MARY Holland's column last Thursday contained the fairest and most understanding assessment of the unionist position to have appeared in any newspaper in quite a while; it should serve as some sort of corrective to the anti unionist hysteria which has been spreading; through even middle class nationalist ranks, not merely ink Northern Ireland but in Dublin too.
One of the most features of the tribal competition on this island is that even to try to understand the motives of the other tribe is seen as betrayal of one's own tribe.
Let us dabble in that betrayal. Let us go over the obvious again, dealing with it in terms of zoology.
If an animal is a clovenfooted ruminant herbivore, we should not be surprised if it declines to hunt down and kill herds of wildebeest and eats grass instead.
The unionist population over the past 25 years has declined, to be anything other than unionist. It is not tempted to be some other form of animal. It is unionist. Unionist. Characteristics other than unionism may be associated with the species unionist.
Profound distrust
It is uneasy with formalised relationships with the rest of the island; profoundly distrusts political mechanisms which could be subverted and deliver it into a united Ireland; is sometimes extremely anti Catholic; seems to adore rituals others find either infantile, atavistic, trivial, stupid and triumphalist; often indulges in weird and anachronistic forms of Protestant fundamentalism; and, most of all, feels itself different from the rest of the people of the island, a feeling it associates with its Britishness.
Nationalist Ireland has a simple word for this condition. It is bigoted.
Now nationalist Ireland does not hold that an identity as strongly held as unionism, i.e., its own nationalism, is bigoted. Holding onto your own essential precepts with undiluted determination is not called bigoted. That is called resolute.
Unionists belong to a political entity called the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. They are not just an adjunct to that entity. They are there on its flag, the Union Jack, in the cross of St Patrick.
They view British history as their history; British victories as their victories; Britain's wars as their wars.
When the unionists refer toe we, they authentically mean the British. This is not an affectation. This is the way they were before the Troubles; this was the way they were during the Troubles; this is the way they are now.
They are as likely to be prised from their loyalty to that flag as the cloven hoofed ruminant is to be found gorging on the open abdomen of a herbivore.
Nowhere Else
These are the people whose interest the British government is expected to defend in negotiation with our Government, which is similarly charged with the duties of representing the nationalist interest.
That this should even be so is remarkable; nowhere else in Europe does one sovereign government meddle in the governance of part of another political entity, with the consent of that entity. Yet it is the case in the North.
This makes the government of Dublin not merely a player in Northern Irish politics, but in London too, which is powerfully influenced by politicians representing that area over which Dublin has a consultative authority. It is an extraordinary situation requiring great delicacy and sensitivity.
What do we get? In an interview conducted by Gerry Barry, Dick Spring engaged in the sort of primitive Brit bashing which might go down a treat at a Ballyseedy memorial rally, but was hideously out of place from a foreign minister of a grown up country in the European Union.
Why? Because the British have recognised that the unionists will not sit at the same table as an armed Sinn Fein IRA.
That is not some new discovery. We have known it for years.
The recognition of this reality is called Washington 3, but the phenomenon existed before it was given that name.
Yet even Garret FitzGerald, whose place in history is assured by his masterly construction of the accord which led to the Anglo Irish Agreement, said in this newspaper after the Mitchell report appeared that Washington 3 was not designed ,to please the unionists but some other faction within British life.
Which one? The only people to please in this complicated process are to be found within Northern Ireland. If the unionists accept a deal, the British will too; if the nationalists of ,the North do as well, Dublin will nod in approving relief.
Most irresponsible
The vetoes do not exist beyond some bourne of the Tory, Party. No doubt the British announced their adherence to an elected convention with too little regard for Dublin's sensitivities - but did its behaviour deserve Dick Spring's words?
"The British set out to divide and conquer," he said, and these divide and conquer tactics, "were not just an Irish experience, we have seen this in many parts of the world."
This is elandaitchery at its silliest; and also its most irresponsible.
We have had more silliness since, with suggestions that the British "pressurise" the unionists to sit at the talks. Pressurise David Trimble, the Orange Hero of Drumcree, is it?
It will not happen. David Trimble speaks for Protestant Ulster and does not answer to London, no more than Gerry Adams or John Hume answers to Dublin. Protestant Ulster will never sit down with an armed Sinn Fein IRA.
How striking it was that Sinn Fein's refusal to sign a consensus report from the Forum, and its insistence that it would not accept the legitimacy of the Northern state, received no condemnation from nationalist Ireland, merely pained regret.
Hardline unionists are denounced; hardline nationalists merely treated as wayward sons. The nationalist tribe is now intact, shoulder to shoulder. Sinn Fein has done a brilliant job.