Unity

From Unity, 7 March 2009

Back to the past

by Jimmy Stewart

Britain’s Conservative Party and Northern Ireland’s Ulster Unionist Party have engaged in a marriage of convenience under the astounding title of “Ulster Conservatives and Unionists—New Force.”
     Already political pundits are making jokes about this “New Force,” speculating whether NF stands for New Farce, or Spent Force, or Third Force? Certainly this new alliance has been pushed by Sir Reg Empey’s Unionists because of their declining support at the polls and their cash-strapped situation.
     They hope that David Cameron will become the next Tory Prime Minister and that this will rub off in the fortunes of the UUP, electorally and financially. However, Sir Reg and his colleagues appear to have learnt nothing from the lessons of history—how the English Conservative Party has both used and betrayed unionists over decades.
     Sir Edward Carson, who led unionists in their opposition to home rule for Ireland, said after partition that “Ireland was used, Ulster was used, and I was used in the dirty game to get the Conservatives back into power.”
     Sir Reg ignores the fact that it was a Tory Prime minister, Ted Heath, who closed down Stormont and removed the Ulster Unionist Party from power. The Ulster Unionist Party was virulently opposed to the Anglo-Irish Agreement, but the Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher shoved it down their throats.
     Now Owen Patterson, the Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, says that if the Tories form the next government at Westminster they would negotiate with the political parties in Northern Ireland for voluntary coalition, instead of the present mandatory coalition agreed in the Good Friday Agreement.
     He is basing this on the current situation where the DUP holds a majority of the seats in the Assembly, and if they formed a coalition with the UUP they would have a total of 54 seats, compared with a total of 44 seats held by nationalists. In other words, back to Unionist rule for Northern Ireland’s citizens.
     However, Owen Patterson’s vision of a return to past unionist control of Stormont is not on. He would do well to listen to the words of the Deputy First Minister, Martin McGuiness, at last month’s Sinn Féin ard-fheis in Dublin, when he told the delegates: “Unionist majority rule is gone, and gone for ever. Like apartheid in South Africa, it is consigned to the dustbin of history.”
     The new pact between the Tories and the Ulster Unionist Party is not only being ridiculed about its new name but is being seriously undermined by the fact that Lady Harmon, their only MP at Westminster, is not in favour of the link with the Tories, because she prefers Labour.
     Sir Reg may feel he and his party are taking one step forward. However, it may be two steps not only back but into oblivion.

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