You can only laugh – at least if you are not an immigrant – at the latest findings from the North and South research project. Sinn Féin voters in the Republic and unionist voters in Northern Ireland have the least positive views on immigration of any two groups of party voters on the island, and the most similar views to each other. Sinn Féin voters in Northern Ireland have the second-most positive view, beaten only by fellow northerners who support Alliance.
Asked if immigrants are good for the economy and culture, the positive responses were 31 per cent from unionists, 38 per cent from southern Sinn Féin voters and 61 per cent from northern Sinn Féin voters.
The North and South project is run jointly by The Irish Times and Arins, itself a joint project of the Royal Irish Academy and the University of Notre Dame in the US.
Sinn Féin could have secured office in the Republic last November by turning against immigration, yet it refused to do so
One explanation for these apparently discordant findings is that northern unionists and southern republicans are both nationalists, albeit for different nations.
A substantial remainder of the explanation must be the tendency of both main communities within Northern Ireland to define themselves against each other. Immigration has simply become another arena for this oneupmanship, with immigrants and ethnic minorities caught in the middle. Although Stormont managed to agree a racial equality strategy in 2015, it has scarcely been implemented.
As with all such arguments, the first question is who started it. Northern nationalists can point to a tradition of liberal internationalism and antiracism dating back to the 1960s. On immigration specifically, unionists were boasting from the 1970s of a multicultural UK in contrast to what David Trimble, the late UUP leader, called the “mono-ethnic and monocultural” Republic.
Both postures were about establishing moral superiority over the other side, and both were almost entirely hypothetical. When Trimble made his comments in 2002, Northern Ireland was 99.3 per cent white, and even other Europeans were a rarity. But immigration was about to take off, from the EU accession states, Portugal and former Portuguese colonies.
Most of the available housing for these new arrivals was in working-class unionist communities, due to their demographic and economic decline. So most of the problems between immigrants and locals inevitably occurred in those areas. So did most of the integration – it has long been noted in England that the urban working class made immigration a success, only to be defamed as racist from the suburbs. Some unionist communities can legitimately feel maligned, although some have also been in denial about the scale of the problem.
After a series of loyalist attacks on immigrants in 2004, Northern Ireland was described by the Guardian as “the race-hate capital of Europe”, an absurd claim with no statistical backing, but which nevertheless stuck. Unionists stopped boasting of the multicultural UK and fell back to their thran instincts of acting down to type.
There is little reason to believe the nationalist experience would have been different under similar circumstances. Nationalist-majority Dungannon in Co Tyrone has had an almost identical immigration history to unionist-majority Portadown 20 miles away, due to shared industries. Both towns can point to a similarly identical record of problems and successes.
The first wave of immigration ended with the 2008 financial crash; many of those who settled left after Brexit. A second wave then began and has continued rising. It is already over twice as large as the first and far less European, making it more visible amid a still overwhelmingly white population. It also includes around 3,000 asylum seekers at any given time, who are forbidden to work and must live in emergency accommodation. This comes on top of a worsening housing shortage and escalating alarm over immigration across the Western world, amplified online. All of this is novel compared to the first wave.
The tendency of both main communities within Northern Ireland is to define themselves against each other. Immigration has simply become another arena for this oneupmanship
The result has been more pressure across more neighbourhoods than previously affected. Racist rioting in Belfast last summer was confined to loyalist areas, as is most racist violence. Incidents in nationalist areas remain exceptionally rare and are always roundly condemned by the community. But unionism’s high opinion of itself did not survive contact with reality, and there is no guarantee nationalism will do any better.
Sinn Féin’s commitment to its anti-racist principles remains convincing. It could have secured office in the Republic last November by turning against immigration, yet it refused to do so. Although there was some equivocation over IPAS centres, this was hardly the “dog-whistling” opponents claimed.
Sinn Féin’s call last week for a “waste audit” of every government department – in effect, for an Irish version of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency – suggests the party is desperately casting around for any populist policy apart from the one its southern voters most want. That indicates genuine conviction.
If its northern voters ever waver, those convictions will truly be put to the test.
