Planting seeds of doubt that can grow into hope

When the Northern Ireland statelet was created the cartography was driven by demography.

That is why these words blink to life in a part of the ancient province of Ulster that had just too many Taigs in it.

When the boundaries of the Six-County entity were established the tribal headcount was 2/1 in favour of people of Protestant background.

Today that those demographic origins are only extant in people who were born at the time of the creation of the statelet or a few decades afterwards.

Yesterday the publication of an opinion poll published by Lord Ashcroft showed that if there was a border poll tomorrow there would be a very slight majority in favour of reunification.

However, if you look at the breakdown by age and tradition it is clear that younger people are not that enamoured with remaining in the United Kingdom.

The British peer was quick to point out that this was within the margin of error.

Consequently opinion in Northern Ireland is currently split down the middle on the issue.

Like everything else at the moment within these conjoined islands Brexit is THE issue.

The people of the Republic of Ireland were not invited in the UK wide referendum and the population of Ireland voted to remain.

For some, mainly middle-class people from the unionist tradition the Brexit vote was a moment of epiphany.

No one in Northern Ireland can look to the Republic and see a Roman Catholic theocracy.

That is done with, over, a thing of the past.

During the time of the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) negotiations, a commentator coined a term to encapsulate the apolitical unionist in Northern Ireland.

It was “the Prod in the garden centre”.

This archetype was someone from a unionist background who was not politically involved. He/she was happy with the constitutional arrangements and spent their weekends browsing in the local garden centre.

It evoked someone with who was enjoying comfortable material existence.

The bottom line is that Mervyn and Hannah browsing the pot plants and hedge trimmers didn’t sound like natural revolutionaries.

However, these are strange times in Ukania.

A comrade of mine who has been deposited on the “Gold Coast” of County Down is perfectly placed to be an ethnographic informer.

My own interactions with garden centre unionism are with folk from the Northern Ireland business community who reside west of the Bann.

Between the pair of us, we have been piecing this together over the past year or so.

Now, this is hardly Lord Ashcroftesque scientific rigour, but we have both detected a few seismic tremors in Garden Centre unionists.

“Perhaps this United Kingdom just isn’t what it is cracked up to be any more” appears to be their internal monologue.

Now, from my world view, this should all be greeted as great news.

However, that’s not how I reacted to the news of the Ashcroft poll.

The last thing I want is a Border plebiscite that is won by the narrowest of margins

The 52/48% vote in the UK over Brexit has been hugely divisive.

Referendums that are won by a comfortable 2/1 majority tend to settle major issues for a generation or more.

The recent decision to Real the Eighth Amendment to the constitution here in the Republic is a case in point.

No one in the NO side, those who wanted to keep the Amendment, can argue that they comprehensively lost at the ballot box.

On 25 May 2018, the Irish people voted by 66.4% to remove the Eighth Amendment,

Just as in the 1983 vote to bring in the Amendment it was a resounding (66.90% v 33.10%) result.

The “pro-choice” side lost and lost big.

It settled at least for a generation back then and no one on the “pro-life” side has stated that they want a re-match anytime soon.

Of course, the losing side still had their views on this most acrimoniously controversial issue and they worked at changing the opinion landscape.

The basic lesson, I think, is that issues settled be referendums are only truly settled if one side wins decisively.

Split decisions are almost always bad news.

The Ashcroft Poll doesn’t’ tell us anything new apropos the changing demographics of the Six County statelet.

The old Orange State is as dead at the generation of British political decision takers who concocted it after the Tan War.

The conversation about the future governance of this island is now underway.

That dialogue must include everyone on this island regardless of their heritage or location.

No matter how you or your ancestor arrived here this island is for all of us.

If it is partly a tale of two cities then Partition has been a disaster for Belfast.

Compared to its standing when the 1911 census was taken it is now way behind Dublin in every metric that measures economic success.

We now from the human genome project m=that many of us have a connection to this place since our dark-skinned ancestors walked here following the reindeer herds as the ice sheet receded.

Others have in their veins the travelogue of the longships that settled the coastline and left an enduring linguistic footprint.

For Wexford see Veisafjǫrðr…

In the Middle Ages, Anglo-Norman conquerors succumbed to local ways.

In time all of these newcomers became Éireannaigh.

Not all who make up the modern Irish nation have such a lengthy backstory.

Down the road from me is a very fine family who decided as a young couple to get on a flight from Kraków a decade ago to seek better opportunities.

Their kids wear Donegal shirts and their eldest is shaping up as a decent corner forward.

No one around here is asking them to stop being Polish, but this is their Ireland too.

This is a very different Ireland to the one that my father left for Britain in the 1950s.

In case you were wondering not all of the locals were that appreciative of these Irishmen who were re-building Britain back then.

For the avoidance of doubt, this Ireland is better in every sense than the one that John Charles McQuaid controlled like a stern forbidding éminence grise.

We still have much to do to make this a republic where all of the children of the nation are cherished equally.

However, I’m hopeful.

Of course, it is the Machiavellian statecraft of the Scot who imagined a unified British state that created the population here that has, heretofore, resisted becoming comfortably Irish.

They self-define as “Ulster-Scots” although they do not seem too keen on the Scots having national self-determination.

Perhaps the English nationalists who are driving the big red Brexit bus will finally deliver the memo to Béal Feirste that this British thing is rather played out in the 21^st century.

Given the history of Northern Ireland from the creation of the statelet and everything else that has happened since then, we need maximum feasible agreement from the broad unionist community.

That said, it must be sadly accepted that at the moment the vast majority of what is self-defined as the PUL community (Protestant Unionist Loyalist) will not get on the 32 County bus.

Even the ones who have flocked to Post Offices in the Six Counties to apply for Irish passports in order to Brexit proof their travel plans.

They remain uncomfortable about how that travel document that they freely applied for describes them:

Éireannach.

Perhaps, the children who accompany them to Alicante or wherever will become accustomed to identifying with all of their island home.

History forgotten is a betrayal.

I think that it would be useful if they were reconnected to their Irish Republican heritage.

After all, it was Presbyterian weavers in Antrim of Scottish ancestry who played a central role in importing these dangerous revolutionary ideas from regicide France and secessionist America.

All I can say to them from Dún na nGall is this:

Beidh fáilte romhat!