UNDERGRADUATE ARTICLE
Is Ulster Here to Stay?
B y JULIAN CRITCHLEY (Pembroke College, Oxford) I EVER a Sunday passes in Hyde Park without a speech from the Irish Anti-Partitionists. Week upon week the wrongs done to Ireland are paraded before an unheeding world. The Londoner, whose pleasure it is to stroll around the speakers, will never stay long at the tricoloured stand. Ireland is no longer a topic of the moment. Only the Celtic Irish are left in front of their tireless speaker. The audience is the same every week. The Irish of Kilburn troop solemnly down the Edgware Road, to be whipped into the conditioned enthusiasm over the way honest Irishmen are groaning beneath the yoke of the " fascist " Ulster government. The speaker does not try to convert or to persuade. It is entirely unnecessary. He is speaking to a hundred and ten people, every one of whom has heard how their grand- fathers marched upon Dublin in '16, and how the General Post Office held out till the Civil war !
Will Ireland ever be unified ? Are the Kilburn Irish doomed to the passing of eternal resolutions ? There is no chance of the Irish being able to enlist the support of a major British political party as they did with the Liberals of fifty years ago. The Conservatives are also the Unionists, the Orange Order and the Conservative Central Office are in firm alliance; the Labour Party is in favour of the border. Even the rump of the Liberal Party has not forsaken the banner of Home Rule and stands in support of the independence of Ulster. Ireland is but a geographical expression. There is one Ire- land on the map, but two kinds of Irish. The Ulsterman is as different from the Southern Irishman as chalk from cheese. He is of Scots-English ancestry, descended of the plantation of Ulster by the first Elizabeth. He is in the main an urban industrial worker.. The Harland and Wolff shipyards—where else in Britain does the Tory party get the docker's vote ?- and the flax industry provide a large proportion of Unionist votes. On the other hand, the Nationalist is either a casual labourer, or a farm worker on the western fringes of Ulster. The Ulster Unionist is a staunch supporter of Britain, the British connection, 'and the Royal family. At every election the choice that the Unionists offer is between. Queen and Republic. Their loyalist enthusiasm out-Englishes the English. Compare this, then, with the well-known hostility towards British Royalty shown by the Irish republican. He associates the Queen with foreign domination and the tyranny of an alien rule. The Ulsterman will hang out the Union Jack and cry " God Save the Queen " upon the slightest provocation. Racially they are different, socially they are separated, politic- ally they are poles apart. But by far the most important difference is that of religion. The Scots-Irish 1,21sterman is a dour, even dismal, low-church Protestant, of the type of Protestantism that is above all else uncompromising and narrow-minded. The Nationalist is a Roman Catholic, not even a Catholic of the comparatively liberal continental kind, but in his turn an uncompromising fanatic who associates his religion as an active ally in his fight for national independence. It is an old accusation that the South is " priest-ridden," but there is unfortunately some truth in the statement. Thus in Ireland we have all the symptoms of political incompatibility. Religion has gone out of English politics. Not so in Ireland. There, a man born Protestant votes Protestant. A man born Catholic votes Catholic. Until the ideological gap can be bridged there is no real hope for a settlement between the two Irelands.
There is a perpetual Unionist majority in the Ulster Parlia- ment. The population divides three to one in favour of the Unionist Protestant parties. Thus Ulster suffers from some of the stagnation that is inevitable in a one-party state. However efficient government may be at its inception, after five years in office even the best begin to show signs of administrative weariness. The Unionists have been the government for thirty years. But what are the alternatives ? The Labour Party in Northern Ireland is rididulously weak. It could never make up its mind to come down for or against the border, and thus it pleased nobody, and withered away. The third party is the Nationalists. They have twelve seats at Stormont, a proportion that has never really altered. It is in no sense of the word a " loyal opposition." It is pledged to surrender the sovereignty of the country it purports to represent. Its declared objectives are to sever the imperial connection and join up with the Eire republic. There is no practical choice. A loyalist Northern Irish Labour Party may grow up, but if it did so it would probably place the Nationalists in the position of calling the tune in Ulster affairs. Any gain in Labour support could only take place at the expense of Unionist votes. There is again no real raison' d'etre for a large Labour Party on the British model in Northern Ireland. There is a certain degree of unemploy- ment, it is true, but it is mainly residual. But the Unionists have adopted all the social reforms that have been put through at Westminster since 1940, not only by the Conservatives, but also by the Labour Government. Therefore there is no press- ing demand for a free Health Service, or larger insurance benefits.
A characteristic feature of the Unionist Party is the Orange Order, a semi-religious political organisation that dates back some three hundred years, and whose avowed principles are the maintenance of the Protestant ascendency. It acts in rela- tion to the Unionist Party in the way that a more powerful Primrose League would do in relation to the Conservative Party. It is a hard core of active Unionists, a ginger group active in spreading Unionism in all facets of. Northern Irish life. It has many disadvantages : it is bigoted; it exercises an undue influence on the programmes and policies of the Unionist party. It is yet another unhealthy example of what happens when tolerance has not yet entered into the practical application of a person's religious beliefs. The influence of the Orange Order on Northern Irish politics is mirrored by the influence of the Catholic Hierarchy on the Dublin Dail. There, Catholic reaction is the tail that wags the Irish political dog. Any attempt to bring in a welfare State, however modest in conception, in a country where the standard of life in the rural areas is one of the lowest in Europe, is bound to come up against implacable opposition from the Catholic bishops. It was ex-Health Minister Dr. Brown who recently learnt that a medical association is not the sole source of opposition to a Health Service,. Yet another accusation against Ulster is the statement that NOrthern Ireland is occupied by British—therefore foreign— troops, and it is only their presence that prevents the people of Ulster from rising and throwing the English out. Ulster is an integral part of the United Kingdom, so how does the presence of, say, the King's Shropshire Light Infantry in Lisburn Barracks imply English Imperialism? For all I know the Gordon Highlanders may be stationed at Wigan, but does that mean that Lancashire is groaning beneath the heel of the Scots? Eire is very sensitive. A couple of years ago, a Dutch naval air squadron was stationed for a short time in Ulster during manoeuvres staged by the Atlantic Pact countries. Eire protested officially to the Dutch Government against this infringement of the territorial rights of Ireland." For Eire has not participated in the Atlantic alliance. She has attempted —so far without any effect—to bargain the abolition of the border as the price for her active participation.
There is no foreseeable end to partition. If the Northern Irish people vote for it, which is unthinkable, the border would be abolished tomorrow. If Eire rejoins the Commonwealth and recognises the Queen, which is equally unlikely, then perhaps the same thing would apply. Both are only remote possibilities. One can but wait till nationalist and religious feelings mellow, and there is no one who will need more patience than the Irish Anti-Partitionist in Hyde Park.
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