Today, a similarly remarkable thing is evident in some contemporary narratives about the north’s future: the border is rendered invisible despite long-standing nationalist opposition to it.
Academics Colin Coulter, Niall Gilmartin, Katy Hayward and Peter Shirlow refer to the constitutional divide in the north as “the binary union/unity border poll” (Coulter et al., 2021, p. 193).[1] This characterization is misleading and partisan. It is misleading because the constitutional binary is centrally about the border, not a border poll. The notion of a border poll is highly contested precisely because the border itself is in dispute. Active discussion of uniting Ireland and a constitutional vote are merely symptoms of a more basic disagreement about British versus Irish sovereignty. The authors’ curious view of the binary is also partisan, for at least three reasons. It highlights and problematizes the unity side of the binary, arguing that heightened interest in a united Ireland produces talk of a border poll that in turn destabilizes politics in the north. And it hides and normalizes the union side of the binary, suggesting that constitutional division and the border itself disappear as the prospect of a border poll recedes. Finally, it privileges unionist discontent with the possibility of constitutional change while it devalues nationalist unhappiness with maintenance of the constitutional status quo.
The authors in effect describe a one-sided binary in which the constitutional status of the north becomes a public concern only when the unity half of the union/unity divide is engaged. Otherwise, the union can plod merrily along without anyone giving a thought to the constitutional state of affairs. In a broader sense, a one-sided binary sees moving to Irish unity as a discrete constitutional experience, but renders continuing with union a non-constitutional, a-constitutional or extra-constitutional circumstance. Maintenance of the status quo becomes constitutionally invisible, as if British sovereignty is somehow a natural or unproblematic state of affairs.
Coulter et al.’s discussion of how Brexit interrupted a comfortable constitutional serenity illustrates clearly the blinkered perspective of a one-sided binary. The authors claim that, at the time of the Good Friday Agreement, republicans and nationalists largely accepted that Irish unity was very far off in a distant future. A united Ireland became more “an ‘aspiration’ than ... a likelihood or even a very strong possibility” (p. 289). In this unionist heaven the authors portray, nationalists silently acquiesce in the border. They consign their constitutional preference to the netherworld of aspiration, to a realm they never expect to materialize. Nationalist discontent with British sovereignty is no more, the border disappears from view. Between 1998 and 2016, constitutional disaffection is evident only in the rhetoric of “hardline or dissident republican parties and groups” (p. 289). The authors seem to lament that Brexit abruptly interrupted this constitutional quietude. Suddenly, after June 2016, nationalist and republican political parties and civic groups began talking about a “united Ireland” that might actually materialize as the result of a border poll. The north moved quickly from unionist heaven to unionist hell.
The major flaw in this account of the constitutional landscape since the GFA is that it devalues continuous and widespread nationalist discontent with the border. The authors are correct to say that Brexit helped to galvanize support for Irish unity and put the issue of constitutional change on the immediate political agenda. But nationalist ambition for a united Ireland long predated Brexit. The authors trivialize this support for unity by labelling it as mere aspiration, and marginalize nationalist opposition to British sovereignty by wishing it away. In nationalist eyes, the border did not disappear between the signing of the GFA in 1998 and the Brexit referendum in 2016. The authors’ account of a golden era of constitutional satisfaction in the years surrounding the GFA is mere illusion, which can endure only because they ignore or otherwise discount nationalist public opinion on the border.
A great deal of evidence shows that nationalists were plainly uncomfortable with constitutional arrangements in the immediate aftermath of the Agreement. Northern Catholic support for the GFA’s constitutional principles dropped precipitously in the decade after 1998. At the time of the GFA, 75 percent of Catholics expressed support for “the guarantee that NI will remain part of the UK as long as a majority of the people in NI wish it to be so”; by 2011 this support for the consent principle (unionist veto) had declined to 55 percent, a drop of 20 points. Northern Catholic support for the south’s removal of its constitutional claim to the north completely eroded, from 49 percent in 1998 to just 16 percent in 2011. This erosion of 33 percentage points was the single biggest reduction in support for any of the Agreement’s principles among either Catholics or Protestants in the north (Hayes & McAllister, 2013, p. 96).
The annual Northern Ireland Life and Times (NILT) surveys provide especially pertinent evidence. They allow for pre- and post-Brexit comparisons on the central question of nationalist support for unity and opposition to union. In the nine years following the GFA—well before Brexit—average nationalist support for unity is fully 64.4 percent, for union a miniscule 12.8 percent. In the eight years since Brexit, the average nationalist support for unity remains strong at 65.9 percent; the corresponding figure for union has risen but stands at just 20.6 percent.[2] Nationalists’ clear preference for unity over union is as evident in the pre-Brexit period as it is in the years since 2016. Nationalist contentment with the border before the Brexit shock is a myth.
Why should Coulter et al. be so cavalier about support for a united Ireland in the immediate GFA years and yet so concerned now, when the level of that support remains largely unchanged? The big difference, of course, is that support for a united Ireland is now open and active, and it has aroused intense opposition from unionists who, like the authors, see a border poll as a polarizing threat. The lesson for nationalists seems to be that they should strive to ensure the border remains invisible. They should stay hidden in the shadowy domain of unrealized aspiration. They should just shut up about Irish unity in order not to unsettle unionists. They should swallow their discontent with the constitutional status quo and eschew mobilizing for a border poll. They should refrain from activating what the GFA defines as their legitimate constitutional preference and instead defer to the superior legitimacy of unionist constitutional wishes. This one-sided lesson repeats the standard unionist trope that refuses to accept nationalists as nationalists, that demands that they drop any active pursuit of a united Ireland for the good of the north (Burke, 2020). As northern public opinion shows, nationalists will continue to resist learning this lesson, no matter how frequently or eloquently it is taught.
Next week, the eighth and final installment in the series will examine the crude demonization of advocates of Irish unity.
Notes
[1] A fuller version of the quotation is that: “the binary union/unity border poll creates no middle ground such as ‘neithers’ might prefer to see.” By neithers, the authors are referring to survey respondents who identify as neither unionist nor nationalist. They argue that neithers tend to become politically disengaged because they have little interest in a politics dominated by the question of a border poll. I’m not concerned in this paper with the plight of neithers, but instead focus on the causal determinant the authors identify as “the binary union/unity border poll”.
[2] In the NILT surveys, “nationalists” are those respondents who say that, generally speaking, they think of themselves as nationalist. I’m using the NILT question on long-term constitutional preference, which asks respondents whether they think the long-term policy for the north should be for it to: remain part of the UK (with direct rule or with devolution), reunify with the rest of Ireland, or be an independent state. The NILT asks this question in every survey since 1998 (NILT, various years). I compute the first set of averages (i.e., means) for the years 1998 to 2006, the second for 2016 to 2023. The surveys in between these two periods, from 2007 to 2015, are compromised by a new, biased question measuring long-term preference, which the NILT introduced in 2007. The biased measure artificially inflates support for union and deflates support for unity, especially among Catholics (Burke, 2021). Means calculated for the years 2007 to 2015 reflect that bias, with average nationalist support for union at its highest level (37.3%) and average nationalist support for unity at its lowest level (49.3%). There remains, despite the flawed question, a decided but reduced nationalist preference for unity over union. The biased measure is still in use today, which affects the figures I cite for 2016 to 2023. One could argue that, by increasing nationalist support for unity and decreasing nationalist support for union, Brexit overcame part of the bias in the measure and restored nationalist long-term constitutional preferences to nearer their natural levels. The NILT has other measures of constitutional opinion, free from the kind of bias in the long-term preference question, but they are available only in limited years. Those questions ask respondents how they would vote, for union or unity, if a border poll were held tomorrow. They confirm the relative stability of nationalist preference for unity over union in the pre- and post-Brexit eras. The one border-poll question available from the pre-Brexit period shows that in 2002 fully 71.3 percent of nationalists wish to unify with the south and only 15 percent want to remain part of the UK. A border-poll question was not asked again until 2017, after Brexit, but was included in every survey since 2019. Calculating averages for these years shows again, like the 2002 pre-Brexit measure, that nationalists strongly favour Irish unity (79.3%) over continued union (8.8%). The border-poll questions also show clear growth in nationalists’ preference for unity since 2017, reinforcing the authors’ view, and that of many others including me, that Brexit has had an independent effect on increasing support for a united Ireland. But this recent growth has occurred in the context of longstanding and strong nationalist preference for unity over union, a context the authors ignore. In addition to the questions on long-term constitutional preference and on voting in a border poll tomorrow, the NILT has a third set of questions asking respondents to select the set of constitutional arrangements that comes closest to their own view. Unfortunately, these questions are available only in the pre-Brexit period (2001, 2003, 2005 and 2006) and are glaringly biased in a pro-union and anti-unity direction. They, nevertheless, show that more than twice as many nationalists prefer unity over union. In sum, all the measures indicate that, both before and after Brexit, nationalists strongly prefer a united Ireland to maintenance of the union. There is no defensible reason for Coulter et al. to downplay the nature of nationalists’ constitutional beliefs in the years before Brexit entered public debate.
References
Burke, M. (2020). “Nationalism = 0: The Formula for Peace and Stability in the North of Ireland?” The Pensive Quill. 1 January. Retrieved from.
Burke, M. (2021). “Up with Union, Down with Unity: Measuring Constitutional Preference.” The Pensive Quill. 29 May. Retrieved from.
Cleary, J. (1996). “‘Fork-Tongued on the Border Bit’: Partition and the Politics of Form in Contemporary Narratives of the Northern Irish Conflict.” South Atlantic Quarterly 95:1 (Winter): 227-276.
Coulter, C., N. Gilmartin, K. Hayward and P. Shirlow. (2021). Northern Ireland a generation after Good Friday. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Hayes, B.C., and I. McAllister. (2013). Conflict to Peace: Politics and Society in Northern Ireland over Half a Century. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
NILT. (various years). ARK. Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey Datasets [computer files]. Retrieved from.
Academics Colin Coulter, Niall Gilmartin, Katy Hayward and Peter Shirlow refer to the constitutional divide in the north as “the binary union/unity border poll” (Coulter et al., 2021, p. 193).[1] This characterization is misleading and partisan. It is misleading because the constitutional binary is centrally about the border, not a border poll. The notion of a border poll is highly contested precisely because the border itself is in dispute. Active discussion of uniting Ireland and a constitutional vote are merely symptoms of a more basic disagreement about British versus Irish sovereignty. The authors’ curious view of the binary is also partisan, for at least three reasons. It highlights and problematizes the unity side of the binary, arguing that heightened interest in a united Ireland produces talk of a border poll that in turn destabilizes politics in the north. And it hides and normalizes the union side of the binary, suggesting that constitutional division and the border itself disappear as the prospect of a border poll recedes. Finally, it privileges unionist discontent with the possibility of constitutional change while it devalues nationalist unhappiness with maintenance of the constitutional status quo.
The authors in effect describe a one-sided binary in which the constitutional status of the north becomes a public concern only when the unity half of the union/unity divide is engaged. Otherwise, the union can plod merrily along without anyone giving a thought to the constitutional state of affairs. In a broader sense, a one-sided binary sees moving to Irish unity as a discrete constitutional experience, but renders continuing with union a non-constitutional, a-constitutional or extra-constitutional circumstance. Maintenance of the status quo becomes constitutionally invisible, as if British sovereignty is somehow a natural or unproblematic state of affairs.
Coulter et al.’s discussion of how Brexit interrupted a comfortable constitutional serenity illustrates clearly the blinkered perspective of a one-sided binary. The authors claim that, at the time of the Good Friday Agreement, republicans and nationalists largely accepted that Irish unity was very far off in a distant future. A united Ireland became more “an ‘aspiration’ than ... a likelihood or even a very strong possibility” (p. 289). In this unionist heaven the authors portray, nationalists silently acquiesce in the border. They consign their constitutional preference to the netherworld of aspiration, to a realm they never expect to materialize. Nationalist discontent with British sovereignty is no more, the border disappears from view. Between 1998 and 2016, constitutional disaffection is evident only in the rhetoric of “hardline or dissident republican parties and groups” (p. 289). The authors seem to lament that Brexit abruptly interrupted this constitutional quietude. Suddenly, after June 2016, nationalist and republican political parties and civic groups began talking about a “united Ireland” that might actually materialize as the result of a border poll. The north moved quickly from unionist heaven to unionist hell.
The major flaw in this account of the constitutional landscape since the GFA is that it devalues continuous and widespread nationalist discontent with the border. The authors are correct to say that Brexit helped to galvanize support for Irish unity and put the issue of constitutional change on the immediate political agenda. But nationalist ambition for a united Ireland long predated Brexit. The authors trivialize this support for unity by labelling it as mere aspiration, and marginalize nationalist opposition to British sovereignty by wishing it away. In nationalist eyes, the border did not disappear between the signing of the GFA in 1998 and the Brexit referendum in 2016. The authors’ account of a golden era of constitutional satisfaction in the years surrounding the GFA is mere illusion, which can endure only because they ignore or otherwise discount nationalist public opinion on the border.
A great deal of evidence shows that nationalists were plainly uncomfortable with constitutional arrangements in the immediate aftermath of the Agreement. Northern Catholic support for the GFA’s constitutional principles dropped precipitously in the decade after 1998. At the time of the GFA, 75 percent of Catholics expressed support for “the guarantee that NI will remain part of the UK as long as a majority of the people in NI wish it to be so”; by 2011 this support for the consent principle (unionist veto) had declined to 55 percent, a drop of 20 points. Northern Catholic support for the south’s removal of its constitutional claim to the north completely eroded, from 49 percent in 1998 to just 16 percent in 2011. This erosion of 33 percentage points was the single biggest reduction in support for any of the Agreement’s principles among either Catholics or Protestants in the north (Hayes & McAllister, 2013, p. 96).
The annual Northern Ireland Life and Times (NILT) surveys provide especially pertinent evidence. They allow for pre- and post-Brexit comparisons on the central question of nationalist support for unity and opposition to union. In the nine years following the GFA—well before Brexit—average nationalist support for unity is fully 64.4 percent, for union a miniscule 12.8 percent. In the eight years since Brexit, the average nationalist support for unity remains strong at 65.9 percent; the corresponding figure for union has risen but stands at just 20.6 percent.[2] Nationalists’ clear preference for unity over union is as evident in the pre-Brexit period as it is in the years since 2016. Nationalist contentment with the border before the Brexit shock is a myth.
Why should Coulter et al. be so cavalier about support for a united Ireland in the immediate GFA years and yet so concerned now, when the level of that support remains largely unchanged? The big difference, of course, is that support for a united Ireland is now open and active, and it has aroused intense opposition from unionists who, like the authors, see a border poll as a polarizing threat. The lesson for nationalists seems to be that they should strive to ensure the border remains invisible. They should stay hidden in the shadowy domain of unrealized aspiration. They should just shut up about Irish unity in order not to unsettle unionists. They should swallow their discontent with the constitutional status quo and eschew mobilizing for a border poll. They should refrain from activating what the GFA defines as their legitimate constitutional preference and instead defer to the superior legitimacy of unionist constitutional wishes. This one-sided lesson repeats the standard unionist trope that refuses to accept nationalists as nationalists, that demands that they drop any active pursuit of a united Ireland for the good of the north (Burke, 2020). As northern public opinion shows, nationalists will continue to resist learning this lesson, no matter how frequently or eloquently it is taught.
Next week, the eighth and final installment in the series will examine the crude demonization of advocates of Irish unity.
Notes
[1] A fuller version of the quotation is that: “the binary union/unity border poll creates no middle ground such as ‘neithers’ might prefer to see.” By neithers, the authors are referring to survey respondents who identify as neither unionist nor nationalist. They argue that neithers tend to become politically disengaged because they have little interest in a politics dominated by the question of a border poll. I’m not concerned in this paper with the plight of neithers, but instead focus on the causal determinant the authors identify as “the binary union/unity border poll”.
[2] In the NILT surveys, “nationalists” are those respondents who say that, generally speaking, they think of themselves as nationalist. I’m using the NILT question on long-term constitutional preference, which asks respondents whether they think the long-term policy for the north should be for it to: remain part of the UK (with direct rule or with devolution), reunify with the rest of Ireland, or be an independent state. The NILT asks this question in every survey since 1998 (NILT, various years). I compute the first set of averages (i.e., means) for the years 1998 to 2006, the second for 2016 to 2023. The surveys in between these two periods, from 2007 to 2015, are compromised by a new, biased question measuring long-term preference, which the NILT introduced in 2007. The biased measure artificially inflates support for union and deflates support for unity, especially among Catholics (Burke, 2021). Means calculated for the years 2007 to 2015 reflect that bias, with average nationalist support for union at its highest level (37.3%) and average nationalist support for unity at its lowest level (49.3%). There remains, despite the flawed question, a decided but reduced nationalist preference for unity over union. The biased measure is still in use today, which affects the figures I cite for 2016 to 2023. One could argue that, by increasing nationalist support for unity and decreasing nationalist support for union, Brexit overcame part of the bias in the measure and restored nationalist long-term constitutional preferences to nearer their natural levels. The NILT has other measures of constitutional opinion, free from the kind of bias in the long-term preference question, but they are available only in limited years. Those questions ask respondents how they would vote, for union or unity, if a border poll were held tomorrow. They confirm the relative stability of nationalist preference for unity over union in the pre- and post-Brexit eras. The one border-poll question available from the pre-Brexit period shows that in 2002 fully 71.3 percent of nationalists wish to unify with the south and only 15 percent want to remain part of the UK. A border-poll question was not asked again until 2017, after Brexit, but was included in every survey since 2019. Calculating averages for these years shows again, like the 2002 pre-Brexit measure, that nationalists strongly favour Irish unity (79.3%) over continued union (8.8%). The border-poll questions also show clear growth in nationalists’ preference for unity since 2017, reinforcing the authors’ view, and that of many others including me, that Brexit has had an independent effect on increasing support for a united Ireland. But this recent growth has occurred in the context of longstanding and strong nationalist preference for unity over union, a context the authors ignore. In addition to the questions on long-term constitutional preference and on voting in a border poll tomorrow, the NILT has a third set of questions asking respondents to select the set of constitutional arrangements that comes closest to their own view. Unfortunately, these questions are available only in the pre-Brexit period (2001, 2003, 2005 and 2006) and are glaringly biased in a pro-union and anti-unity direction. They, nevertheless, show that more than twice as many nationalists prefer unity over union. In sum, all the measures indicate that, both before and after Brexit, nationalists strongly prefer a united Ireland to maintenance of the union. There is no defensible reason for Coulter et al. to downplay the nature of nationalists’ constitutional beliefs in the years before Brexit entered public debate.
References
Burke, M. (2020). “Nationalism = 0: The Formula for Peace and Stability in the North of Ireland?” The Pensive Quill. 1 January. Retrieved from.
Burke, M. (2021). “Up with Union, Down with Unity: Measuring Constitutional Preference.” The Pensive Quill. 29 May. Retrieved from.
Cleary, J. (1996). “‘Fork-Tongued on the Border Bit’: Partition and the Politics of Form in Contemporary Narratives of the Northern Irish Conflict.” South Atlantic Quarterly 95:1 (Winter): 227-276.
Coulter, C., N. Gilmartin, K. Hayward and P. Shirlow. (2021). Northern Ireland a generation after Good Friday. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Hayes, B.C., and I. McAllister. (2013). Conflict to Peace: Politics and Society in Northern Ireland over Half a Century. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
NILT. (various years). ARK. Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey Datasets [computer files]. Retrieved from.
⏩ Mike Burke has lectured in Politics and Public Administration in Canada for over 30 years.
" This one-sided lesson repeats the standard unionist trope that refuses to accept nationalists as nationalists, that demands that they drop any active pursuit of a united Ireland for the good of the north "
ReplyDeleteThere is a reverse to this in the sometimes mentioned (by Nationalists/Republicans) belief that Unionists are simply misguided Irishmen and they'd all be much happier in a United Ireland.
One thing about the Northern Irish is that they are great at 'othering' the otherside without dwelling on their own opinions.