How persuadable people think seems to form a bit of a blind spot for those to whom it should matter most – people who are apparently invested in trying to keep NI in the UK and those who are set on achieving reunification. Both sides seem to prefer repetitive rhetoric laden arguments (with those who will never be convinced) and comfortable conversations with those of a similar persuasion. Many of us accept our unionism or nationalism as a kind of ... Read more...
How persuadable people think seems to form a bit of a blind spot for those to whom it should matter most – people who are apparently invested in trying to keep NI in the UK and those who are set on achieving reunification.
Both sides seem to prefer repetitive rhetoric laden arguments (with those who will never be convinced) and comfortable conversations with those of a similar persuasion.
Many of us accept our unionism or nationalism as a kind of birthright, but in many cases it’s really just assigned to us as an accident of birth – no matter what we tell ourselves.
My background is unionist and conservative Christian.
At some point I started to question what I saw as triumphalism within unionist culture. I found it jarring and odd how unionism appeared to enjoy provocation by rubbing peoples faces in it, marching where they were not wanted. I was mystified as to how people could claim not to be aware of any of this, it seemed like wilful ignorance to me.
I applied for and was offered a place to study at Trinity but I ended up choosing to go to Queens instead. While at university I wasn’t politically active, although I remember having long conversations with a person from Poleglass who said they had been in the INLA. I was not persuaded by their arguments, but I was open to and interested in talking to someone from a completely differently background to myself.
On graduation I ended up living and working in Dublin for almost ten years. We lived there during the tail end of the Celtic tiger, during and after the crash. During that time we earned a fortune, while still complaining about having to pay for things like having our rubbish collected. Even in those years, it was difficult to find a nice rental property but we always found somewhere decent in the end.
Dublin and her people treated me well. I have a big emotional connection to the place, much more so than Belfast.
After a decade or so, we wanted to move closer to family and to buy our first home, without mortgaging ourselves to the hilt. The NHS was also a factor in returning north, but unfortunately that seems very misguided in retrospect.
Anyway, it was really upon my return that I found myself increasingly inclined towards reunification and incredibly weary of political unionism. After years of normal politics in Dublin, our dysfunction here was glaring. Glimmers of hope and positivity were never nurtured, but squashed in the face of opposition from hardliners.
And now I had personal lived experience that life in “Ireland” could be good for a Protestant like me, despite all the fear mongering by unionism.
There is a sense that people living in the south own and solve their own problems. They are invested in making their country better and they have agency in making this happen. I remember hearing a public health announcement while driving in Connemara and feeling a lot of emotion in that moment. It’s hard to put into words, but it was a sense of belonging to a system of government – where the people in real authority are your own people and all of the big decisions are made just a few hours up the road.
Fast forward to today. I’ve been home for almost a decade and I feel a bit politically homeless. I’m in a state of absolute permanent exile (self imposed) from the unionism of my birth, but in trying to find where I belong I veer between the pragmatism of Alliance and the soft nationalism of the SDLP.
When I move back towards the middle ground it’s frustration at nationalism (particularly the SF brand of it) that sends me there, rather than any pull from unionism. Sometimes I feel that the second coming (reunification) is always believed to be so close/the answer to everything that no amount of suffering is too much in the meantime. I feel frustrated that nothing ever works because people don’t want to make it work and we are collectively being punished in the pursuit of greater goal, which has yet to be delivered.
I am northern Irish, but have no attachment to “Northern Ireland” the construct (be it country, region or province), despite a deep sense of belonging to the place, as in the land and many of the people.
I don’t feel at home within the hardline Irish republican camp. I detect hostility towards people like me and it makes me feel uneasy. The constant rhetoric used to belittle and make fun of unionist people (who are essentially my people by blood) is tiresome and makes me feel surprisingly defensive of stuff I don’t even personally hold dear.
I used to mock unionist culture myself, but I have come to learn there is an arrogance in that, and consequences one might not have considered.
For me, it’s important to avoid the self indulgence of group think and to always try to see the bigger picture, and indeed to try to be the better person no matter what. It’s the harder path to travel, but attacking people who only believe what they believe because of where they were born is not the way to go.
My instinct is that SF and the DUP seem to place preaching to the converted and party (votes etc) over their supposed overarching goal and so they are compromised in their ability to deliver what should be their very purpose.
