`Do you have a heart for Ulster?" is the question blaring from loudspeakers in Protestant areas of Northern Ireland this week. It is a mark of the established culture of unionism that a question that invariably elicits a positive response is followed by "Then Vote No on May 22nd." Those who would underestimate the power of this folksy nonsense should not overlook some Ulster Protestants' addiction to homespun versions of American evangelism.
Equally ironic is the fact that there will be a profound difference in the voting habits of anti-partitionists North and South. A further irony - that Ian Paisley and Bob McCartney will join Ruairi O Bradaigh and Bernadette SandsMcKevitt in casting votes against the Belfast Agreement - is lost on the unionist oppositionalists. To their minds, if West Belfast is voting Yes then East Belfast should vote No. Right? Wrong.
Even if Mr O Bradaigh and Ms Sands-McKevitt are to be written off as "ultras" who would oppose anything less than an immediate British declaration of withdrawal, anti-agreement unionists would be wise not to ignore Prof Joe Lee - hardly a militant republican - who has warned nationalists to beware of "self-delusion" about the agreement.
Bairbre de Brun, one of Sinn Fein's senior negotiators, has claimed that Northern Ireland's place in the Union rests on one hinge, the Act of Union. Leaving aside the fact that the provision of the Government of Ireland Act dealing with Westminster's ultimate sovereignty is to be re-enacted in a new Northern Ireland Constitution Act, the ultimate hinge is provided by the principle of consent. The only transitional arrangements in the agreement deal with the transfer of powers to the new assembly.
Nationalist self-confidence, or self-delusion, apparently rests upon rarely articulated assumptions about the demography of the two religious communities. It is an ugly debate with overtones of eugenics but, for the record, the majority of births in Northern Ireland for the last few years have been Protestant and the majority of primary schoolchildren are also Protestant. The safest assumption is that there will be no Catholic majority for at least a generation. Beyond 2025 predictions are virtually meaningless.
The claims of a demographic imperative are further rendered irrelevant by the fact that a significant minority of Northern Catholics is totally averse to Irish unity and a larger slice is not prepared to contemplate it without significant unionist acquiescence, which does not exist. Given that the agreement's terms are hardly likely to deepen Catholic economic grievances, the motor towards a solidification of Catholic attitudes on the constitutional question is difficult to make out.
Further, the most coherent criticism of the agreement is that it institutionalises the communal blocs: Catholics are given no incentive to vote for anything other than a "Catholic" party and vice-versa. It follows that a significant conversion on the part of Protestants to the cause of Irish unity is inconceivable. The ultimate irony is that only unionism - or at least the most unreconstructed element within it - holds the keys that can unlock the Border. So long as they are frustrated - and that remains to be seen - there is more chance of a German-speaking United Europe than a Gaelic-speaking United Ireland.
The republican movement has taken a huge risk in deciding to take its seats in the new assembly. It has calculated that the cost to the ideology underpinning the armed struggle is outweighed by the prospects of anti-agreement unionists having sufficient numbers to bring about the slow death of the assembly and its replacement by the sort of inter-governmental framework it had hoped to achieve from the talks. On that occasion, though, it was outwitted by a confident unionism which refused to leave the table open to a sordid peace deal between the IRA and the British government.
Even in the final hours of the talks, the Rules of Procedure guiding the negotiations - which republicans had no part in devising because of their self-imposed exclusion - meant that the process was impervious to final-hour promises of a permanent ceasefire and the decommissioning of weapons in return for a nationalist consensus on the Strand Two package.
As Mitchel McLaughlin has admitted: "We had sought to firewall the North-South bodies but we did not succeed . . . the assembly does have a controlling input in terms of both the establishment of the bodies and their functions."
The party which adamantly said No to an assembly, No to a unionist veto on the North-South body, and No to changes to the Irish Constitution's definition of the national territory, came away with all three. No wonder its decision on the document had to be postponed while internal dissent was rooted out. Its stated No to decommissioning must surely now be viewed with a scepticism in some republican circles.
And decommission, or otherwise prove their commitment to exclusively peaceful means, it is required to do if it is to avail of positions in the new Northern Ireland executive.
Sinn FEin must hope that unionist wrecking tactics will succeed before the two-year limit on the completion of decommissioning mentioned in the agreement as the SDLP has given it little succour. Sean Farren of the SDLP was unambiguous: "I don't think my party can honestly participate with parties which continue to maintain any affiliation with paramilitary organisations."
The unionist No camp appears to be divided between wreckers and conscientious objectors. The attitude of the former is wicked but hardly surprising. The latter have now had the clarification they sought. Prisoners will be released only on licence, the RUC will not be disbanded, and unreconstructed terrorists will not be eligible to hold ministerial office. The utterly unnecessary sight of jubilant welcomes for criminals on day-release caused such revulsion in unionist homes that it will soon be possible to distinguish genuine conscientious objectors from those who believe an electoral opportunity exists by opposing the agreement.
All shades of No are foolishly ignoring the strength derived in UK political opinion from accepting the agreement and underestimating the sanctioning power of a government with the largest peacetime majority this century and, seemingly, at least another nine years in office guaranteed.
By default they would be happy to see unionism revert to the failed policy of collaboration through passivity brought on by moral distaste.
They further misinterpret the document. As was so embarrassingly revealed on RTE's Questions and Answers, even Bob McCartney has recognised the power of the simultaneous referendum in undermining violent republicanism. Can they not see that every time a "new phase of the struggle" is announced from a glitzy conference platform, another republican sacred cow has just been slaughtered in south Armagh or east Tyrone?
Steven King is an adviser to the Ulster Unionist Party deputy leader, Mr John Taylor MP
