DUP's intransigence on Brexit leaves Northern Ireland at a crossroads

IIn February 1969, I was in Fermanagh County to talk about what was presented as a "crossroad election", during which Northern Ireland would choose between a limited reform and a state-to-party single Protestant and Unionist. I remember this campaign well because it was the subject of an article I was publishing for a university magazine, the first I ever wrote for a publication.

The election was deemed particularly important because the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Terence O. Neill, sought recognition of his policy of granting civil and political rights to the Catholic minority – a policy that divided his own trade union party.

I had the feeling early on that it was already too late to compromise because the institutionalized anti-Catholic discrimination was too deep for change to occur without violence.

There were signs of it in the villages and small towns around the Fermanagh lakes. I was following the campaign of a Catholic candidate with progressive views. One evening we saw a group of men standing by the roadside and he made a short speech denouncing the union establishment. Once he was finished, one of the men said that the candidate did not have to worry "because no one here will vote for a Protestant".

Like many calls to the moderate center of Northern Ireland over the last fifty years, O'Neill's has been less successful than expected. The Prime Minister said that he had received 150,000 letters in favor of political compromises, but that they had not given enough votes on election day to give him the mandate he needed.

He got only a slight majority among pro-reformed Union members and was humiliated when he nearly lost his seat in Bannside under the influence of the virulent anti-Catholic preacher, Ian Paisley, who had just gained importance in Northern Irish politics. A few months later, O'Neill resigned as prime minister. Paisley won the seat in the next 1970 election as a candidate of the Protestant Unionist party, which changed shortly afterwards to become the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).

Half a century later, many things have changed in the world, from the fall of the Soviet Union to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that followed September 11, but the DUP is virtually identical to what he was at the time.

The only (big) difference is that it is no longer a marginal party, but a party that provides the essential parliamentary support to keep the British government in power. Politicians and the media are eagerly and respectfully seeking out the conditions under which Britain should leave the European Union, apparently ignoring the fact that the DUP's agenda is very different from that of the Conservative Party and other Brexit supporters .

One of the many extraordinary things about Britain in the Brexit era is that the nature and history of DUP are not scrutinized more closely. On the other hand, it is in keeping with the British tradition of ignorance of Irish politics in the North and South, which does not deserve to be taken into consideration. This is despite the fact that the fate of Northern Ireland security is one of the main themes of television broadcasts and central to the most important decision in the history of the United Kingdom since the Second World War. Tony Blair was one of the only British leaders to know much about Northern Ireland, which is why he was able to negotiate the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) in 1998, which ended three decades of fighting.

Paisley has softened in his last years, becoming premier of the Northern Ireland Executive in 2007, but the DUP has changed less than him and remains closer to uncompromising and sectarian opinions. that he has adopted for most of his career. Once, he was asked about building bridges between the Protestant and Catholic communities in Northern Ireland and his answer explains a lot the approach taken by the DUP today. "Where are the bridges going?", He asked rhetorically and gave the clbadic answer, insulting to his eyes: "they are heading from the other side".

There is strong evidence that DUP leader Arlene Foster, who opposed the GFA as a member of the Ulster Unionist Party before joining the DUP, continues to think in this direction. When she asked him in 2017 why she had not bargained with Sinn Fein, the dominant nationalist and Catholic party and her partner in the North Irish executive power, she responded "If you feed a crocodile, he will come back and look for more.

She then regretted the comparison of crocodiles, but her record seems to confirm her words to Catholics, who now make up half of the population of 1.9 million people in Northern Ireland.

Later that year, Theresa May lost her parliamentary majority in the general election and entered into a trust and supply agreement with the DUP. This is accompanied by a £ 1 billion grant for Northern Ireland, in addition to the usual UK annual grant of £ 11 billion a year.

The DUP had an extraordinary chance, but perhaps less for the UK as a whole, that the party retains the balance of power at such a critical moment, even though its beliefs had hardly changed since the first years of the Troubles.

Dr. John Kyle, Councilor of the Progressive Unionist Party on the Belfast City Council and General Practitioner in the heart of Belfast's Protestant East, has been closely examining DUP in action for several decades.

"The DUP remains socially conservative, politically right-wing, highly sectarian, very pragmatic, tough negotiators and always reluctant to change." He adds that the central terrain of Northern Irish politics remains sparsely populated because of the polarization exacerbated by Brexit.

The DUP wins the elections, he continues, "because, when pushed, he plays the constitutional card [saying that the union with Great Britain is under threat] and people are nervous to vote in any other way that would give victory to the opposition [Sinn Fein]Kyle adds that Sinn Fein benefits exactly the same way by persuading Catholic voters to gather around their candidates to stop unionists.

Alison Morris, security correspondent for Irish newssaid that everything goes in the direction of the DUP: "The party can say" we are practically in power in Westminster and we have all this confidence and we provide money ". They are drunk in power. They like Brexit because it's a British-style identity. They do not want anything to do with the south [Irish Republic]"

Given its undeniable influence in Westminster, the DUP does not need to share power with anyone in Northern Ireland and it is likely to do even better than before in the upcoming elections.

Yet, the DUP remains a foreign movement that most people do not notice when watching its MPs interviewed by the British media. Two extremely sectarian and regressive organizations lie at the heart of its operation: the Free Presbyterian Church, founded by Ian Paisley in 1951, and the Orange Order.

Three out of ten (30.5%) members of the DUP belong to the Free Presbyterians according to The democratic unionist party: from protest to power Jonathan Tonge, Mayor Braniff and others, who interviewed three-quarters of the party members. This is a high proportion of the DUP, as there are only 10,068 free Presbyterians, who make up 0.6% of the population of Ireland. North.

The other characteristic of the DUP is membership in the Orange Order, with 34.6% of members belonging to an organization whose determination to parade in Catholic areas has often caused sectarian violence in the past (although much less today by reorienting or banning parades crossing sensitive areas).

The DUP is therefore much more like the Republican Party of the Southern States of the United States, with its backbone of Christian fundamentalist evangelicals, than other British political parties. His social policies on issues such as abortion are regressive and homophobia has a tradition that has not changed since Ian Paisley led the "Save Ulster of Sodomy" campaign in 1977.

Lord Patten, former Conservative Party president and European commissioner, who is one of the few British political leaders with knowledge of Northern Ireland, reportedly told a newspaper interview this week that May's agreement with the DUP in 2017 was "a huge mistake". He believes that the British government has "compromised its balanced position on Northern Ireland in order to go to bed with the DUP".

The DUP denies wanting a hard border, which would be economically devastating for many businessmen and farmers who vote for the party. But there is widespread suspicion in Northern Ireland that this is not true and that the party basically wants a hard boundary separating Northern Ireland from the Republic of Ireland, as this would bring a fatal blow to the agreement of Good Friday. Foster said last October that the agreement was not "sacrosanct" and could be amended to accommodate Brexit.

"DUPs have never been in favor of framework agreements," Morris said, noting that the party's hostility to the Good Friday deal was not surprising. "They voted against that at the time. Why should they protect him now? He was supposed to have quite similar nationalists and trade unionists forming a government. But the DUP and Sinn Fein disagree on almost all economic and social policies. They do not even agree on the name of the place: Sinn Fein still calls it the North and DUP of Northern Ireland.

Surprisingly, the leaders of Sinn Fein do not seem to worry about the prevalence of DUP, claiming that it is only temporary and that it will come to an end as soon as the DUP does not. will have more power in Westminster. There may be an element of wishful thinking in this; and the political parties all like to imagine that the successes of their opponents are pyrrhic victories. Lord Patten baderts, however, that the DUP is "doing more for Sinn Fein than Sinn Fein by undermining confidence in the existing economic and political relations between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom," he said. Europe and the Republic of Ireland ".

The Catholic community relies on another long-term factor that, in its view, would negate the tactical gains made by the DUP. Their numbers are growing faster than Protestants and they will be in the majority by 2021, which is a coincidence for the 100th anniversary of the founding of the state of Northern Ireland.

It is equally important that the Catholic community become more prosperous and better educated than Protestants. It used to be the Catholics who held low-level jobs and had an unemployment rate twice that of Protestants – 18% versus 9% in 1972 – but this gap has disappeared. The Catholic middle clbad has been the main beneficiary of the peace process and Catholics make up 60% of the tertiary education workforce.

Queens University in Belfast is increasingly seen as a "green" institution, while Protestants often go to Scottish or English universities and many do not return after graduating. Catholics are increasingly dominating professions such as law, medicine and accounting.

"Professional clbades are increasingly populated by the nationalist community," says Dr. Kyle, adding that Protestant youth of the working clbad of East Belfast would have historically entered the shipyards and would have worked as welders, painters, plumbers – heavy industrial jobs that have disappeared today. . Ironically, Catholics were less vulnerable to deindustrialization because discrimination had prevented them from getting the industrial jobs that have now disappeared.

Morris tells his own family history to illustrate this trend: "My mother was a housekeeper, she had eight children; my father was mainly unemployed because of the troubles. She was removed from school at the age of 14 to care for other children, but she was obsessed with education, as were many Catholic families, and she pushed us all to go to high school. "

The fortuitous political triumph of the DUP comes at a time when the Protestant and Unionist community is declining socially and demographically.

According to Dr. Kyle, "most trade unionists would have the impression that it is only a matter of time before the majority of the population is of nationalist or republican origin". He believes that the "arrogance and sufficiency" of DUPs and their efforts to impose Brexit despite the majority opposition of Northern Ireland (56 to 44% in the 2016 referendum) will be counter-productive. productive because they alienate the nationalists and the middle clbades. trade unionists.

The Good Friday agreement is compromised by the prospect of a tough border despite its great success as a historic compromise between the two communities. The economic benefits are visible everywhere. The Belfast metropolitan area, which has a population of 600,000, seems more prosperous than many cities in the rest of the United Kingdom.

It is this success that is now jeopardized. This does not mean that there will be a resumption of unrest after 1968-1969, but that friction between Catholics and Protestants has further increased after the fall of recent years.

Morris remembers reports from the Orange Order parades around July 12, usually the culmination of sectarian violence. "I often went home at four or five in the morning, covered with bruises caused by metal locks thrown at parades," she says. But the clashes have become much less common and in the last three years she has said, "I often sat in a bar with a glbad of wine in my hand at seven in the evening."

This trend could reverse if Brexit raises the political temperature in Northern Ireland. The lack of concern and ignorance about what could happen is illustrated by the way in which the Brexiteers denounce the backstop as a conspiracy by the EU and the Irish Republic to trap the Great Britain. Brittany in the customs union rather than would reverse the agreement on Good Friday.

The GFA was probably the biggest achievement of the British state in the last fifty years. The DUP would like to see him disappear or strip him of all meaning, and he could succeed. As in the 1969 general election, Northern Ireland is at a crossroads again.

---

We will tell you what is true. You can form your own view.

AT L & # 39; Independentno one tells us what to write. This is why, in the era of political lies and biases in Brexit, more and more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p per day for additional exclusives, events and eBooks – all without advertising

Subscribe now