Young
Unionists

This blog will occasionally publish pieces by more than the core team of bloggers.  The first such piece is penned by Chekov of the Three Thousand Versts blog:

Little Ulsterism, Ulster nationalism, ‘ourselves alone’ unionism, you can roll out the pejorative epithets and they perfectly encapsulate the tone of an editorial carried in yesterday’s News Letter. In many ways this piece illustrates tendencies which have done most to handicap Northern Ireland throughout its history and damage the cause of unionists within it.

The piece is a simplistic litany whereby Ulster’s stout defenders are perpetually let down by the perfidious Brits at Westminster. It represents Ulster unionism with the drawbridge up, besieged and confused, with no intention of attempting to alleviate its predicament.

There is no acknowledgement here that unionism itself, by failing to engage constructively with successive British governments, contributed to the various reverses which the editorial lists. There is no ambition to strengthen Ulster unionism’s position, learn from past mistakes, actively strive toward “making Northern Ireland’s status within the UK more solid and binding”.

Cameron is currently offering Ulster Unionists a chance to advance those very objectives. He is making the offer because the United Kingdom is a different place to that in which previous perceived Conservative wrong-doings were inflicted on Northern Irish unionists. The Union is under attack from various quarters and Northern Ireland is no longer so clearly a ‘place apart’. Rather, the attempts of Ulster Unionists to bolster the Union and protect the constitution, strike an increasingly harmonious chord right across the UK.

The opportunity is there for Ulster Unionists, both to strengthen the Union and participate in a modern, revitalised pan-UK unionism. It is no time to heed the voices represented by this article, or those from within the DUP, which wish unionists to collectively repair to a bunker. From there to cry ’sell-out’ whenever political developments, which we have abdicated responsibility for, go against us.