Northern Ireland’s Unionists Are Fighting for Survival

Every year, unionists—those who want Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom—take to the streets to commemorate several key events leading up to the 1690 victory of Protestant King William III over his chief rival, James II, in a festive show of music and singing.

By the 1690s, Ireland had been under English rule for several decades. James, the deposed Catholic king of the British Isles, was determined to restore his authority. He mustered an army consisting primarily of Catholic recruits and clashed with William’s advancing forces on the banks of the River Boyne.

His eventual defeat all but secured the crown for William, and more importantly, reinforced Protestant control of Ireland for the next several centuries.

Although a relatively minor event in the long march of history, the Williamite War has had significant reverberations in the modern day. For many unionists, the fight to protect British Protestant identity is ongoing. But instead of seizing territory with muskets and cavalry, they’re fighting a rearguard action on the election trail, the steps of city hall, and inside stuffy courtrooms.

Sinn Féin election workers carry nationalist-party posters in Belfast on April 25, 2022. Charles McQuillan/Getty Images

Although unionist politicians didn’t lose seats, their overall performance paled in comparison to Sinn Fein’s romp, and that was enough to sound the alarm bells.

“For unionism, it’s perhaps a ‘wake up and smell the coffee’ moment,” former Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Edwin Poots said to reporters at the BBC.

The recent elections are part of a long, steady decline of political unionism. After more than half a century in which unionists held an unshakeable grip on power, the 1998 Good Friday Agreement—the peace accord that ended the 30-year conflict known as the Troubles—required unionists to give their opponents in the leading nationalist parties an equal hand in the administration of the country.

Since then, nationalists have made steady electoral gains across the country. They took control of Belfast City Council in 2011, a major propaganda coup with serious political and symbolic ramifications. Six years later, unionists lost their century-old majority in the region’s legislative assembly, before completely relinquishing control to Sinn Fein at last year’s assembly election. They also lost the role of kingmaker in Westminster when former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson won a commanding majority in the 2019 U.K. general election; no longer could the small but thran DUP hold former Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal hostage. The recent local elections are the latest such defeat for unionism.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Advocates for the Good Friday Agreement argued that the peace document was a victory for unionism; the Irish government had renounced its territorial claim to the country, and the British government promised that its constitutional status wouldn’t change without the consent of the majority.

Given the demographic composition of Northern Ireland at the time, the consent principle effectively meant unionists would have final say. Reflecting the optimism of the time, Gary McMichael, a unionist representative with ties to paramilitary groups, told reporters after signing the agreement in 1998 that “the union is not only safe, but has, in fact, been strengthened.”

There were, of course, detractors. Unionist dissidents recoiled at being asked to negotiate with former members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), a nationalist paramilitary group responsible for roughly 1,500 deaths during the conflict.

Democratic Unionist party leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson poses with fellow election candidates during the DUP party manifesto launch in Belfast on April 28, 2022. Charles McQuillan/Getty Images

There were political concerns, too. As soon as IRA gunmen were given seats at the table, unionists argued, a long process would begin that would inevitably end with those same IRA gunmen holding the keys to the kingdom.

Those dissenters look prescient now. Sinn Fein, the former political wing of the IRA, is poised to lead the governments of both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in the south, an unimaginable prospect even 10 years ago.

In the most recent Irish general election in 2020, Sinn Fein fell just two seats short of becoming the largest party in the Irish parliament. That might still have been good enough to put it in government, but an eleventh-hour deal led by rivals Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, the country’s historically dominant parties, kept it from power. Recent polling data suggests that the establishment parties might not have enough to overcome another big Sinn Fein performance.

A Sinn Fein takeover could be seismic. The party continues to make holding a referendum on Irish unity a core part of its political program.

The aftermath of a Sinn Fein takeover could be seismic. The party’s leadership continues to make holding a referendum on Irish unity a core part of its political program.

For many unionists, it’s hard to ignore what looks obvious.

“The fundamental premise of the peace process,” said Jamie Bryson, a prominent loyalist activist, “was that IRA acts of violence and terrorism were rewarded with political concessions.”

Justice and equality were two of the guiding principles during the Good Friday negotiations, but when a formerly privileged group loses status, it’s sometimes perceived as injustice and inequality. This can lead to reactionary politics and violence, a course of events that has played out in many other parts of the world—from the United States to the former Yugoslavia.

A local resident walks past a loyalist paramilitary mural in Belfast on April 4 close to the 25th anniversary of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.Charles McQuillan/Getty Images

Nowhere has this been on greater display than policing, one of the most controversial issues in Northern Ireland today, just as it was in the 1990s. Among other changes, peace negotiators in 1998 agreed to replace the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), Northern Ireland’s police force, with a new body. Prior to the outbreak of the conflict in the late 1960s, many in the region’s Catholic population saw the RUC as an armed agent of state repression with little interest in defending their communities.

This was highly offensive to many unionists, who believed the RUC had served honorably in a brutal conflict, upholding law and order in the face of constant death threats and intimidation.

It didn’t end there. Perhaps the most controversial provision of the Good Friday Agreement was the conditional release of convicted militants. By the middle of 2000, more than 400 prisoners had been freed, forcing many victims and victims’ families to live alongside their brutalizers.

While the recidivism rate for conflict-related criminals has been remarkably low, unionists couldn’t shake the horrifying reality that the victims of republican terrorism weren’t going to get justice. When it emerged in 2014 that the British government had secretly granted IRA fugitives immunity from prosecution, it was clear that the violence committed against unionist communities would go unpunished.

That sense of double-dealing came to a head in 2021, when the government chose not to prosecute Sinn Fein officials for ignoring COVID-19 restrictions to attend the funeral of former IRA strategist Bobby Storey.

As far as unionists were concerned, they were subject to one law, nationalists another.

But the reality is more complicated.

Dating back to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, the peace accord allowed for the release of both republican and loyalist prisoners, meaning that loyalists who committed violence against Irish nationalist communities would also escape justice.

Indeed, the structure of the Good Friday negotiations themselves was manipulated so representatives of loyalist paramilitary groups were guaranteed seats at the table, despite having negligible support at the polls. In more recent times, former First Minister and DUP leader Arlene Foster came under heavy criticism after she met with a representative of loyalist paramilitaries in 2021 at the height of the Northern Ireland Protocol crisis, suggesting that violent groups still held sway.

Still, the notion that unionists are losing status is difficult to shake, and recent international disputes such as Brexit have only served to further entrench those beliefs.

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Two men dressed as customs officers take part in a protest outside Stormont against Brexit and its possible effect on the north and south Irish border on March 29, 2017.Charles McQuillan/Getty Images

Much of the wrangling and negotiating that followed—including the much-publicized disputes over the so-called backstop and the Northern Ireland Protocol, both of which established trade barriers in the Irish Sea—were aimed at mollifying nationalist concerns.

Observers were right about Brexit destabilizing Northern Ireland, but wrong about who would be most upset.

Observers were right about Brexit destabilizing Northern Ireland, but wrong about who would be most upset. At an EU summit in 2018, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, echoed the prevailing notion that erecting new customs posts within Ireland could inspire republican paramilitary groups to remobilize. While organizations such as the New IRA have certainly made headlines, loyalists were the ones taking matters into their hands.

The protocol was designed to stabilize Northern Ireland and ferry the Good Friday Agreement through its most turbulent period since the late 1990s. It’s done the opposite.

When Johnson and the EU agreed to the protocol in October 2020, unionists were outraged. After all, they were told in 1998 that the country’s constitutional status wouldn’t be changed without their consent. The economic relationship with Britain, they argued, was a fundamental part of the constitutional framework.

Johnson and his Conservative Party allies mostly ignored them, and by April the following year, parts of Northern Ireland were in flames.

“The protocol is leading to sustained societal difficulties, which are not only liable to persist, but will probably get incrementally worse,” Bryson told me at the time.

British officials had to act, but when they did, it only seemed to confirm unionists’ worst suspicions. The U.K. Supreme Court ruled that not only did the protocol override parts of the Acts of Union, but also that Parliament had the explicit authority to do so. It looked as if Westminster was selling out, and there was nothing unionists could do about it.

In a last-ditch effort to reform the protocol and secure Northern Ireland’s place inside the United Kingdom, the DUP—Northern Ireland’s largest pro-Union political grouping—withdrew from the region’s governing bodies, refusing to reengage until substantive changes were made to the Protocol.

Although the DUP’s boycott has come under intense criticism from nationalist politicians, it’s extremely popular among unionists. According to one poll from LucidTalk, nearly two-thirds of unionists believe their politicians should refuse to reenter the regional executive until the protocol is either changed or scrapped entirely.

This is despite the emergence of some data that suggests that Northern Ireland’s economy is actually better off under the current arrangement. But economics are secondary to the true north star in Northern Ireland politics: identity issues.

A man walks past a mural marking unionist territory in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, on May 4, 2016.Charles McQuillan/Getty Images

Shortly before the April 2021 riots, the Loyalist Communities Council, the body that coordinates Northern Ireland’s remaining loyalist paramilitary groups, temporarily rescinded its support of the Good Friday Agreement, citing grave concerns over the protocol.

“Please do not under-estimate the strength of feeling on this issue right across the unionist family,” it said in a statement.

Several months later, the same LucidTalk poll mentioned above showed that a majority of unionists would oppose the Good Friday Agreement if they voted today. One should not forget that unionist support was considered not only necessary, but absolutely vital to the viability of the peace process in the 1990s.

The summer marches have long been one of the most controversial events in Northern Ireland. Nationalists call them triumphalist displays of ethnic supremacy, while unionists say they’re merely celebrations of culture and heritage. No one agrees what their true purpose is anymore (and it might be all the above), but we may have to add another designation to that list: a lamentation of lost status.