Unionists in Ireland have long been keen to avoid checks on incoming goods at Larne. In 1914, despite a royal proclamation prohibiting arms importation into Ireland, Fred Crawford, gunrunner for the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), was commissioned to use a defence fund subscribed to by British and Irish unionists, to buy 20,000 rifles and two million rounds of ammunition in Hamburg. They were landed at Larne, Bangor and Donaghadee on the night of April 24th-25th and were then distributed, unimpeded, to UVF units throughout Ulster. The success of this audacity boosted the confidence of the UVF and reinforced the unionist sense of the necessity of militant self-reliance in the face of a perceived betrayal by the British government.
What goes on in Larne now is preoccupying Crawford’s paramilitary successors, and officials from the Northern Ireland Office recently spoke via Zoom to a delegation from the Loyalist Community Council (LCC), an umbrella organisation representing loyalist paramilitaries, including the UVF, UDA and Red Hand Commando. As a result of the Brexit Northern Ireland protocol, the LCC expressed concern about dilution of their identity and the need “to ensure there would be no actual or perceived diminution in Northern Ireland’s constitutional position”, adding threateningly that it would be “monitoring” the situation.
Now the DUP has launched its campaign for the North to be “freed from the protocol” and halt North-South relations. This seems like last-chance saloon stuff for Ulster unionism, but they are playing the same old orange card involving a siege mentality, accusations of betrayal, deliberately pulling up political bridges in Ulster and in the background and on the walls, there are again ominous noises and graffiti from indulged loyalist paramilitaries. The European Commission’s stupidity in suggesting overriding the protocol has exacerbated the situation and recent talk of Border polls and Irish unity are another complicating factor.
Cherishing unionists
The DUP was always going to pay a heavy price for its incompetent handling of Brexit. Arch Brexiteers were not, despite the DUP’s claims, in the business of cherishing unionists; rather the DUP was temporarily useful as a tactic employed in a crude English power game, an updated version of the strategy during the Crawford era when senior Tories encouraged Ulster rebellion against home rule to try and gain the upper hand in domestic politics rather than because of a passion for Ireland.
The DUP was always going to pay a heavy price for its incompetent handling of Brexit
Former UK chancellor George Osborne’s recent comments about the North heading for an exit from the UK may have been self-serving and self-satisfied but he was accurate in writing of the DUP’s “short-sighted support for Brexit and unbelievably stupid decision to torpedo Theresa May’s deal that avoided separate Irish arrangements”. He also highlighted an indifference to the fate of Ulster unionism: “It pains me to report that most here and abroad will not care.” This attitude is underlined by the recent Sunday Times poll which revealed 20 per cent of those surveyed in England would be “pleased” with a united Ireland, while a further 37 per cent said they are “not bothered” by the idea; just 31 per cent indicated that they would be upset if Northern Ireland left the union. This also reflects a continuity; historically, unionists have had to continually plead with Britain to take them seriously. A century ago, James Craig was preparing to be the first prime minister of Northern Ireland but, as his biographer Hugh Shearman was later to write, “he had learned that British sympathy was not to be relied on”.
‘Settle down’
On Wednesday, the DUP’s Ian Paisley implored Boris Johnson to be “the unionist we need you to be”, those words addressed to a prime minister who does not have a semblance of coherent intellectual or political commitment to any cause. Johnson’s predecessors are hardly good readers of Northern Ireland either; Tony Blair recently surmised that Northern Ireland was beginning to “settle down”. The opposite is true and there is a responsibility on both sides of the Border to address that.
Historically, unionists have had to continually plead with Britain to take them seriously
Paul Bew has rightly argued there is a “big task ahead for those who want to make the case for Irish unity by consent”. The Taoiseach’s “shared island” initiative unveiled last year created barely a ripple, and there is still food for thought in the observation made by political scientist Tom Garvin 30 years ago; that if the Republic was offered a united Ireland “it would turn Northern Ireland upside down. However, it would have devastating and possibly destabilising effects on the Republic as well” because, in many respects, the structure of the Republic “is predicated on the unspoken assumption of indefinite continuance of partition”.
A corresponding task Bew omitted to mention, however, is for unionists to manage the Brexit fallout by moving beyond their traditional, militant siege tactics. Despite the posturing this week, they need to confront the reality identified by historian Gillian McIntosh: “the world which the British and that which the unionists wish to preserve are not necessarily the same”.