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‘THE CLOSEST WE’VE BEEN SINCE PARTITION’: IRISH REUNIFICATION
ON THE HORIZON  
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Matt Kennard
April 8, 2024
Declassified UK
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_ Since Brexit, the conversation around a unified Ireland has taken
place at a pace which people have never seen before. The chaos, the
recklessness, that emanates from Westminster shows that they do not
care about the interests of people here. _

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In Northern Ireland, the 12th of July serves as a reminder of the
still raw sectarian wounds of the recent past. 

“The Twelfth”, as it’s known, is a protestant day of parades and
marches. It celebrates the victory of King William of Orange over
catholic King James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. This
ensured a protestant ascendancy in Ireland.

The night before, named the Eleventh Night, it is tradition for
unionist communities to build huge bonfires, sometimes with effigies
of republican politicians, and have street parties into the night.

I walk up towards a protestant community in north Belfast, but to get
there I have to go through New Lodge, a working class catholic area. 

“Is Tiger’s Bay that way?” I ask at a local newsagent.

“Yes, it is, but be careful, it’s rowdy tonight,” the man tells
me. “Where are you from?”

“London,” I say.

“Ah, okay, you’ll be fine, then.”

Like most of Belfast it’s clear when I’ve crossed the unmarked
lines dividing the communities still. In Tiger’s Bay, union jack
flags flutter all around while pictures of King Charles III appear in
windows. 

Down Upper Canning St, I come to a large parking lot which has been
converted into a party venue. Huge speakers pump out house music at an
incredible volume. Teenagers stand around drinking spirit mixers and
beers. The star of the show is the huge bonfire in front, not yet lit
at 11pm. It has an Irish tricolour flag strapped across it.

I stand around with a beer for ten minutes before one of the kids
asks: “What you doing here?”

“Just looking around,” I say.

“Don’t,” he says. 

[A bonfire with the Irish tricolour flag is prepared to be burnt,
north Belfast. (Photo: Matt Kennard/DCUK)]

A bonfire with the Irish tricolour flag is prepared to be burnt, north
Belfast. (Photo: Matt Kennard/DCUK)

BREXIT

The protestant festivities in July are a reminder of how real the
divides in Northern Ireland still are. The Orange Order parade the
next day brings out all the most extreme within the community. Many
catholics don’t leave their houses—or leave the city completely.

But something historic is happening in this territory: the unionists
are losing control. Locals say that even the parades have a more
lacklustre feel in recent years. 

In the 2019 general elections, Northern Ireland didn’t send a
majority of unionist MPs back to London for the first time. Then in
the May 2022 elections, Sinn Féin became the largest party in the
Northern Ireland assembly, again for the first time, pushing the
Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) into second place. 

A year later, in May 2023, Sinn Féin became the biggest party in
Northern Ireland local government, the first nationalist party to hold
the most council seats.

On top of this, Sinn Féin, who’s flagship policy is a reunified
Ireland, is leading in polls south of the border under the leadership
of Mary Lou McDonald.

A 10 minute walk west up Duncairn Gardens from the bonfire and
teenagers are the offices of John Finucane, one of the seven Sinn
Féin MPs who were returned to Westminster at the 2019 general
election.

For many in Northern Ireland, the big change that has accelerated the
trend towards Irish reunification is the 2016 vote for Brexit. 

“I think everybody would accept that since Brexit, the conversation
around a unified Ireland has taken place at a pace which people have
never seen before,” Finucane tells me. 

“The elections in 2022 and 2023 demonstrate that people are looking
more and more on the horizon towards Dublin rather than to
Westminster, for all of the reasons that we have seen over the last
six or seven years.”

He adds: “The chaos, the recklessness, that emanates from
Westminster shows time and time again that they do not care about the
interests of people here.”

Finucane and his fellow Sinn Féin MPs practise a policy of
abstentionism, which means they do not physically take up their seats
in the House of Commons. Their argument is that British political
control over Northern Ireland is illegitimate and working within it
formally endorses it. 

Finucane’s father, Pat, was a prominent lawyer killed by loyalist
paramilitaries from the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) in 1989 as he
ate Sunday lunch with his family. 

“It is for the people here to decide what their constitutional
future will be. If the majority decide that they want to maintain the
union with London, then that is what the outcome will be. If the
majority instead want to have something different, they want to have a
new Ireland. And I think more and more people, certainly outside of
the Republican base, are having that conversation.”

A mural on Shankill Road running through a loyalist stronghold in West
Belfast. (Photo: Matt Kennard/DCUK)

YOUNG PROGRESSIVES

Chris Hazzard, Sinn Féin MP for South Down since 2017, wants to meet
at the James Connolly Centre in west Belfast. Connolly is a hero of
the republican struggle as a key figure in the Easter Rising of 1916,
after which he was shot dead by the British. 

Hazzard won South Down for Sinn Féin 101 years after Connolly was
killed. And he says that the prospects for Irish reunification have
never been better. 

“It’s the closest we’ve been since partition,” he says.
“We’re not only picking up those republicans who maybe fell out of
the electoral system, were maybe more hardline once, who now see the
opportunities that now exist and are coming back to us. 

“But equally on the other side of it, the more progressive minded
younger people on the civic issues, things like abortion, marriage
equality, who haven’t liked how the DUP have done things, and who
despise Tory administration, that’s been a really big motivating
factor.”

The historic nature of what is unfolding in Northern Ireland seems to
be lost on many. The territory was designed to maintain a unionist
majority. In the 1918 election, Sinn Féin won an overwhelming
victory, with 85% of the seats. 

But instead of allowing independence, the British government
partitioned the island three years later, in 1921. The new territory
was composed of six counties in the north, which had a clear
protestant majority.

The resulting political entity was constructed with a lot of
gerrymandering. There wasn’t one person, one vote. A business owner
could have up to six votes and you had to own your own house. Very
often catholics couldn’t vote. The state was essentially built to
maintain protestant supremacy. 

The plan was left in tatters in 2019 when Sinn Féin, led by Michelle
O’Neill, won the most seats in Westminster. 

Chris Hazzard, Sinn Féin MP for South Down, in front of a statue of
Irish independence leader James Connolly. (Photo: Matt Kennard/DCUK)

IMPASSE

Sinn Féin’s recent electoral success was a test for the Good Friday
Agreement, signed in 1998. The system had worked while the DUP were
running the executive, but when that changed, there was a stalemate. 

For nearly two years after becoming the largest party at Stormont,
Sinn Féin was not allowed to form an executive, which required DUP
approval. 

“The Good Friday Agreement stipulates that the first minister should
come from the largest party,” says Hazzard. 

Before the resolution of the impasse in February, Hazzard told me:
“I really can’t overstate the extent to which people are just so
fed up with that approach from unionist political leaders.  You
can’t have it both ways. You were First Minister and now things are
changing. You can’t just throw your toys out of the pram and say,
‘I’m not doing democracy anymore.’”

Hazzard believed there was a “real sense of frustration and
annoyance”. “You go out in the street and ask 100 people, what do
they really believe? And I’m pretty sure 99 of them are going to say
they just don’t want to work under Michelle O’Neill. That would be
the view.”

But the stalemate was helping the republican cause, Hazzard added.
“People are saying if the system doesn’t work it’s time for
something new.”

How far O’Neill is allowed to operate as First Minister still
remains an open question. 

A protestant pub in west Belfast on the day of the Orange Order
parade. (Photo: Matt Kennard/DCUK)

BUSINESS COMMUNITY

Another interesting part of the dynamic unfolding is that the business
community may be increasingly getting behind a united Ireland. 

“The DUP would traditionally have had a fairly significant hold in
what you would call the pro business type community,” Hazzard says.
“Brexit smashed that into a million pieces.”

He continued: “I was chatting with a guy, a businessman this
morning, actually, who comes from the unionist tradition. He was
talking about the huge surpluses now that the Dublin government is
running, and he was saying, ‘they’re a very wealthy country, part
of the European Union’. He’s a businessman. He’s saying, ‘all
my trade’s with the south’. Five years ago, he would not have been
having that conversation.”

Danny Morrison, a former national director of publicity for Sinn
Féin, added: “The business community, which traditionally was
dominated by the unionists, now see the economic benefits from being
in the European Union. So they’re going to go with the flow.”

Morrison, who was a spokesman for Bobby Sands, added: “A lot of
unionists have been disillusioned by a number of factors, including
how successive British governments have treated them.”

The DUP has reverted to the right and towards their base, which has
opened up a large centre ground. The Alliance Party, which is
described as a centre ground party, made huge advances similar to Sinn
Féin. They have quickly become the third party in Northern Ireland. 

“You have your Republican community who will always vote for our
unity, you have your unionist community who will always vote for
that,” added Hazzard. “But that centre ground is now going to be
the defining place, and the politics of the last five to ten years is
making them look one direction at the moment.”

[A mural in Ballymurphy, west Belfast. (Photo: Matt Kennard/DCUK)]

A mural in Ballymurphy, west Belfast. (Photo: Matt Kennard/DCUK)

PREPARING FOR REUNIFICATION

The prospect of a reunified Ireland has come on to the horizon
quickly, largely since the Brexit vote, so thinking about what that
might look like in practice is inchoate. 

Anne Cadwallader is a British journalist who has lived in Belfast
since the early 1980s. Until recently she worked at the Pat Finucane
centre, named for John’s father. 

“Sinn Féin are arguing constantly with the Irish government that
they should start preparing for unity now, so that when it happens it
isn’t a kind of huge shock to the system,” she says about a united
Ireland. 

“What would it look like? They say that if there is a united island,
it wouldn’t just be the south with the north tacked onto it, it
would have to be an entirely new state.”

There are many open questions and no side seems to have even started
grappling with the realities. 

“Would there have to be a new flag? Would there have to be a new
national anthem? What would the health service look like? Who would
control education?” asks Cadwallader. 

“All those issues have to be looked at and thought over so that when
people vote, they know what they’re voting for.”

The Good Friday Agreement enshrines the right to a referendum on
reunification. But the process is amorphous. 

As part of the Agreement, a provision for holding a reunification poll
was made in UK law. The Northern Ireland Act 1998 states that the UK
government will allow a vote “if at any time it appears likely to
him that a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern
Ireland should cease to be part of the United Kingdom and form part of
a united Ireland”.

But it is not clear exactly what would satisfy this requirement.
It’s also unclear how many in the Republic of Ireland would support
it. 

The DUP did not respond to requests for an interview.

_Matt Kennard is chief investigator at Declassified UK. He was a
fellow and then director at the Centre for Investigative Journalism in
London. Follow him on Twitter @kennardmatt._

_Declassified UK is the leading media organisation uncovering the
UK’s role in the world.  We investigate Britain’s military and
intelligence agencies, its most powerful corporations and its impact
on human rights and the environment.  We tell the truth about the
UK’s global footprint – a public service that is not provided
anywhere else._

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