Colin Coulter

The character of unionism

Abstract This paper seeks to offer a critical examination of the existing literature on unionism in Northern Ireland. It contends that recent interpretations have typically failed to grasp fully the essential diversity of the unionist mind. In particular, commentators have proved content to overlook those secular and liberal impulses that inform the political imagination of modern unionism. The paper concludes with a brief discussion concerning how social scientists might arrive at a more faithful understanding of the character of unionism.

The Absence of Class Politics in Northern Ireland

These are scarcely auspicious times for the left. An unfortunate confluence of recent social and political trends has conspired to question seriously the value of materialist interpretations of the world. The reconstruction of western societies out of the debris of the economic crises of the nineteen seventies has led to the emergence of increasingly intricate class hierarchies. Changed work practices and accelerated consumption have both served to blur the boundaries between previously distinct social strata. The increasingly complex and dynamic nature of contemporary bourgeois society has invited predictable and indeed opportunistic responses from neoliberal critics. Most famously the political scientist Francis Fukuyama (1989, 1992) has declared that we are living through the end of history. The unprecedented material wealth and optimal political freedom that global capitalism has allegedly afforded humanity have ensured, Fukuyama insists, that the notion of social class has effectively ceased to have real meaning.

Under Which Constitutional Arrangement Would You Still Prefer to be Unemployed? Neoliberalism, the Peace Process, and the Politics of Class in Northern Ireland

This article seeks to critically examine the political economy of the Northern Irish “peace process.” When the principal paramilitary organizations in the region declared cease-fires in 1994, it was widely assumed that political progress would be followed by economic prosperity. However, this “peace dividend” has never fully materialized. Those working-class communities that were at the center of the Troubles have derived little economic benefit over the last two decades. Indeed, if anything the already substantial class divisions in the six counties have become more pronounced over the course of the peace process. The article concludes by suggesting that these widening socioeconomic disparities have the potential to undermine the prevailing political settlement in Northern Ireland.

Northern Ireland: 20 Years After the Cease-Fires

In the closing months of 1994, the principal paramilitary organizations in Northern Ireland declared that their campaigns of violence were at an end. The cease-fires called by republican and loyalist groupings represented the most significant heralds of a complex process of conflict transformation that continues to unfold even twenty years on. In this introduction, we set out to map the key developments that have shaped the tortuous narrative of the Northern Irish ‘peace process’, thereby providing the historical backdrop for the articles that follow. While remarkable progress has been made over the two decades since the paramilitary cease-fires, the political context and future of the region remain rather more fraught than is often assumed abroad. It is perhaps best, then, to speak of the six counties in terms not of resolution but rather of ambiguity. Twenty years on from the optimism that greeted the paramilitary cease-fires, Northern Ireland retains the essential ‘inbetweenness’ of a political space that has moved from a ‘long war’ through a ‘long peace’ and into a profoundly undecided future.

Direct Rule and the Unionist Middle Classes

In March 1972, as the political climate in Northern Ireland degenerated apace, the Conservative administration in London exercised its constitutional prerogative and dissolved the devolved legislature at Stormont. The introduction of ‘direct rule’ from Westminster represents a significant watershed in the development of modern Northern Ireland. The operation of direct rule over the past two decades has initiated a ‘passive revolution’ which has transformed Northern Irish society. The aspect of social change occasioned by direct rule which has preoccupied commentators most is the emergence of an enlarged and variegated Catholic middle class. Rather less attention has been afforded to the more affluent elements of the unionist community. This essay seeks to begin to redress this significant imbalance within the study of contemporary Northern Irish society.

The origins of the Northern Ireland conservatives

Abstract This article sets out to tell the story of the Conservative associations that appeared in parts of Northern Ireland in the late nineteen eighties. Ironically, the emergence of the Ulster Tories may be attributed largely to the activities of a small leftist sect. Throughout the seventies and eighties the British & Irish Communist Organisation (B&ICO) developed and advanced an ideological programme of ‘electoral integrationism’. While the case for electoral integration attracted little attention initially, the advent of the Anglo‐Irish Agreement enabled it to reach a wider and more receptive audience. The principal achievement of the electoral integrationist movement was perhaps to persuade the British Conservative Party to establish constituency organisations in Northern Ireland. Although opinion polls often suggested a bright future for Conservative politics in the region, the early nineties saw the Ulster Tories suffer humiliation in a sequence of elections. The swift and ignominious decline of the Northern Ireland Conservatives is instructive not least because it casts light upon the troubled relationship between Ulster unionists and the British state.

Class, Ethnicity and Political Identity in Northern Ireland:

The formal purpose of this paper is to offer a critical examination of the social and political philosophy of electoral integrationism. The critique of electoral integrationism is employed as a means by which to explore the relationship between class, ethnicity and political identity in contemporary Northern Ireland. The paper tenders two principal contentions. First, I challenge the view that the ethnoreligious divisions existent within the province are aberrant and irrational. I claim instead that political sectarianism in the six counties may be more faithfully conceived as a rational and perhaps inevitable reflection of the manner in which northern society is structured and experienced. Secondly, I argue that whilst political identity in Northern Ireland may be fashioned primarily by ethnicity, it also bears the indelible impression of class sentiment and experience. It is the particular nature of the articulation between class and ethnic identity in modern Northern society which renders the present conflict so apparently intractable. The paper concludes with the suggestion that, given the material foundations of ethnoreligious sentiment, the eradication of political sectarianism in the six counties will require radical structural reform.

Austerity’s Model Pupil: The Ideological Uses of Ireland during the Eurozone Crisis

During the Eurozone crisis, Ireland would come to be regarded widely as a ‘poster child’ for the remedial powers of the austerity agenda and as a ‘role model’ for the other heavily indebted states. In this article, we offer a critical reading of the narrative of an Irish ‘recovery’ that has gained currency over recent years. Tracing the genealogy of terms such as ‘poster child’ and ‘role model’ reveals that they predate the recent apparent revival in Ireland’s economic fortunes. The specific point of origin of these metaphors suggests that the often euphoric discourse that has come to attend the Irish economy articulates a very specific political enterprise. In their efforts to cast the country as the harbinger of economic ‘recovery’, powerful political players have sought to make ideological use of Ireland to ensure that repayments would continue to flow from those European countries in which private bank debts were socialized after the crash. The success of this endeavour has meant that the crisis in the Eurozone has been resolved in the interests of those powerful forces that sparked it in the first place.

Peering in from the window ledge of the Union: the Anglo-Irish Agreement and the attempt to bring British Conservatism to Northern Ireland

In this article I examine one particular way in which the Anglo-Irish Agreement redefined unionist politics in the late 1980s. While the operation of “direct rule” had drawn the unionist middle classes ever closer to Britain in economic and cultural terms, it had also left them in a precarious position politically. The nature and scale of this political subservience was brought home dramatically in 1985 when the British government signed an international agreement giving the Dublin government the right to be consulted on Northern Irish affairs. In the period of political flux summoned by the Hillsborough Accord, elements of the unionist middle classes were drawn to the previously marginal ideas of a small leftist organisation that argued for the British political parties to organise in the region. Given the material interests and social conservatism of those attracted to it, the call for “equal citizenship” would inevitably take the form primarily of a movement seeking to bring British Conservatism to Northern Ireland.

‘These people protesting might not be so strident if their own jobs were on the line’: Representations of the ‘economic consequences’ of opposition to the Iraq war in the Irish national press

In this article, the authors examine the ways in which the social movement in Ireland opposed to the Iraq war was represented in the national press. The article draws upon data generated by the largest research project of its type ever conducted in an Irish context. The authors considered representations of the anti-war movement in 11 daily and Sunday newspapers over a period of 9 months. One of the principal threads that ran through newspaper coverage of the time centred upon concerns about the possible ‘economic consequences’ of opposing the war against Iraq. A close reading of the data reveals that the familiar reliance of journalists on official sources and interpretations ensured that the national press tended to cast the anti-war movement in Ireland as a danger to both the regional and national economy at a time of seemingly unprecedented prosperity.