Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

As election time approaches a ‘new force’ has emerged in unionist politics. It appeals across communities for support and it wants to offer Northern Irish voters a chance to choose their national government. ’Unionist unity’ is the watchword for the group’s opponents and the concept creates serious fissures within the Ulster Unionist party. The UUP and the DUP step back in order to support an independent ’unionist’ candidate. In North Down, the DUP throws its weight behind a prospective MP who is determined to hinder the emergence of genuine participation in British politics. It is an alliance of self-interest, animated by the party’s stake-holding in sectarian politics. The candidate prepared to shout loudest about ‘Unionist Unity’ is, in actual fact, a very blatant Ulster nationalist. Sounds familiar? Perhaps. But it is a description of the campaign preceding the 1987 general election. And it was certainly not the Ulster Unionist party’s final hour. In the aftermath of the An...

A discussion about preferred candidates on Redemption’s Son led Ignited to suggest that the current Ulster Unionist initiative had been tried before, when Robert McCartney and others spearheaded the ‘Campaign for Equal Citizenship’ back in the nineteen eighties. I countered that McCartney had never seriously threatened to deliver an arrangement whereby Northern Irish candidates had a good chance of being elected as members of a governing party at Westminster. Undoubtedly, though, current developments do appeal to similar impulses as the CEC. If the internet had been widely available in 1986, and had I been a peculiarly politically precocious nine year old, ’Three Thousand Versts’ would almost certainly have been coloured by an integrationist hue. During the early part of that decade James Molyneaux was proud of his links with Thatcher’s Conservative Party. Under the influence of Enoch Powell, there was an integrationist bent to his politics. But the party was also possessed of ...