The DUP caused some queasiness last week by parading around Washington celebrating its Irishness. There was particular annoyance online at a photograph of Assembly member Jonathan Buckley sporting a shamrock lapel badge while placing his arm around US president Donald Trump.
More significantly, DUP minister Gordon Lyons signed a memorandum with the organisers of the 250th anniversary of American independence to celebrate the contribution of “those with Northern Irish heritage”, especially the Ulster-Scots.
The DUP wants Ulster Protestants to be recognised for throwing off British rule.
Much of the vitriol this provoked was blatant sectarianism or petulance at unionists having the White House to themselves. Sinn Féin, the SDLP and Alliance boycotted Trump’s St Patrick’s reception. Republicans condemning the DUP for double-standards displayed a double-standard of their own: do they want unionists to be Irish or not?
At home the DUP spurns Irishness, but when abroad it embraces it
Unionists are enjoying the pile-on over the Republic’s defence freeloading
It would be pathetic if the united Ireland cause was frustrated by bill for disability benefits
A British defence spending bonanza will present Sinn Féin with a dilemma
Nevertheless, it is grating for the DUP to spurn Irishness at home while embracing it abroad. The inconsistency disrespects nationalists and other unionists alike. It plays to negative stereotypes of unionism as a shallow identity, the classic example of which is the unionist who proclaims they are Irish when on holiday. Reports since Brexit of unionists snapping up Irish passports – no actual figures for this are available – have underscored perceptions of hypocrisy. It is understandable that nationalists would be exasperated with what looks like cynical opportunism.
But could there be deeper change under way? Unionism is overdue a generational reassessment of its Irishness. The exclusively British identity stated by a third of respondents to the 2021 census is a phenomenon associated with the Troubles – a reaction to being under attack. Most unionists felt comfortably British and Irish for most of Northern Ireland’s existence and centuries beforehand; they might now drift back towards this, albeit with their own idea of what Irishness means. British-only identity was at 40 per cent in the 2011 census, so it is declining faster than the Protestant population.
The DUP’s behaviour will be reflective of any change. Some people may even look to it for leadership on the issue.
Unionist Irishness is a question the party has been pondering for some time. The late Ian Paisley used to say he was an Ulsterman first but also a proud Irishman. This tended to strike outsiders as significant. Like his religiosity, however, it simply did not resonate with the bulk of the unionist population.
In a 2012 speech in Dublin, the then DUP leader Peter Robinson said unionists had lost their “sense of being Irish” over the past 50 years and would only recover it through a Northern Ireland identity – Northern Irishness.
In subsequent speeches he urged his party and the unionist community to build a Northern Ireland identity welcoming to Irish nationalists, as the union was otherwise doomed. This was an attempt to fudge the question of whether unionism is an ethnic group or a political idea. Robinson wanted the best of both words, so inevitably delivered neither.
The DUP has now apparently decided unionism is an ethnicity.
For all the thought the DUP has put into this approach, it is a demographic dead end for unionist politics, if not the union itself
Earlier this month, the First and Deputy First Ministers began recruiting for two new posts, an Irish language commissioner and a commissioner for the Ulster Scots and Ulster British tradition.
Both posts were created under the 2020 New Decade, New Approach deal, which restored devolution after a three-year collapse. The DUP wanted a British cultural commissioner but had to agree to a more convoluted title, including mention of Ulster Scots, to give some appearance of symmetry alongside Sinn Féin’s needs on the Irish language.
New Decade, New Approach contains several other unionist-focused cultural and community initiatives, as does the DUP’s 2024 Brexit deal with the Conservative government.
All are premised on recognising a British population with historic roots in Northern Ireland, a distinctly ethnic conception of unionism. That opens the way to exploring unionism’s Irishness, or at least its place in Ireland. St Patrick’s Day is an obvious, harmless way to test the waters.
Yet for all the thought the DUP has put into this approach, it is a demographic dead end for unionist politics, if not the union itself. Allusions to the Ulster Scots language, which few unionists take seriously, doom the commissioner to irrelevance or ridicule – or outrage, if the plan to foist Ulster Scots lessons on schoolchildren is attempted. Other approaches remain available: the Ulster Unionist Party still aspires to a more expansive unionism. In the last census, 10 per cent of respondents described their national identity as British and Northern Irish or Irish, while another 20 per cent gave “Northern Irish only”. This indicates almost half a million people with hybridised British-Irish identities, each one the product of individual reflection. The influence any political party has over this is subtle at best and requires inspirational vision.
It seems likely the DUP will be rethinking its approach again within a short number of years.
