Unity?

I can’t entirely disagree with Seamus Mallon in the following:

“We made that mistake a hundred years ago when Northern Ireland was set up on the basis of a head count,” he says. “A premature Border poll may deliver a narrow and completely unworkable majority for unity.”
He adds that in the event of unity a separate Northern government may have to be maintained in an Irish confederation to take account of unionist concerns and fears about a united Ireland.
He is writing in The Irish Times today on the publication of a book, A Shared Home Place, which he co-authored with Andy Pollak.

But the logic of his position does raise questions:

He adds: “I have come increasingly to the view that the Good Friday Agreement metric of a bare 50%+1 majority for unity in a Border Poll will not give us the kind of agreed and peaceful Ireland we seek. My concern is that a very narrow vote for unity would lead to more division, instability and probably violence.”

Would he feel more sanguine with a 60:40 majority, or a 70:30 one? Indeed what would be the critical mass of unionism saying no which would prevent unity?

Mr Mallon warns nationalists against imposing by majority on unionists in a united Ireland what was imposed on nationalists in the North a century ago . . . “with the two sides simply changing positions – nationalists in a majority in a ‘united’ Ireland and unionists the sullen, alienated and potentially violent minority”.

Again all true. But still problematic. The point of the GFA/BA was that it – in a sense – broke the unionist veto. Not immediately, but using precisely the terms which unionism itself had outlined the issue – that being their democratic rights with a given geographic space. Now, I agree entirely that democratic rights aren’t sufficient in a context like this. But they’re not irrelevant either. But that works both ways.

And more importantly this is the metric that was arrived at and agreed. Curiously, his idea about a separate NI government somewhat ignores the thoughts of Richard Humphreys in respect of the GFA/BA persisting post-unity, along with its structural elements (though where Humphreys thinks all this ends is a different matter). An Sionnach Fionn has noted the ‘reverse GFA’ approach as a plausible one in a UI and I’d strongly agree. But it may be that the GFA is written in so deeply as an agreement that it would be difficult to rework its structures in a UI in a short period of time.

That may in and of itself address the issues that Mallon raises – after all, such a context would retain many links East/West, specific aspects of the structure would allow for a fairly full expression of unionist identity and so on. There are aspects that will be challenging, most immediately how would North South political links function? The arrival of NI TDs in the Dáil? Presumably yes. But that wouldn’t prevent residual links (possibly through the Lords) to the UK for NI voters.

But none of this is insoluble and I’d suspect the most creative solutions are the ones that will work best – where there is genuine parity of esteem.