UNWELCOME GUESTS OF THE NATION
A rlene Foster’s decision, announced in late April 2021, to step down as party leader and first minister followed months of internal rumblings against her leadership led by the traditionalist Free Presbyterian wing of the party. Agriculture minister Edwin Poots quickly emerged as the main contender to replace her. Recently returned to his post after medical treatment, Poots enjoyed the support of the evangelical faction of the party. His ally and fellow MLA for Lagan Valley, Paul Givan, was first to support his candidacy. Poots’s main rival for the position, Jeffrey Donaldson, was completely out-manoeuvred by the coup planners. Donaldson was politically close to Foster and together they deserted the UUP to join the DUP in 2004. While there are no more than 10,000 members of the tiny Free Presbyterian Church founded by the Reverend Ian Paisley, over one-third of the DUP MLAs, and more than half its councillors, are members. Poots and his evangelical colleagues were long opposed to gay rights, marriage equality and abortion rights. As a creationist, Poots held to a belief that the Earth is 4,000 years old.
The successful heave against Foster followed her decision to abstain on a UUP motion in the assembly to ban gay conversion therapy, which outraged the fundamentalists. Poots had previously supported bans on gay men donating blood or gay couples adopting children. During the early months of the Covid-19 crisis, he claimed that Catholics were super spreaders of the virus citing inaccurate figures of case numbers in different areas of the North.
Despite his hard-line, conservative views, including a scepticism about climate change, Poots supported efforts to restore power-sharing with SF after the collapse of the executive in early 2017. He subsequently led the DUP team in negotiations with senior SF members Conor Murphy and Stephen McGlade. He promoted an all-island health initiative for congenital cardiac care for children. After boasting about his intentions to block legislation on the Irish language, Poots subsequently agreed to it as part of the New Decade, New Approach agreement that restored the executive in early 2020, but then obstructed its implementation. In mid-May, he defeated Donaldson in the leadership contest by 19 votes to 17 by the DUP’s 8 Westminster MPs and 28 members of the assembly, a result that reflected its continuing and deep divisions. With only a few hundred active members, the party was already losing voters to the more socially liberal Alliance and the choice of Poots was unlikely to arrest this fall in support among unionists.
At the same time came a change of leadership in the UUP following the resignation of Steven Aiken. His replacement was Doug Beattie, a former British army officer who had suggested in some media interviews that he wanted the party to move towards the centre in order to recover voters drifting to Alliance. Beattie proposed the assembly motion to ban gay conversion therapy which had contributed to Foster’s political defenestration. The change of leaders in both parties served to underline the existential crisis of unionism as it celebrated the centenary of the NI state.
The victory of the Scottish National Party (SNP) in May elections and the promise by its leader, Nicola Sturgeon, that she would legislate for a second independence referendum added to the fragility of the pro-union advocates in the North. Within weeks of his narrow victory, Poots was removed as DUP leader following a revolt by the party’s executive over his agreement with SF to resume power-sharing. He resigned as party leader after he nominated Paul Givan as first minister of a new executive against the wishes of the party’s ruling body. Poots was replaced by Donaldson, who was the only candidate to put himself forward and who used his first public statement as leader, as RTÉ News reported on 26 June, to accuse the Irish government of ‘cheerleading’ for the protocol and ignoring the concerns of unionists. Following his ‘coronation’ in late June, Donaldson said:
The Irish government and the Irish prime minister have made clear that they want to protect the peace process, they want to protect political stability in Northern Ireland. But the Irish government has to step away from being a cheerleader for one part of the community. If the Irish government is genuine about the peace process, is genuine about protecting political stability in Northern Ireland, then they too need to listen to unionist concerns.
It’s not just London, Dublin also needs to understand that if we’re going to move forward and have co-operation, if they’re intent on harming our relationship with Great Britain, they cannot expect that it will be business as usual on the North–South relationship.
He announced that he would seek to secure a ‘coalition for the union’. This would be an annual UK-wide ‘conference on the union’ involving civic and political society, business and academics in order to promote ‘pro-union ideas, research and relationships’; a ‘unionist convention’ to build ‘practical and strategic unity’; and ‘a new pro-union campaigning group’ that would work alongside the unionist political parties. He did not explain how he would convince the British government to scrap the NI protocol. He also allowed the Stormont executive to continue in operation and continued the agreement made by Poots with SF on the appointment of Givan as first minister. In exchange for accepting the first minister’s nomination, SF received a commitment from the British government that it would enact Irish language legislation in the autumn.
Concerns over a fresh escalation of street violence during the annual Twelfth of July celebrations were heightened when nationalist residents of the New Lodge area in north Belfast complained about the risk to their homes from a massive bonfire in the adjoining Tiger’s Bay area and attacks on their community by those building it. They also criticised the decision of the PSNI not to move on the intelligence they had about the UDA in north Belfast gathering weapons and petrol bombs in advance of the Twelfth, or to assist contractors to remove dangerous and illegal bonfires.
Infrastructure Minister Nichola Mallon of the SDLP and SF Communities Minister Deirdre Hargey unsuccessfully sought a court order to force the PSNI to remove the bonfire, while unionist politicians insisted it was a legitimate expression of their culture. Donaldson, Beattie and Jim Allister of the TUV visited the bonfire in the days leading up to the Twelfth in an unprecedented show of support by the leaders of political unionism. Jamie Bryson represented the Tiger’s Bay Bonfire Group in discussions with Mallon over the controversial pyre. The bonfire was lit and the night ended without violence.
Among the casualties of the loyalist campaign against the protocol during the summer was the first fully integrated Irish preschool, which was forced to relocate from Braniel Primary School in east Belfast because of a social media hate campaign. Naíscoil na Seolta was due to open its doors for the first time in September 2021 with 16 children from across the communities in the traditionally unionist area. Among those involved in setting up the preschool was Linda Ervine, who said that an alternative site would be secured for the project. The parents and teachers involved decided to move venue following anonymous threats made against them and their children on social media.
In an early indication that Beattie would entice more moderate unionists into the UUP fold, Ian Marshall announced his decision to join the UUP in late July. It was a development that ‘soft’ unionists hoped might herald a more open approach by the party to all-island engagement under its new leadership. Marshall said in the Irish Times that he intended to run for an assembly seat in the next election and called on unionists to accept that, ‘We have a protocol that is here to stay.’ He acknowledged that it was causing disruption and cost to some business but said that it also had advantages: ‘There can be opportunities here for business and trade. It goes back to the pre-Brexit situation when we had all this access before, but we forfeited that,’ he said.
Meanwhile, the political and diplomatic efforts of the Irish government were focused on leveraging US and EU support for its position on the protocol in advance of the G7 summit of world leaders in London in June. Accepting that the protocol was causing problems for business and trade with the UK, Simon Coveney insisted that the solution was to be found in repairing the practical difficulties rather than removing it and endangering the single market. Coveney used the opportunity of a stop over at Shannon Airport by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan to explain to the senior White House officials how the NI protocol was being undermined by British ministers, despite their having agreed to it in an international treaty. On 25 May 2021, the Irish foreign minister spent two hours with Sullivan, who has family roots in County Cork, discussing a range of issues – including the ongoing Middle East crisis and Iran – but their bland statement in relation to the North understated the significance of the meeting. According to a report in the Sunday Times, ‘Mr Sullivan and Foreign Minister Coveney reaffirmed their commitment to protecting the gains of the Good Friday Agreement for all communities in Northern Ireland.’ Sullivan, it said, ‘spoke with Coveney for two hours, focusing heavily on the Northern Ireland protocol and leadership change across unionism’.
However, it later emerged that the Shannon Airport encounter would form the basis for an unusual and dramatic intervention by a US diplomat in London. On 3 June, the US chargé d’affaires in Britain, Yael Lempert, delivered a diplomatic message, or démarche, to Brexit minister David Frost, which expressed the inceasing concern of her government over the protocol stalemate. According to the official British government minutes of the meeting, quoted by the Times newspaper, ‘Lempert said the US was increasingly concerned about the stalemate on implementing the protocol. This was undermining the trust of our two main allies. The US strongly urged the UK to achieve a negotiated settlement.’ Lempert told Frost and John Bew, foreign policy adviser to Boris Johnson, that if Britain agreed to a veterinary deal that meant following EU agri-food rules, Biden would ensure that the matter ‘wouldn’t negatively affect the chances of reaching a US–UK free trade deal.’ She also asked how the US could be helpful in brokering a deal with the EU over the protocol.
Following the publication of the exchange, Coveney confirmed that the US intervention was a direct consequence of his discussion with Sullivan in Shannon Airport when he asked the secretary of state to assist with the resolution of the standoff between the UK and the EU. ‘We asked him to and then we followed that up with a note on the meeting to give a very clear Irish perspective on what we thought the points of tension are and how we can move beyond them,’ Coveney told RTÉ’s Prime Time. ‘And I think that was received well’.
Following the G7 summit, and the implicit threat of economic sanction from the US and the EU, Frost appeared to soften his language on the protocol which he had previously described as unsustainable.
The EU’s offer of a veterinary agreement to eliminate 80 per cent of the checks on the Irish Sea border and to extend the grace period for the introduction of the protocol was now under consideration by the British. A spokesman for Boris Johnson acknowledged that the prime minister was focused on finding ‘radical and urgent solutions within the protocol’. Frost had spent weeks assuring unionist politicians and Tory supporters of Brexit that he would get rid of the protocol, including at meetings attended by the LCC. Among those who criticised his engagement with representatives of illegal organisations was the North’s justice minister Naomi Long, who also condemned a warning by the LCC that Irish government ministers were unwelcome in the North while the protocol remained in place.
Although the Northern Ireland Office privately briefed that Frost was meeting paramilitary groups in order to get them to keep a lid on street violence in loyalist areas during the marching season, the nationalist parties and Alliance were incensed. They were particularly angered when the LCC issued a statement in early May that it had met with Frost and Secretary of State Brandon Lewis at a time when the LCC was telling Irish government ministers they were not welcome north of the border.
It was perhaps no surprise then, given LCC’s ‘veiled threat’ to Irish government ministers and officials – as Naomi Long described it in the Irish News – that LCC chairman David Campbell stood down from the board of the peace-building, cross-community and cross-border charity Co-operation Ireland. Over decades, the charity had received hundreds of thousands of euro in support from Irish government funds through the Department of Foreign Affairs, including for projects in communities controlled by the loyalist paramilitaries. On the board of the charity with Campbell were a number of politicians, including former Taoiseach John Bruton; its vice-chair, former foreign minister Charlie Flanagan; former DUP leader Peter Robinson; and former SDLP MP Margaret Ritchie; as well as former Irish rugby international Trevor Ringland. Peter Sheridan, chief executive of the charity since 2008, was previously an assistant chief constable of the RUC and PSNI and a member of the NI Equality Commission. The joint patrons of Co-operation Ireland are President Michael D. Higgins and Queen Elizabeth II.
Its chair, Dr Christopher Moran – a property tycoon, DUP supporter, Brexiteer and Tory party donor – had been a front row guest at the DUP’s conference when it was addressed by Boris Johnson in November 2018. Indeed, at the beginning of his rousing speech, Johnson thanked Moran for arranging his invitation to the event. That same weekend, however, Moran was the subject of a media investigation by the Sunday Times, which revealed that a London apartment block he owned was being used for prostitution. The newspaper reported:
More than 100 prostitutes were operating out of flats at Chelsea Cloisters, a Sloane Avenue apartment building owned by Dr Moran, where the rent for two-bedroom flats can cost more than £2,500 per month. Scotland Yard is now examining evidence provided by the newspaper before deciding whether to investigate. There is no suggestion that Dr Moran is involved in any illegal activity.
A legal representative told the Sunday Times that Dr Moran had not tolerated prostitution at the building or profited from it in any way. The newspaper also claimed that the prime minister, Theresa May, was under pressure to return the £290,000 Moran is said to have donated to her party. The revelations were embarrassing to the DUP and to Johnson, but it turned a spotlight on the make-up and political connections of a leading charity supported by the two governments. More sinister and damaging to the charity, however, was the role of a board member in making threats, however veiled, to one of its key funders.
In response to the threat, Varadkar was quoted in the Irish Independent as saying that he did not think the LCC decided ‘who’s welcome in Northern Ireland and who isn’t,’ and that ‘Irish government ministers will continue to travel to Northern Ireland to engage with people from all backgrounds’. In mid-June 2021, Varadkar told the Fine Gael ard fheis that he believed that a united Ireland could happen in his lifetime. This was in sharp contrast to remarks by the Taoiseach Micheál Martin who, on an episode of BBC’s Spotlight marking the centenary of Northern Ireland, had referred to the next century when speaking of the prospects of a united Ireland.
In his leader’s address at the online party conference, Varadkar said that ‘the views of unionists must be acknowledged, understood and respected but no one group can have a veto on Ireland’s future.’
He rejected the ‘crude vision espoused by Sinn Féin’, which was, he said, ‘a cold form of republicanism, socialist, narrow nationalism, protectionist, anti-British, euro-critical, ourselves alone, 50 per cent plus one and nobody else is needed.’ Instead, he said that:
Unification must not be the annexation of Northern Ireland. It means something more, a new state designed together, a new constitution and one that reflects the diversity of a bi-national or multi-national state in which almost a million people are British. Like the new South Africa, a rainbow nation, not just orange and green.
We have to be willing to consider all that we’d be willing to change – new titles, shared symbols, how devolution in the North would fit into the new arrangements, a new Senate to strengthen the representation of minorities, the role and status of our languages, a new and closer relationship with the United Kingdom.
He went on to say that, until it was clear how a united Ireland would work, holding a border poll would be premature. Arguing that Fine Gael had ‘a duty to engage with each other and others to find answers these questions’, he suggested it consider organising a branch for party members and activities in the North. Varadkar dismissed criticism of his speech from Brandon Lewis over his ‘united Ireland’ remarks after the secretary of state urged politicians to ‘to dial down the rhetoric, particularly at this time of year’. In response, Varadkar told RTÉ News that:
It was the wrong time during the three years of Brexit because of those negotiations. It was the wrong time this week because of the difficulties the DUP was having. It’ll be the wrong time for the next few months because of negotiations around the protocol and the marching season. It’ll be the wrong time next year because we’re running into the assembly elections and it’ll be the wrong time after that. For those people, including some in my own party, who are uncomfortable talking about unification, they will always be uncomfortable.
Varadkar used the ard fheis to promote his nationalist credentials in advance of a by-election in Dublin South Bay in early July, not least because at that time it was believed that the main challenge to his party would come from SF. Instead, the Tánaiste’s favoured party candidate, James Geoghegan, was beaten into second place by Labour senator Ivana Bacik in a significant blow to Fine Gael and Varadkar. Fianna Fáil was even more damaged by the dismal performance of its standard bearer, Deirdre Conroy, who won less than 5 per cent of the vote. Sinn Féin candidate Lynn Boylan, a senator and former MEP for Dublin, came in third with over 16 per cent of the vote. The result prompted another wave of criticism of Martin’s leadership from disillusioned backbenchers and party members and, although a likely contender for Martin’s job, Jim O’Callaghan was also implicated in the disastrous result as director of elections for Conroy’s campaign.
In the wake of the party’s weak performance, a number of FF backbenchers led by Marc MacSharry, a consistent and outspoken critic of the leader, sought to mount a challenge to Martin. The Sligo TD claimed to have the support of a significant number of Oireachtas party members, whom he said had signed a petition calling on the Taoiseach to resign as party leader. However, MacSharry said, O’Callaghan had declined to participate and, instead opted to await a more timely opportunity, which put an end to the heave.
Martin did not avoid another damaging blow when one of his most vocal media supporters, columnist Eoghan Harris, had his contract with the Sunday Independent terminated. The paper’s management and owners, Mediahuis, discovered that Harris was contributing to a Twitter account that had been routinely, and anonymously, criticising journalists and other public figures for over a year. Following complaints to Twitter over the handle @barbarapym2, the social media company suspended the account, which it said was in breach of its rules on platform manipulation, and eight others linked to the Barbara Pym account.
The account, named after a dead English novelist, had directed its attacks on journalists and other public figures deemed to be ‘soft’ on SF. Among those subjected to attack on Twitter were Aoife Grace Moore, a Derry-born reporter with the Irish Examiner; Paul Larkin, a former producer with RTÉ and the BBC; and Seán Murray, a Belfast filmmaker (and son of Sean ‘Spike’ Murray), who had recently directed Unquiet Graves, a documentary exposing the activities of the notorious loyalist Glenanne Gang. International lawyer Francine Cunningham, the Strabane-born wife of Peter Vandermeersch, the publisher of the newspaper, was also the subject of abuse in a tweet on an account called @northernwhig. The tweet, according to Village Magazine, suggested that she had nationalist tendencies and, remarkably, described her as ‘the ex-wife of Frank Connolly’, although we have never met, less still married.
Niall Murphy and his Belfast firm KRW Law represented a number of those abused by Harris on the various Twitter accounts, including Larkin, Derry rights activist Emma DeSouza and Denzil McDaniel. Murphy also advised IF members Martina Devlin, a long-time journalist with Independent Newspapers, and Colin Harvey, who were also the subject of adverse comment by Harris.
It appeared that Harris had grown ever more agitated and reckless as the debate over a unity referendum gained momentum and as the vote for SF reached unprecedented levels in the South. He argued that the surge in nationalism would destroy democratic values, and he promoted Micheál Martin, a fellow Cork man, as the political leader most capable of protecting his imagined citadel against the barbarian hordes from the North, led by SF and IF.
Contrary to the accusation by Harris that it was ignoring the wishes and sensibilities of unionism, IF organised a successful and widely-viewed video production featuring a number of prominent members of the Protestant community as part of its efforts to further discussion on Irish unity. The webinar, entitled New Ireland – Warm House for All, was hosted by broadcaster and journalist Andrea Catherwood in February 2021, and featured independent MLA Trevor Lunn; Ireland’s first female Baptist minister Rev. Karen Sethuraman; trade unionist Mark Langhammer; as well as Denzil McDaniel and Glenn Bradley. It reflected the effort and capacity of the movement to attract those of a non-nationalist background into its orbit. None of the participants came from a Catholic/nationalist background but all were open to the debate on a united Ireland.
IF also produced a detailed economic analysis on the benefits of a united Ireland which estimated, with up-to-date figures provided by the ESRI and others, the real level of the British subvention to NI at less than half the claimed £10 billion per annum. It also set out the advantage people in the South enjoyed in income, wealth and life expectancy compared with those living across the border. In early July 2021, the economic report was presented to 50 prominent members of the business community at a Chatham House Rules event in Belfast, which was addressed by Niall Murphy and Rev. Sethuraman. Among those present were a number of businesspeople from unionist backgrounds.
In June, Professor John Doyle of DCU produced, in a contribution to the ARINS project, an important, peer-reviewed study on the subvention. His study found that the real cost of the UK subvention to the North, calculated at £9.4 billion in 2019, could be less than £3 billion when liabilities incurred by the British state are removed. He found that pension payments in 2019 to retired workers in the North amounted to £3.4 billion, a political obligation that would remain on the UK exchequer after a united Ireland is agreed, just as it continues to pay pensions to those in the South who previously worked in Britain. In reality, he accepted, the pensions issue would have to be negotiated between the British and Irish governments, following a vote for unity. Some £2.4 billion of the subvention related to the annual payments by the North towards the UK national debt but, according to Doyle, this is more of an accounting exercise as no contribution has been made from NI finances towards UK debt liability for several decades. In his conclusion to the 2021 report, Doyle said, ‘The cost of the subvention objectively – in terms of what is relevant to the debate about Irish unity – is no more than £2–£3 billion’.
Any discussion on the cost of unity would also have to consider the benefits, including from corporation tax, that would accrue to the Irish exchequer from an all-island economy as well as other amounts that might be negotiated with Britain as part of its disengagement from Ireland. The role of the EU, which had continued to fund peace and other cross-border projects since Brexit, was the subject of much conjecture given that, post-reunification, it would be in the EU’s interests to protect and advance the interests of Ireland as a single economic entity within its common trade area as well as securing the external border on its north-west Atlantic seaboard.