Letting go of the apron-strings.
In Part 1, I spoke of the covenant of 1912, of how most of the northern Protestant community of the time signed up to resist any move which would dilute their membership of the British state. What then did Britishness mean to those who signed on to defend it?
At the time, Irish Protestant attachment to the idea of Britishness rested on three great pillars: faith, crown and empire. Ninety-two years later, one fo these pillars has collapsed while the other two rot away, threatening to tumble in the near future.
First, let's deal with the pillar which is definitively on the ash-heap of history; the British Empire. In 1912, this monstrosity covered one quarter of the Earth's surface, from Vancouver to Wellington. Today, with the greatest respect to the good people of the Turks and Caicos Islands, it is all just a memory.
Irish Protestants, as former colonial settlers themselves, embraced the empire with gusto. Many went from Ulster to far-flung lands to work as soldiers, civil servants amd missionaries. The vast colonies also provided a market for Ulster's then prodigous industrial output. For a small people on a little island off the coast of France, the empire served as a gateway to a wider world.
During the years of the Home Rule crisis, opponents of the measure claimed that it would undermine the integrity of the empire and block Ulster's access to its markets. Now, in the era of the European Union, this argument for the Union no longer applies.
What then of the two remaining pillars, which totter but still stand? I don't think I'm being particularly daring when I say that both the Church of England and the British monarchy are in terminal decline.
Britain, and to a lesser extent Ireland, are becoming post-religious countries. Regular attendance at a service of worship in England is a fairly good indicator that a person is either old or Muslim. Protestantism, as Brendan Behan famoulsy quipped was "built on the bollocks of Henry the VIII". Yet in Henry's native land there are now more people attending Mass each Sunday than going to a Church of England service. The estblished church has virtually no relevance to the life of the average English person. It is now little more than a minority sect with a lot of choice real estate. Faith, as a glue to hold together the peoples of Britain, no longer sticks.
For the defender of this embattled faith, Queen Elizabeth II, these are also difficult times. She is the last member of her family to commnad genuine respect from the British people. She is the final remnant from a very different era of unquestioned loyalty to the crown. Once she passes away and her eldest son becomes king, one can expect calls fo a British republic to multiply.
But even if Charles were to survive such (metaphorical) calls for his head, the mystique of monarchy is gone, long ago drowned in a sea of toe-sucking and eating disorders. The crown, as rallying point, as the British "crowd symbol" is finished.
All this which I have outlined: the end of empire, the decline of religion and monarchy, is hardly a secret. It is obvious to anyone who takes even the most cursory look at British histoy. Yet given all this, the great majority of Irish Protestants cling determinedly to their sense of British identity, and to membership of the United Kingdom. As I outlined in Part 1, I feel this is largely due to a deep-seated fear of persecution in a united Ireland.
But fear in itself is not enough to sustain a healthy political disposition. Nothing has come to replace the three pillars, to provide a common, positive bond between Irish Protestants and the British. What in our culture, our mentality, our worldview resonates in the post-modern Britain of today? Outside of the Central Belt of Scotland, the answer is very little.
With the best will in the world, we are doomed to be outsiders in the United Kingdom. The 60 million "mainlanders" (to adopt unionist nomenclature) will always look on the 1 million "loyalists" as fundamentally different, as political and religious dinosaurs, amusing at best, embarassing at worst. Our very different history sees to that. In the past a common identification with crown, faith and empire could overcome this, but not any longer.
There is today the tragi-comic situation that the people who cling tighest to the Union flag are the ones whom most British citizens see as somewhat foreign. There is something fundamentally pathetic in such a state of affairs.
But what of a united Ireland? Would we merely be swapping one form of estrngement for another? It is my firm belief that we would not. Culturally, historically, geographically, we share more with our fellow Irishmen than we do with the British. Protestants and Catholics may never love each other, but we do at least know one another. A history of conflict is still a shared history.
In the final analysis, a united Ireland provides us with a chance to recover the pride and self-esteem which have drained away as the relationship with Britain has deteriorated. In many fields of human endeavour, we have produced great men and women, out of all proportion with our numbers. We have much of which to be proud, and a lot less to be ashamed of than some would have you believe.
To be always the unloved runt of the British litter is not a fate which befits a people like us. We can do better.