Unionism (Ireland)

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Unionism, in the context of Ireland, is a belief in the continuation of the Act of Union 1800 (as amended by the Government of Ireland Act 1920) so that Northern Ireland (created by the 1920 Act) remains part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Followers of Unionism are known as unionists.

Everyday life in Northern Ireland reflects the rest of the UK, sharing the same newspapers, roadsigns, postcodes etc. Irish culture, of course, influences the province as well. However, Unionists identify themselves as British due to their ancestry or personal or cultural preference.

Unionists are mostly, but not exclusively, from Protestant backgrounds in terms of religion. Unionism is a natural identity for the descendents of English and Scottish settlers who arrived in Ulster, especially from the Plantation of Ulster, in the early 17th Century, onwards. Some Northern Irish Catholics have supported the union (see Catholic Unionist) and have vocally been its defenders for over two hundred years (see Sir Denis Henry).

In the context of Irish history, the term refers to those who opposed home rule for Ireland within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland before the creation of Northern Ireland.

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The Unionist vision is for Northern Ireland to continue with England, Scotland and Wales as part of the United Kingdom

Contents

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Terminology

The terms Unionist and Loyalist are often used interchangeably, particularly by the media. However, the term 'loyalist' is now often used in recent times to describe extremists who are prepared to break the law to maintain the status quo or whose views are unusually hardline. Most unionists do not describe themselves as loyalists. Strictly speaking, the definition of 'unionist' incorporates everyone who supports the continued union between all parts of the United Kingdom. The term 'loyalist' could therefore can be interpreted as either loyalty to the union or loyal to the British Crown.

On the opposite, nationalist, side, the term republican traditionally refers to the more extreme element which has advocated violence against the state of Northern Ireland and its citizens e.g. Sinn Fein. The term nationalist, on the other hand, traditionally describes the more moderate element, which has consistently supported constitutional politics e.g. the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP).

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Development

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Home Rule

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Prior to 1912, Unionists wished to see the Act of Union 1800 (which had merged the Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801) remain in place. They opposed Irish Home Rule, which mainstream southern Irish nationalists had sought since the 1860s as they thought that a self-governing Irish Parliament - dominated by southern-based nationalists - would be to their economic, social and religious disadvantage, and would move eventually towards total independence, thus threatening their natural British nationality and identity.

Home Rule would have involved Ireland having its own regional parliament while still remaining in the United Kingdom. This demand, the policy of nationalist leaders such as Isaac Butt. William Shaw, Charles Stewart Parnell, John Redmond and John Dillon, became the aim of the Nationalist Party, also known as the Home Rule League and later the Irish Parliamentary Party. The Home Rule League/Irish Parliamentary Party won the majority of Irish parliamentary seats in the Westminster parliaments from the 1870s until 1914.

While most Unionists outside Ulster were almost made up of the governing and landowning classes and the minor gentry, Unionism had a broad popular appeal among Protestants of all classes and backgrounds in the North-East which, in contrast to the rest of Ireland, had developed through the Industrial Revolution and had an economy that closely resembled Great Britain.

Various British governments introduced four successive Bills to set up an Irish Home Rule parliament in Dublin. The Irish Home Rule Bill 1886 never made it through the House of Commons but managed to destroy the Liberal Party government, with Whig and Radical elements leaving to form the Liberal Unionist Party in alliance with the Conservative Party. Eventually the two parties merged, calling themselves the Conservative and Unionist Party.

The Irish Home Rule Bill 1893 passed in the Commons but succumbed to the veto of the House of Lords.The House of Lords had far more Conservatives than the House of Commons. The Home Rule Act 1914 passed (or at least passed all stages under the Parliament Act, 1911, which curbed the veto power of the Lords) but never came into force, due to the onset of World War I (1914 – 1918). The fourth Bill, known as the Government of Ireland Act 1920, envisaged two Irish home rule states: Southern Ireland which would have had a nationalist majority, and Northern Ireland which would have a much smaller Unionist majority. Only the latter became a reality, while the former became the Irish Free State.

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Irish unionists opposed Home Rule for many reasons. Much of their support in southern and western Ireland (the provinces of Munster, Leinster and Connacht) came from landed gentry who feared that a nationalist assembly would introduce property and taxation laws more suitable to a small island than the laws imposed from Westminster, which were designed for a much larger area, the entire United Kingdom. Some also feared that they would experience a similar sort of discrimination that the British monarchy up to 1800 had practised on non-Conformists, namely the Penal Laws, or the more subtle discrimination that followed, although this is hard to credit as Ireland would have remained part of the UK. Others identified strongly with the Crown and British rule, and wished to see both continue unchanged in Ireland. However one should not presume that Irish unionist support came entirely from the landed gentry, or that all Protestants supported Unionism. Many working-class and middle-class Unionists and some gentrified Catholics supported the maintenance of the union, while many Protestants (most notably Charles Stewart Parnell) supported home rule.

Other unionists, particularly in Ulster, had economic fears, suspecting that a nationalist parliament in Dublin, on a predominantly agricultural island, would impose economic tariffs against industry. Ulster was the most industrialised part of Ireland and would have suffered.

For much of the period up until 1920, though the Unionist support base predominated in four of the nine counties of Ulster (where the Protestants outnumbered the Roman Catholics), the Irish Unionist Party's leadership came from the rest of Ireland. Its most prominent leader, the Dublin-born barrister and politician Sir Edward Carson, opposed not merely Home Rule but any attempt to divide Ireland into two. Other southern Unionist leaders included the Earl of Middleton and the Earl of Dunraven.

When, following the curbs placed on the power of the House of Lords in 1911 it became clear that home rule would come, Unionists, particularly in parts of Ulster, mounted a campaign that threatened to establish a Provisional Government of Ulster if Home Rule were to come about. They set up the Ulster Volunteer Force, a militia, and imported 25,000 rifles from Imperial Germany, to defend the Provisional Government should it ever become necessary.

90,000 men had joined by the middle of 1914. Irish Unionism received the support in the period from the 1880s until 1914 from leading English Conservative politicians, notably Lord Randolph Churchill and future British prime minister Andrew Bonar Law. Slogans such as Ulster Will Fight and Ulster Will Be Right expressed the determination of unionists to oppose Irish Home Rule by whatever means it deemed necessary.

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Northern Ireland

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The creation of Northern Ireland, with a unionist majority, under the Government of Ireland Act 1920, and the later creation of the Irish Free State, in the territory the above Act had called Southern Ireland, separated southern and northern unionists. Unionists were in the majority in four counties (Antrim, Londonderry, Down and Armagh) but insisted on control over the counties of Fermanagh and Tyrone as well.

As these counties had a large land area but were thinly populated compared to the other four, it was felt that the slight dilution of the pro-Union population was worth it for the extra territory. The exclusion of three Ulster counties, Donegal, Monaghan and Cavan from Northern Ireland, and hence the United Kingdom, left Ulster unionists there feeling isolated and betrayed. They established an association to canvass their fellow unionists to reconsider the border, but to no avail. Many assisted in the policing of the new region, serving in the B-Specials, while continuing to live in the Free State. See ([external link]).

Edward Carson had expressly urged the Northern Ireland Unionist prime minister, Sir James Craig to ensure absolute equality in the treatment of Roman Catholics, to ensure the stability of the new entity. However, discrimination took place although its extent is debated. Basil Brooke, whose son had been kidnapped by Irish republicans and was embittered and understandably suspicious of the Catholic community, called for Protestants to employ only Protesants. Some boundaries demarcated electorates in such a way as to produce Unionist majorities in areas that would otherwise have produced nationalist councillors. However, there was also widespread poverty among Protestants and recovery operations in working class areas after the Belfast Blitz in 1941 revealed that both communities were disadvantaged.

Nobel Peace Prize winner and former Ulster Unionist Party leader, David Trimble, has admitted that Northern Ireland was a 'cold house of Catholics' for most of the 20th century a process he said the Belfast Agreement must change. Many unionists, particularly in the DUP, deny that organised discrimination took place and point to the poverty shared by many people both communities due to wider economic conditions.

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The Troubles

By the 1960s, belated attempts by a moderate new Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Terence O'Neill to create equality created a backlash led by fundamentalist Protestant preacher and politician, the Rev. Ian Paisley. Nationalists launched a Civil Rights movement under John Hume, Austin Currie and Ivan Cooper.

A collapse in government control, the controversial killing of 13 unarmed civilians by the British army Parachute Regiment in Derry/Londonderry on Bloody Sunday (30 January, 1972) and the emergence of the Provisional IRA, alongside Protestant paramilitary groups like the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and the Ulster Volunteer Force, led to the suspension, then abolition, of the unionist-dominated Stormont parliament and government (1972).

After two decades of brutal killings by paramilitary groups on both sides of the political divide in Northern Ireland and the police and British army, a ceasefire and inter-community negotiations produced the Belfast Agreement (also known as the "Good Friday Agreement"), which attempted with mixed success to produce a power-sharing government for Northern Ireland, to which both the unionist and nationalist communities could give allegiance.

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Unionism in Northern Ireland today

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British identity in Northern Ireland is expressed in a number of different ways through passive everyday preferences (some of which can be a combination of British and Irish) such as choice of newspaper or sports team, participation in a locally developed unionist culture or electoral support for unionist political parties and candidates. It is only through elections that unionism can be statistically analysed but surveys have studied trends of support for the union within the province's population.

Unionism and Religious Background

While some commentators regularly use the religious terms 'Catholic' and 'Protestant' interchangeably with 'nationalist' and 'unionist' in Northern Ireland, this is a simplification. Not all Catholics support nationalist causes, for example. The Ulster Unionist Party has some Roman Catholic members, including Sir John Gorman, who was one of its most respected MLAs in the last Assembly.

Some Roman Catholics have served in the former and current Northern Ireland police forces, the Royal Irish Constabulary and in the British Army, despite opposition, threats and attacks from Irish republicans.

Public Support for Unionism in Northern Ireland [1]
Indicator Survey Date Overall % Protestant % Catholic % No religion %
Support for the union as long-term policy 2004 59 85 24 51
British personal identity 2003 49 78 12 44
Unionist personal identity 2004 39 71 1 21
Support for unionist political party 2004 37 66 2 25

One of the strangest situations in Northern Ireland is that the Protestant fundamentalist leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, the Rev. Ian Paisley, attracts some Catholic votes in his constituency at elections to the House of Commons. That may be a personal quirk, due to his reputation as a good constituency MP who will help anyone, irrespective of their religion. However, his party, the DUP, has never had any openly Catholic members.

The mildly nationalist SDLP, meanwhile, has often attracted sympathetic Protestants, some of whom have been elected. Sinn Féin has also has some Protestant members and elected officials, more often in the Republic.

Northern Ireland has many citizens who are neither Catholic or Protestant. Increasingly, the trend has been to ignore the question of religion, particularly as the numbers of practising church-goers, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, have been in decline. This led to a new question on the census form, asking residents to describe their religious background as well.

This decline does not mean that nationalists and unionists have equal numbers. Polls taken over the years have suggested that as many as one in three Catholics could be considered Unionists, regardless of what political party they may vote for at election times, although this percentage seems a little high, particularly given Sinn Fein's ascendance recently.

Furthermore, a strong decline in the Roman Catholic birth rate may slow down or even reverse the growth in the Catholic population. However, that may be balanced in turn by an increased rate of emigration of young Protestants, often to study and then work in Britain. How these changes will affect the long-term number of Protestants and Catholics is hard to assess.

While southern Unionism predominantly (though not exclusively) originated in Church of Ireland circles and the upper-middle to upper classes, northern unionism remains and has been predominantly (though not exclusively) associated with the working and middle classes and predominantly Presbyterian.

Electoral Unionism

Northern Ireland currently has a number of pro-union political parties, the largest of which is the traditionalist Democratic Unionist Party led by Ian Paisley, followed by the more moderate Ulster Unionist Party led by Reg Empey.

On a smaller level, the Progressive Unionist Party, which is political wing of the UVF paramilitary group, attracts some support in the greater Belfast area, while the UK Unionist Party is centred on North Down and the United Unionist Coalition is a loose grouping of independent candidates across the province.

The pluralist Conservative Party (officially named the Conservative and Unionist Party) also organises in the province. While the Alliance Party supports the status quo position of Northern Ireland, it does not define itself as Unionist.

Current Unionist Electoral Share in Northern Ireland [2]
Level Election Total seats Unionist seats Unionist poll Unionist % vote
House of Commons 2005 18 10 371,888 51.8%
Local Government 2005 582 302 343,148 48.8%
European Parliament 2004 3 2 266,925 48.6%
Northern Ireland Assembly 2003 108 59 352,886 51.0%

Pro-union parties and independents contest elections and represent their constituents at a number of different levels. There is a unionist presence at election time in all parliamentary constituencies.

Unionist candidates stand for election in most district electoral areas (small areas which make up district councils) in Northern Ireland. Exceptions, in 2005, were Slieve Gullion in South Armagh, Upper and Lower Falls in Belfast, Shantallow, Northland and Cityside in Londonderry - all of which are strongly nationalist. Likewise, nationalist parties and candidates did not contest some areas in North Antrim, East Antrim, East Belfast, North Down and the Strangford constituency as these are strongly unionist and therefore unlikely to return a candidate.

Local government in Northern Ireland is not entirely divided on nationalist-unionist lines and the level of political tension depends on the district and its direct experience of the Troubles.

Eight Ulster Unionist peers also sit in the House of Lords but form no organised group and are therefore classed as Cross-benchers. DUP MP Nigel Dodds is also an alternate member of the UK Parliament’s delegations to the Council of Europe and Western European Union (see [[3]]).

South Belfast and Fermanagh and South Tyrone will be the key target seats for unionism in the next general election, but previous experience indicates that neither seat can be won without an electoral pact between the DUP and the UUP. Both seats were lost, in 2001 and 2005 respectively, due to a divided Unionist vote.

Unionists will also be keen to improve their poll in the next European Parliament elections, scheduled for 2009 and ultimately, maintain a majority in any future referendum on a united Ireland. The 1998 Good Friday Agreement allows such referenda to take place every seven years and can be called by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if it appears to him that a majority would support a united Ireland.

Any unionist participation in elections to Dáil Éireann, if a united Ireland takes place, is purely a matter for speculation at this stage, although there may be some form of abstention, reflecting Sinn Fein's policy towards the House of Commons. On the other hand, a united post-unionist minority could form just under 20% of the electorate and may hold the balance of power in a system dominated by coalition governments.

Unionism and Republicanism

It is technically possible for a unionist to be a British republican. However, a strong cultural attachment to the Crown, especially in traditional unionism (Orange Order etc.), pro-monarchy support from the main unionist parties and the identification of republicanism with Irish republican violence means that this position is, in practice, probably rare. No accurate statistical information is available for actual support for the current monarchy or an alternative British republic within unionism.

The area currently known as Northern Ireland was ruled by the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell between 1649 and 1660 but the Commonwealth of Britain envisaged by Tony Benn would have ended British sovereignty in Northern Ireland.

The British Republic Campaign has no opinion on the union apart from the assumption that Northern Ireland should accept an elected head of state if a Republic is achieved (see [[4]]).

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Southern / Neo-Unionism

After 1890 and particularly during the period from the start of the First World War to the mid 1920's the number of Unionists in what is now the Republic of Ireland declined to a point where their numbers were widely regarded as almost insignificant. This is attributed to a number of factors.

  • 1. World War I: A higher rate of participation in WWI amongst Irish Unionists than among Nationalists (who were split on the issue of Irish participation in WW1) combined with the very high casualty rate amongst Irish regiments in the conflict. (Note: military conscription did not apply in Ireland)
  • 2. Terrorism: A campaign of murder and ethnic cleansing in parts of the country by some members of the IRA of Protestants and Unionists particularly during and after the Anglo-Irish War, although the degree to which this occurred is widely disputed.
  • 4. Assimilation: Many of those remaining to some degree underwent a gradual process of Cultural assimilation into Irish society and culture. This was encouraged (some would claim enforced) by the Free state government and was largely accepted as it was generally perceived that the issue of Unionism had (as far as the South was concerned) become "a lost cause" also during the Irish Civil War most Unionists found themselves supporting the Pro-treaty government (if only as "the lesser of two evils").

On the other hand to some extent the process of assimilation had begun even prior to Irish independence with many Protestants playing leading roles in the Irish Nationalist and Gaelic revival movements

  • 5. Intermarriage and The Ne Temere decree: The decline in the numbers of Unionists reflected the decline in the Protestant Population in the Republic (Unionists were/are largely, though not exclusively Protestant) Much of which was down to the fact that In most areas of the Free state Protestants were a small minority of the population and the widespread practice of bringing children of mixed (Protestant/Roman Catholic) marriages up as Roman Catholics (often because of community/family pressure and the Ne Temere decree).

Some Unionists in the south simply adapted and began to associate themselves with the new southern Irish regime of William T. Cosgrave and Cumann na nGaedhael. On January 19, 1922, leading Unionists held a meeting and unanimously decided to support fully the government of the new Free State. Many gained appointment to the Irish Free State Senate, including the Earl of Dunraven as a Senator when Thomas Westropp Bennett an Anglo Irish Catholic was Cathaiorleach (pronounced 'ka-here-loch'). One Unionist political family, the Dockrells, joined and became TDs (MPs) over a number of generations for Cumann na nGaedhael and its successor party, Fine Gael (the governing party in the 1920s, the main opposition from 1932 onwards).

There are two Protestants in the current Dáil: Jan O'Sullivan and Trevor Sargent. The Dublin borough of Rathmines had a unionist majority up to the late 1920s, when a local government re-organisation abolished all Dublin borough councils.

However, having lost their privileged status, most Irish Unionists simply withdrew from public life. The number of Protestants declined in the Irish Free State and in its successor state, the Republic of Ireland. IRA attacks in the 1920s drove away many who assisted the British in the Anglo-Irish War, in the process burning many historic homes as reprisals for the Crown forces' destruction of the homes and property of republicans, suspected or actual.

Others had suffered disproportionately in World War I, losing their sons and heirs on the bloodied fields of Flanders and the Somme. Some that remained became victims of the Roman Catholic Church's Ne Temere decree imposed by Pope Pius X, which required Catholics in mixed marriages to ensure that all children of the marriage were brought up to follow the Church of Rome. This decree contributed greatly to the religious divide in Ireland, and is still in force, but not followed as much as before, and Protestants have greater options nowadays, even in southern Ireland.

As a result, many eligible Protestant women, who because of the deaths of Protestant men in World War I were denied the availability of Protestant husbands, either married Catholics or remained unmarried, either way ending the Protestant family line. This reversed an earlier trend of Catholics becoming Protestant to avoid discrimination.

Furthermore, land reform from the 1870s to the 1900s broke up many of the large estates. Protestant families, who had owned most of the land, saw it returned to their largely Catholic tenantry. Many chose in the 1920s to use their compensation money to settle in Britain, often in other estates they owned there.

In addition, the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland from 1871 by an Act of Parliament led that Church to sell many of its estates and bishops' palaces, in the process laying off many Protestant workers who themselves then moved away. (Previously, the Church had had considerable wealth thanks to tithes (mandatory taxes) which the local Roman Catholic, Presbyterian and Methodist communities had to pay to the (Anglican) Church of Ireland. The loss of this money underlined the economic vulnerability of the Church of Ireland.)

However, It is widely (if not universally) accepted that little evidence of widespread discrimination against Protestants in the Irish Free State/Éire exists. The first President of Ireland, Douglas Hyde (1938 – 1945), and the fourth, Erskine Hamilton Childers (1973-74), belonged to the Church of Ireland. Mary Robinson, nee Mary Bourke, the seventh President has both Catholic and Protestant branches in her family, and is married to a Protestant, Nicholas Robinson, although her children were raised as Roman Catholics (her parents boycotted her wedding).

Leading ex-Unionists like the Earl of Granard and the Provost of Trinity College Dublin gained appointment to the President of Ireland's advisory body, the Council of State.

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Some people draw a distinction between membership of the "Unionist tradition" (those with a strong cultural or ethnic identification with Britain) and actually advocating Unionism as a political philosophy. There is also a distinction drawn between "Partitionist" Unionism (i.e. not desiring a United Ireland) and Neo-Unionism (the aspiration for Southern Ireland to reunify with Britain). The extent of support for which is widely regarded as negligible.

Southern Irish Unionists are sometimes referred to as "Anglo-Irish" (or sometimes in the case of Ulster "Scots-Irish" or in America, "Scotch-Irish") or (often despairingly) "West British".

The study of Irish history from a Unionist perspective is known in The Republic of Ireland as revisionist history, although some Catholic writers are regarded as revisionists, such as Kevin Myers and Eoghan Harris.

However, many historians have come to view that the accepted and traditional view of the history of the British Isles, particularly that of the history of the Gaels, was already subject to historical revisionism (for example, in the Book of the Taking of Ireland, known as The Book of Invasions).

While Southern Unionists in many regards identify with their Northern Counterparts one respect in which they differ is describing themselves as "Irish Unionists" Many Northern unionists no longer like to regard themselves as Irish at all because while the term may be geographically correct it is often perceived as being synonymous with Gaelic culture (which is associated with nationalism and with which few Unionists identify) and prefer the term Ulster Unionist. Southern Unionists however contend that "Irish” does not necessarily imply "Gaelic” and the term "Ulster Unionist" is both geographically incorrect (part of Ulster is in the Republic of Ireland) and excludes Unionists from the other three Irish provinces (Leinster, Munster and Connaught).

Today, except for the minuscule Irish Unionist Alliance founded in the 1990s, Unionism no longer exists in the 26 Counties as a political option.

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See also

Unionism in Northern Ireland

Southern / Neo-Unionism

Wider Interests

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Resources

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Articles

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Books & Reports

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Manifestos

The following Unionist parties have contested at least one election in Northern Ireland since 2001 and produced online manifestos (all PDF format): Image:New-conservative-logo.png Conservative and Unionist Party

Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) Image:Dup.png

Progressive Unionist Party (PUP)

Image:Uup.gif Ulster Unionist Party (UUP)

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Speeches

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Websites

Analytical
Analytical sites do not necessarily imply support for political causes:

Cultural Image:Lambegdrumming.jpg Cultural sites do not necessarily imply support for political causes:

Integrationist (with Great Britain)

Legal
A number of Acts of Parliament and other laws provide a legal framework for the union:

Political Parties

Southern / Neo-Unionist

Structural Image:UK-Passport-Cover.jpg Some official agencies and organisations at a national level have developed specific structural links as part of the union. These links reflect the responsibilities of the agency or organisation to the citizens of Northern Ireland and the other UK regions. However, they do not indicate support for political unionism as the UK Civil Service is regulated by strict laws on impartiality. In addition, Northern Ireland is nowadays part of a web of co-operative links with the Republic of Ireland (north-south), the whole British Isles (east-west), the European Union and the USA.

Ceremonial

Central Government

Co-operation

Devolution

Parliament

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