Republican News · Thursday 19 December 2002

PARTITION'S DYING PANGS

As 2002 draws to a close, republicans may reflect with disappointment but not despondency on some of the more depressing political developments of the year, most notably the theatrics of the PSNI hoax-raid on Sinn Féin's offices in Stormont, and the subsequent suspension of the political institutions. Assessing the extent to which the republican project has been advanced by this scenario, and the other failures as far as Good Friday Agreement implementation is concerned, would, however, be an exercise in 'not seeing the wood for the trees'.

As we go to print, new census figures are set for release which, it is expected, will reveal that the unionist community in the Six Counties has dwindled to less than 50 per cent of the state's population for the first time since its inception. The republican-nationalist community, consequently, is said to be approaching parity with that of its unionist counterpart. Demographic shifts, for republicans, have never been seen as the key to the resolution of a problematic political conflict, but unionism's reaction to this trend reveals something portentous about the nature of the state they relentlessly defend.

Pre-empting the results of the census, rejectionist unionist MP Jeffrey Donaldson proclaimed that an overall majority within the Six-County state in favour of a united Ireland would not be enough to end partition. Majoritarianism - the keystone of unionist political ideology - is now being refuted by those who have used it to maintain their supremacy, their squalid little state, for eighty years. 'Tyranny of the majority' they will cry, when that tyranny has been the most fundamental weapon in their political armory.

Republicans must endeavour to reconcile unionists to the reality that ending tyranny, rather than extending and reversing it, will be the end-product of an all-Ireland democracy. But unionists must accept the agreement that was endorsed by the overwhelming majority of the electorate in both jurisdictions on this island, and its unequivocal assertion that 50 per cent plus one is enough to decide issues of constitutional change.

While preposterous PR stunts may soothe the wounds unionist hegemony has had to endure during the course of the peace process, history will record such retrograde actions as the dying pangs of British imperialism in Ireland.