No more covenant, no more blood.
In 1912, with Home Rule for Ireland a real possibility, the vast majority of the country's largest minority group, the Protestants, signed a covenant declaring their implacable opposition to such a policy. Some of those who signed on to resist Irish self-government forsook the luxury of ink, choosing instead to write in their own blood. According to my grandmother, several of my male ancestors chose to make their mark in this manner. Their blood, my blood, is on that covenant.
It's one of the great tragedies of Irish life that each new generation is imprisoned by the mindset of the one before. Part of full political maturity, as far as I'm concerned, is the ability to disregard Bismarck's dvice to "think with your blood" and to think with your brain instead. You should be able to come to your own conclusion, whether or not this tallies with that of your forbears. So I feel I'm doing nothing immoral when I say that the time has come for us, as Protestants, to embrace Irish unity.
I was born too late unfortunately, to ever speak to a family member who could remember back to 1912. I don't know first-hand why people signed up to resist Home Rule in this way, but I can make a pretty good guess. Leaving aside economic and imperial issues, which were of some import, it seems to me that the over-riding reason that Protestants feared rule from Dublin was pure, brute numbers. Quite simply, they didn't want to live in a state where they would be outnumbered four to one.
As in 1912, so in the vastly different world of 2004. There may be fewer Irish Protestants prepared to sign anything in their own blood these days, but nevertheless, most Protestants still fear rule from Dublin for the same reason that their great-grandparents did. The suspicion has always been that, should Protestants in the North acede to a united Ireland, they would soon find their culture and religion suppressed and their numbers reduced by economic discrimination.
In all fairness, when one surveys the past century of Irish history, one finds plenty to support this attitude. The independent Irish state which arose from the wars of the 1920s was indeed one which was defined in narrowly Catholic terms. The church was given the reigns of power in education for generations. Catholic doctrine on abortion, contraception and divorce became government policy. The Roman Catholic church was recognised as having a special status in the Irish constitution. Thanks to emigration and inter-marriage, the state's small Protestant population declined markedly. In short, a northern Protestant looking for encouragement to change their mind about a united Ireland, would not get much from looking at the state in the South.
But there are two important reasons why, I think Protestants should not look on this as a reason to remain opposed to unity. Firstly, the South today is a vastly different country from what it was even twenty years ago. A great secular tide is washing over the Irish Republic, pushing the Catholic church out of the public sphere and back where it belongs - in the private world of personal morality.
The Ireland of de Valera is gone forever and this is the crucial point. Secularism is a one-way street, it is irreversible. The retreat of religion in the South is powered by complex social and economic factors which transcend international boundaries. No politician, no matter how much they wail for the return of "old-fashioned family values" can turn back the clock.
The divorce referendum of 1995 is a good example of this. The proposal to legalise the annulment of marriages passed by the narrowest of margins with many commentators speculating that rain in the conservative west had been the crucial factor on polling day. But now that divorce is legal, it would be unimaginable to outlaw it again. A victory for secularism, no matter how narrow, quickly becomes entrenched. So Protestants in the North needn't worry that the changes in the South are some passing fad.
Secondly, it should always be remembered that the Southern state, whether confessional or secular, is not the state of the whole of Ireland. The so called Republic of Ireland does not rule six of Ireland's counties, containing almost a third of her population. Most pertinently, the state does not include the great majority of Ireland's largest non-Catholic population.
So a true united Ireland would look very different to the Irish state of today. The current Republic of Ireland, in spite of its growing secularism is still nominally Catholic in the same way as countries like Spain and Portugal are. A united Ireland however, would be decidedly less mono-denominational than the Iberian peninsula. So when considering the southern state, Protestants should bear in mind that they are not really looking at a proto-type for a united Ireland.
If we, as Protestants, do choose one day to live in one state with the other people of our island, we will be a minority of more than 15%. There are many worse fates in life than that. Proportionally, we would constitute a larger bloc than Muslims in India, blacks in the US, or whites in South Africa. So let's not be overly pessimistic and pretend that Protestants in a united Ireland would be helpless.
It's OK to be scared, fear as Rocky said, "is what stops you getting hurt." But it's not alright to cling on to fear long after the danger has been averted. If there ever was a monster hiding under the bed, it has gone now. Unionism, in so much as it was an ideology which arose to protect Protestants, has outlived its usefulness.
I mean no disrespect when I say that we don't have to stick to the oath that our forefathers signed.