for many unionists to sit at the table and outline what they want as concession prizes from the process of constitutional change that renders Northern Ireland obsolete. They can hardly validate that eventuality with their active engagement before it happens. Still, United Irelanders are not mind-readers. And while we’re at it, they are entitled to a few preconditions of their own. We still need to hear that unionists will accept the result of a border poll with equanimity. That being the case, they should have no issue with a crackdown by the British authorities on recalcitrant loyalist narco-groups that still operate in plain sight. Their removal from the political stage should be something everyone can agree on. We cannot allow the spectre of UToV – the Unionist Threat of Violence – to linger in the room any longer. I guess what it boils down to is this: Unionists are entitled to a fair deal, but not special pleading. A reasoned and reasonable offer designed to maximise the benefits of Irish unity and to treat those for whom it will be an unwelcome result the surety that they will be equal citizens in the new republic.
They are also entitled to hear that offer spelled out in detail. So United Irelanders need to plough on with greater urgency, setting out the contours of how a 32-county Irish state will work, with or without active unionist involvement in the discussion at this point. And it must be a rational conversation at all times: What matters is what works. Retaining Stormont in whatever shape or form, for example, would be nothing short of insane. You cannot have a second legislature 90 minutes up the road from the main one in a country of fewer than eight million people. It would be a recipe for chaos and grandstanding. Instead, look at what the neighbours are up to. Devolution is the hot button issue in British politics with meaningful political and agency being transferred to localities.
Perhaps this united Ireland might also adopt a socialised healthcare system like Britain’s. Northern Ireland’s NHS gets £8 billion a year – roughly the same amount that Greater Manchester receives. (Although Greater Manchester’s population is a third higher and infinitely more complex than Northern Ireland’s). Integrating northern and southern systems will deduplicate costs and provide economies of scale that are currently going begging. Ireland’s economic success would quickly transform the north, reliant as it has been for half a century on an intravenous relationship with public funding. The sheer unreality of Stormont’s public finances – requiring ever more cash not to improve life in Northern Ireland, but merely to maintain its current level of dysfunction – more than fulfils Einstein’s definition of madness.
On the issues Pollak raises – what I might term the cultural stuff – a deal is there at some stage, subject to give and take. But it’s the ‘three P’s’ that I would respectfully suggest he, unionists more broadly and even United Irelanders turn their attentions.
Power. Prosperity. Public services.
By Kevin Meaghar
‘You can’t always get what you want,’ the Rolling Stones insisted. ‘But if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.’ If we struggle to divine what unionists might like from a reunited Ireland (because they won’t tell us), can we at least offer them what they need?
The thought occurred to me after reading a recent piece by Andy Pollak on the Slugger O’Toole website. I always find him worth reading for a liberal unionist perspective but found myself scratching my head on this occasion.
‘What they want is actually quite straightforward,’ he wrote. They want their ‘British and Protestant identity and culture to be respected and protected in a future united state.’ Especially urban working class and rural unionists ‘for whom the Orange Order, parades, bands and bonfires are important.’
But what does that mean in practical terms? ‘There are many ways of doing this,’ he elides ‘but three possibles immediately come to mind. Change the flag; change the anthem; change the constitution.’ As I wrote the other day, starting the conversation with cultural issues is a road to nowhere and merely invites impasse.
On the Irish constitution, Pollak suggests ‘insert[ing] a clause recognising and pledging legally to protect the loyalty of a significant minority of the Irish people to the British monarch’. I’m not sure how that works in practice. Is there any other state with similar guarantees in its constitution? It feels like it would be open season for vexatious legal cases. (‘I’m British and there’s Irish music in the pub, so I’m being discriminated against…’). Anyway, Ireland’s written constitution is already pretty sound on protecting minorities, but okay, tightening-up safeguards around individual liberty should not worry anyone. (It bears saying that the Orange Order in the south has few complaints).
Pollak also mentions Ireland rejoining the Commonwealth. Some will be instinctively hostile to this, but the Taoiseach attending a few meetings a year with other heads of state, thus affording unionists an umbilical link to the auld country, is a concession worth considering. What else has he got? Er, that’s pretty much it. But what do unionists need? There was nothing about protecting agriculture. Or the number of seats the north might get in the Dáil. Or what local decision-making model might fit in unionist areas. Or regeneration guarantees for east Belfast. Or more frequent air and sea links to Britain. Or even ongoing access to the BBC iplayer.
I accept its tricky for many unionists to sit at the table and outline what they want as concession prizes from the process of constitutional change that renders Northern Ireland obsolete. They can hardly validate that eventuality with their active engagement before it happens. Still, United Irelanders are not mind-readers. And while we’re at it, they are entitled to a few preconditions of their own. We still need to hear that unionists will accept the result of a border poll with equanimity. That being the case, they should have no issue with a crackdown by the British authorities on recalcitrant loyalist narco-groups that still operate in plain sight. Their removal from the political stage should be something everyone can agree on. We cannot allow the spectre of UToV – the Unionist Threat of Violence – to linger in the room any longer. I guess what it boils down to is this: Unionists are entitled to a fair deal, but not special pleading. A reasoned and reasonable offer designed to maximise the benefits of Irish unity and to treat those for whom it will be an unwelcome result the surety that they will be equal citizens in the new republic.
They are also entitled to hear that offer spelled out in detail. So United Irelanders need to plough on with greater urgency, setting out the contours of how a 32-county Irish state will work, with or without active unionist involvement in the discussion at this point. And it must be a rational conversation at all times: What matters is what works. Retaining Stormont in whatever shape or form, for example, would be nothing short of insane. You cannot have a second legislature 90 minutes up the road from the main one in a country of fewer than eight million people. It would be a recipe for chaos and grandstanding. Instead, look at what the neighbours are up to. Devolution is the hot button issue in British politics with meaningful political and agency being transferred to localities.
Perhaps this united Ireland might also adopt a socialised healthcare system like Britain’s. Northern Ireland’s NHS gets £8 billion a year – roughly the same amount that Greater Manchester receives. (Although Greater Manchester’s population is a third higher and infinitely more complex than Northern Ireland’s). Integrating northern and southern systems will deduplicate costs and provide economies of scale that are currently going begging. Ireland’s economic success would quickly transform the north, reliant as it has been for half a century on an intravenous relationship with public funding. The sheer unreality of Stormont’s public finances – requiring ever more cash not to improve life in Northern Ireland, but merely to maintain its current level of dysfunction – more than fulfils Einstein’s definition of madness.
On the issues Pollak raises – what I might term the cultural stuff – a deal is there at some stage, subject to give and take. But it’s the ‘three P’s’ that I would respectfully suggest he, unionists more broadly and even United Irelanders turn their attentions.
Power. Prosperity. Public services.