Newton Emerson: Mind your language – unionists are now a race

There were audible groans from the studio audience last Friday night when Late Late Show host Ryan Tubridy announced the following week's guest would be DUP leader Arlene Foster.

For the moment, groaning at unionists is merely political hostility, but might it soon count as a racial incident?

That is the implication of so-far little noticed provisions in the New Decade, New Approach Stormont deal. Its section on the Irish language contains matching arrangements for Ulster Scots, including the creation of a commissioner for each. However, this section also mingles the terms "Ulster Scots" and "Ulster British" and expands the concept beyond language. The role of the relevant commissioner is "to enhance and develop the language, arts and literature associated with the Ulster Scots/Ulster British tradition."

In a subsequent section the full meaning of this becomes clear. The UK government pledges to “recognise Ulster Scots as a national minority under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities”, a Council of Europe treaty – not a European Union treaty – ratified by the UK solely for the recognition of racial minorities.

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European charter

This is separate to mentions in the deal of the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages, another Council of Europe treaty, under which the UK already classes Ulster Scots as a regional language.

There are no references in New Decade, New Approach to an "Ulster Irish" identity or to recognising Irish people in Northern Ireland as a national minority.

What has just happened is that unionists have become a race – a term mingled with ethnicity and nationality in UK and European law. Application of the convention for national minorities in Northern Ireland has until now been focused on non-white groups, Irish Travellers and the Roma. To this has been added “Ulster British”, a novel term in the context, creaking under the weight it must bear. There is at least as much English as Scottish heritage in Ulster, with each background seen as quite distinct for centuries. Rolling them together feels like a clumsy update of the imperfect term “PUL” (Protestant, unionist, loyalist), which has never found much favour beyond loyalism and academia.

But such are the times we live in. If almost any definable group wishes to be a race, then almost by definition it is. The UK proved this to the point of absurdity a decade ago when it recognised the Cornish as a racial minority. You could say it showed a tin ear on the issue.

The DUP has made so little of the concept since the deal was struck there is a suspicion deeper thinking is at work

The Irish Government has kept its fingerprints off this part of New Decade, New Approach but its acquiescence to it remains remarkable. In 1971, Conor Cruise O'Brien published States of Ireland, provoking a generation of fraught debate among nationalists and republicans on "two nations theory", until the peace process slowly changed the subject. Dublin has just waved the whole theory through again without batting an eyelid.

There has been sour grumbling from Northern Ireland’s rights sector, which normally never sees a categorisation of the population it does not like. Some rights organisations claim unionists could always avail of elements of the convention for national minorities so there was no need to refer to it in the Stormont deal.

The appeal to the DUP of annoying the rights sector should not be underestimated. Highlighting the hypocrisy of your enemies, even at the expense of making yourself look ridiculous, has an Ulster Scots word to describe it – 'thran'. After the 1998 Belfast Agreement, one Ulster Unionist Party adviser said Ulster Scots was included only as a joke.

Suspicion

During the Stormont crisis of the past three years the DUP was desperate to find some win it could balance against Irish language legislation, given that few unionists take the Ulster Scots language seriously. The Ulster British concept appears to fit that bill, yet the DUP has made so little of it since the deal was struck there is a suspicion deeper thinking is at work.

Unionists have long defined themselves as simply a British national majority, with no need to assert a distinct ethnicity or even culture – grandiose claims to the latter are a relatively recent phenomenon.

Having lost their electoral majority within Northern Ireland, their challenge is to emphasise unionism as a political position and grow it beyond its base. Officially, that is the DUP’s goal. Unofficially and more fatalistically, unionism could accept decline and don the moral and legal mantle of minority status, perhaps with an eye on a future united Ireland. Rather than unionism losing a constitutional argument and fading away, the DUP might foresee itself as leading a permanent ethnic minority bloc. That would explain why it has not trumpeted this win in the Stormont deal. It could be considered preparation for defeat.

If anyone in the Republic wants to imagine such a future, they need only recall the debate on recognising Travellers as an ethnic group.

Few unionists doubt they would enjoy similar popularity.