Unionist identity, external perceptions of Northern Ireland, and the problem of unionist legitimacy *.

A common view in journalistic and academic commentary is that the recent internationalization of the Northern Ireland conflict and peace process has had a positive impact. (1) This perspective, however widely shared, carries subtly tendentious implications. While there are important exceptions, (2) unionists have in the main been significantly more suspicious of the involvement of external actors such as the United States and the European Union in the conflict than have nationalists, regarding such involvement as unsympathetic. (3) Britain has been the "external actor" that most consistently provided counterbalancing support for unionists. In recent years, however, even British policy has seemed to shift toward a position of neutrality between the two communities, leaving unionists feeling more and more isolated. Affinities between the most powerful forces in British politics and unionism are weak at best. In consequence, many unionists and loyalists perceive that there is an asymmetry between British and Irish political leaders' attitudes to their respective erstwhile allies in Northern Ireland. (4) Supported by a historical context, this tension between British policy and unionism is represented powerfully within unionist identity in a fear of British or other internal betrayal which at times almost exceeds or obscures fear or animosity toward the nationalist/republican "Other." (5) The fear of British betrayal is often linked in unionist demonology to the idea of a pan-nationalist alliance or conspiracy involving the Irish state's wholehearted backing of mainstream republicanism in the North. Not only is the existence of such a coherent pan-nationalist alliance actually a myth, but many researchers fail to see much difference between British and Irish political parties' attitudes toward Northern Ireland. (6) Viewed from the context of unionist politics, however, the considerable ambiguity in British attitudes to unionism exacerbates unionist insecurities and creates a series of tactical dilemmas. (7)

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Unionists have thus experienced greater difficulties than nationalists and republicans in securing support and endorsement from any significant audience external to Northern Ireland. This cannot be explained simply by reference to particular ignorance among or influences upon audiences in Britain, the United States, or continental Europe, since unionists' lack of external political support in three such locations seems likely to be underpinned by some common factors. The importance of such factors can hardly be overstated, since they have had such a critical disruptive influence on the current peace process. Many unionists sense that in view of this lack of outside support for their position, a peace process influenced by external actors cannot in practice enshrine the trumpeted goal of parity of esteem between "the two traditions" in Northern Ireland, but in fact accords privilege to nationalists: Hence not only is a high proportion of opposition to the peace process unionist, but such opposition has repeatedly jeopardized progress in the process to date, and may yet prove fatal. (9) To an extent these problems are also cumulative: It may be suggested that, relatively deprived of external support, unionists have been discouraged from further cultivating such support, (10) have tended more to entrench their position than undertake self-criticism, (11) and, in the words of one commentator, have "retreat[ed] characteristically into that sullen, charmless introspection which has deprived the unionist cause of influence." (12)

Unionists' problem of international political legitimacy is thus a critical element in the recurrent problems that have marked the fragile peace process. This is a question particularly deserving of investigation in the current historical moment. As the recent elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly (November 2003) demonstrated, much to the chagrin and surprise of outside observers, neither the levels of electoral support for anti-agreement unionism nor difficulties in the peace process show any sign of abating. Yet unionism's international-legitimacy problem is also curiously underexplored in that few convincing or wide-ranging causes have been suggested. On the other hand, simple and partisan explanations of this problem are commonly advanced, and this paper will thus initially explore these at some length. It will be shown that these factors fail to help us understand this critical problem, and thus some more complex global influences will also be considered. By definition such global tendencies may be hard to alleviate. Unfortunately, therefore, this analysis does not carry many optimistic implications for the peace process, although it is to be hoped that addressing this dimension of the obstacles to peace in Northern Ireland may at least offer an original, enlightening, and thus ultimately helpful perspective upon it. (13)

There are three reductive explanations for the lack of political legitimacy accorded to unionism by global observers. The first suggests a supposed failure of leadership among unionists, especially pro-agreement unionists in recent times; the second suggests that unionism simply deserves to be accorded no political credibility; and a third argues that the accordance of political legitimacy to causes in Northern Ireland is distorted by the success of misleading propaganda emanating from Irish republicans and nationalists. The first view is advanced by Tim Pat Coogan in the somewhat patronizing suggestion that unionists are fine people, "but they lack leadership," (14) and finds a more significant echo in the more academic analysis of post-agreement politics put forward by Brendan O'Leary. According to O'Leary, David Trimble and his advisers have "consistently mishandled their management of the [Ulster Unionist] Party, their referendum campaign, and all the ensuing elections," and attempted to press unwarranted demands upon nationalists and republicans in an effort to "appease" rejectionist unionists. (15) But unlike other reductive explanations of unionism's difficulties, features of this diagnosis are shared by nationalists and unionists. Specifically, anti-agreement unionists also attack the leadership of pro-agreement unionism for failing to make the unionist case before global opinion and to articulate a position acceptable to a majority of unionists during the peace process. If David Trimble's biographer's contrasting effort to prove that his leadership of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) is essential to the peace process does not entirely convince, (16) such criticisms of Trimble's leadership are still unpersuasive for three reasons. First, it seems a trite explanation, and rather self-serving when used by unionists' political opponents. After all, it could just as easily be argued that, for instance, John Hume and Gerry Adams have failed to face down "rejectionist" or "extremist" opposition to possible moderate turns in their policies at key points in the process. (17) Second, the considerable level of unionist opposition to the Good Friday Agreement as early as April and May 1998 demonstrates that any effort by Trimble to "appease" rejectionist unionists, even if it were in error, was certainly not wanton. Third, the weaknesses in unionism created by its divisions are not simply file product of errors on the part of file moderate or mainstream unionist leadership. Not only were such divisions evident long before Trimble was elevated to UUP leadership, but hard-line unionist attempts to attribute all of the responsibility for these divisions to moderate unionists are surely no less self-serving than the republican/nationalist analysis. Perhaps most significantly in recent times, the decision of file hard-line Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), led by Ian Paisley, to absent itself from all-party talks in Northern Ireland in the summer of 1997 has made pre-existing divisions in unionism harder to surmount and increasingly bitter.

This rejection of dialogue on the part of a significant body of unionists might seem to support the second reductive explanation of the lack of political legitimacy accorded unionists. According to this argument, the core unionist conviction that Northern Ireland should stay part of the United Kingdom is itself not a legitimate political aspiration, so that political formations and actions associated with such a conviction necessarily evince intolerance, intransigence, and supremacism. Analysts who are often ...