One gratifying side-effect of the European Election result has been the unusual silence from the ethno-nat number crunchers on sites such as Slugger O'Toole. According to their carefully scribbled out plans and projections, involving (amongst other sectarian counters)the number of little catholic babies born, overflowing protestant graveyards and their perennial "just because" factor, the *Unionist* *Community*’s vote would continue its inexorable fall into oblivion. Of course it didn’t and the pattern apparent since 2000 continued, that is the consolidation of the admittedly small but significant positive difference between the aggregate votes of the DUP, UUP (and now TUV) and those garnered by the pro-Irish "Unity" parties, the SDLP and Sinn Fein.
Whilst it’s not surprising to see anonymous bloggers talking nonsense (!), you do expect self-anointed journalists to have at least some kind of grip on reality(pdf) to back up their assertions. But no. If Doherty had taken the 5 minutes or so required to check on the pattern of elections since 2000,he would have realised the line fed to him "for the first time ever Unionist vote less than 50%" was plainly, well, bollocks. The pro-Union parties vote actually increased, albeit by a minimal amount, on the Euro election of 2005.
Secondly, I’d like to see those surveys he mentions about the "younger Protestants open to Irish Unity", a figment of Pat’s creative imagination I strongly suspect. The standard survey referred to in these cases shows a rather different story.
OK, so it’s always fun bursting any Nat bubble with the harsh pin of reality, but the fact that Doherty and Co still bring such crap as the religious beliefs of 4 year old school-kids to the argument is symptomatic of the narrow ethno/sacral mindset of still a surprisingly large element of Irish Republicanism. It's about time that full advantage was taken of this weakness, but that will involve a reappraising of a similar communal mindset amongst many of those within the pro-Union political and media elite.
First of all, make no assumptions, take nothing or nobody for granted.
Take as a base fact that a Unionist is someone who voted for a pro-Union party at the last election, a nationalist or Republican is someone who voted for the SDLP or Sinn Fein.
Bearing that suggestion in mind, there seems a fair proportion of the population who are neither.
So then why speak about a homogeneous "Unionist Community" (or indeed a "Nationalist baby")?
Need our allegiance to the Union be the main (or even only) selling factor to be pushed at an electorate which seems more and more apathetic on the constitutional question?
If not, then what else are we proposing "to sell"?
1 comment:
The most interesting thing I noted from the NI results was the very low turn-out. When more than half of the voting population is not exercising their right to vote it is dangerous to draw too many conclusions full stop. Surely one of the parties in NI could think up some strategy to rock the vote. Just imagine if the SDLP had managed to convince a share of those non-voters to get out there, they would have won a seat even though the total number of unionist votes would have been exactly the same. That makes all of the analysis of the results just a little pointless.
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