Six into 26 won’t go!” I saw that painted on a Belfast gable wall when I was a boy. Being a competitive little lad, I thought the graffiti author didn’t understand fractions. After all, six goes into 26 “four and a third times.” Of course, the statement was not about division, where it may have been correct according to certain schoolteachers, but about partition. Although he presents himself as a nonpartisan figure, in ideological terms O’Leary would fit snugly into the now moribund Irish Labour Party — swimming along with the tides of progressive neoliberalism, content with a sort of Fabian incrementalism. It is not that Making Sense offers an ideological roadmap for any reunification project or campaign. Indeed, it is the claim to be without ideology that is likely to presage the tenor of the debate. Pacific Dispositions The most famous Ulster unionist slogan is “no surrender,” still cried at the annual August and December parades of the Apprentice Boys over Derry’s walls—or Londonderry’s. The “boys” are nowadays mostly somewhat-matured men. The slogan means no surrender either to Irish Catholics or to illegitimate British power.

My party’s vision is for a republic. But why not, for example, have a role for the royals in terms of patronages and civic society?” he added. Prof Brendan O’Leary, in his book Making Sense of a United Ireland, has suggested a united Ireland could rejoin the Commonwealth, although that is deeply unpopular with Irish voters. Spectre of violence after reunificationThe genesis of Making Sense lies in O’Leary’s previous publication, A Treatise on Northern Ireland, a three-volume work that aimed to provide readers with a foundational political-historical study of Northern Ireland’s colonial and sectarian underpinnings. Unlike many in the Irish academy, he insisted that “archaic” colonial causes were still central to understanding “modern” antagonisms. Moderate Unionists have turned to the centrist Alliance, which is Northern Ireland’s third largest party and is neither Unionist nor nationalist. It also has no position on reunification.

Since the last quarter of the 19th century such Catholics have mostly voted for nationalist parties with platforms that favour an autonomous or independent and united Ireland. Today the largest of these parties are Sinn Féin and the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP). Not everyone who votes Sinn Féin or SDLP will vote for Irish reunification if and when the Northern referendum happens. Like everyone with a vote they will want to know what is on offer and what the benefits and costs are, both for themselves and their families and for their peoples. But cultural Catholics will have a choice, and their votes will matter – with increasingly decisive importance over the rest of this decade. By 2030, as I shall try to show, the decision will be theirs to make.O’Leary and his colleague John McGarry went on to publish two influential works on the Northern Irish conflict, The Politics of Antagonism (1993) and Explaining Northern Ireland(1995). The first was a narrative history of one of Europe’s most intractable conflicts from its origins to the present day, while the second was a critical survey of theoretical perspectives on that conflict. If there was going to be a united Ireland tomorrow, would I be still here fighting tomorrow?” asks Doug Beattie.

Should be required reading for everyone - including unionists - who are interested in and concerned about the fate of this island' Dublin Review of Books Neale Richmond, a Fine Gael member of the Irish parliament, believes that Brexit has brought the prospect of a unified Ireland closer, but says the rights of those who identify as British must be respected. “The challenge for those who believe in unity is to reach out to the unionists and other communities to convince and reassure. We need a new Ireland that is genuinely inclusive of a minority British population, one whose identity will be respected and who will see no diminution of their rights.” Their talk of a united Ireland ‘in my lifetime’ is mystical blather,” writes Colm Tóibín. It isn’t – a united Ireland is inevitable. The demographics are moving daily towards it. Catholics are now perhaps in the majority in the province, and most people there favour membership of the European Union over union with Britain. This is the feeling among the better educated – whether Catholic or Protestant, and predominantly among the young. Britain is a declining economy, while the European Union is a world superpower moving onward and upward.Colm Tóibín wrongly implies that people who believe in a united Ireland are sinister troublemakers full of “mystical blather”. His attitude also reeks of nimbyism when he virtuously distances himself from Northern Ireland issues: “Their hatreds were not mine.” The final straw is his suggestion that we should admire the Queen for her diplomacy during her Irish state visit. It’s 2021 – “whatever you say, say nothing” has been replaced with “we’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace”. The King’s Counsel barrister quit the DUP for the second time in 2007 over the party’s decision to enter power-sharing with Sinn Féin and founded the TUV. The Republic of Ireland is richer per head today by some significant margin than West Germany was in 1989. Northern Ireland is richer today with or without support from the British economy than East Germany was in 1989. German unification has taken place — it’s not perfect but it certainly is not a disaster.” Enter the unionists So did the MacBride campaign, begun among the Irish diaspora in the United States under the auspices of the former Irish foreign minister Seán MacBride, which begat the Fair Employment (Northern Ireland) Act of 1989, enacted by Margaret Thatcher’s government to replace the failed act of the same name of 1976. The draft bill was effectively redrafted by Belfast-born legal scholar Prof Christopher McCrudden, then lead adviser on law to Kevin McNamara MP, the British Labour Party’s frontbench spokesman on Northern Ireland. The Fair Employment Act proved to be remarkably effective legislation. Among other accomplishments it made cultural Catholics more likely to stay in Northern Ireland. Unionists have lived a large part of their lives fearing constitutional change, by virtue of the fact that we had very brutal terrorist campaigns towards that end,” he said in his office in Ballymena, approximately a 40-minute drive from Belfast.