A cold place for unionists: John Reid has warned that Northern Ireland must not become a "cold place" for Protestants, but unionists are growing increasingly disillusioned with the way the Belfast Agreement is working out. Northern Editor Gerry Moriarty explores the reasons for their feelings of alienation in the first of a series of articles examining the unionist mindset
Imagine, if you will, the coffee and brandy stage of a dinner in a leafy south Belfast home where the middle-class hosts and guests are so daring as to allow the normally restricted subject of Northern Ireland politics to be aired. This is a mixed group of Protestant and Catholic professionals, so the tone will be polite and measured.
John Reid's Liverpool speech in November will arise. That was where he warned that Northern Ireland must not become a "cold place" for Protestants. Most people think he actually said "cold house", but no, it was "cold place". It was David Trimble who used the cold house analogy, in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, when he conceded that the North was not always a cosy home for nationalists.
Be sure that some unionists in this grouping will contend that the wheel has turned full circle. They will complain that, while they might accept the theory of the Belfast Agreement, its practice, or implementation, has gone against them.
Someone may be able to quote Dr Reid's analysis on the state of unionism: "A community which feels its traditions, culture and way of life are under threat from an alliance between the large and vibrant Catholic minority within its boundaries, its larger neighbour to the south, and a spineless, ungrateful or even perfidious parent across the Irish Sea. A community which feels that some elements of nationalism are intent on humiliating it under the legitimate guise of achieving parity of esteem."
One of the nationalists at the table may stiffen on hearing this quotation. Unionists have been in a privileged position and nationalists are catching up, he may argue.
The unionist doctor or lawyer could usefully cite Dr Reid again. While nationalists are still more likely to be unemployed than unionists, the wider reality, as the Northern Secretary said, is that nationalism today "breathes confidence, coherence, dynamism and energy" and unionism doesn't.
A debate is currently opening up in Northern Ireland society about the Belfast Agreement and about whether unionists are getting a raw deal.
There is no doubt that many unionists feel themselves under the cosh at the moment. Ian Paisley is probably correct when he says that the majority of unionists now oppose the agreement. But, looked at dispassionately, unionist arguments don't quite add up. The logic is that, short of a possible Balkans-style conflict, there is no political alternative to the Belfast Agreement. That is borne out by the Westminster and local election results: the four main parties - Ulster Unionists, DUP, Sinn Féin and SDLP - are each on over 20 per cent. Make peace or make war appears to be the message.
FAR and above everything else in the agreement is nationalism accepting the principle of consent. Unionists with a political or historical bent realise the enormity of this sea change in republican ideology, but it seems to have passed over the heads of most others.
They complain that implementation of the agreement is a one-way street which, in the words of Ulster Unionist sceptics, has "hollowed out" the North's Britishness. They cite the "loss" of the RUC, which defended them against the IRA for three decades, and the gradual stripping of British symbols from Northern officialdom.
Yes, there is a new police force. But surely it is objectively in unionism's interests that, for the first time, and within the confines of the UK and with insignia which includes a crown, most nationalists - it is fair to say - support the Police Service of Northern Ireland.
Yes, there is a restructuring of the criminal justice system. But again, in terms of symbolism, the changes are relatively minor and have been tempered to try to keep unionists sweet.
And while the Union flag may not fly so conspicuously over public buildings, it will be flown on the 20 or so days designated by the British government. Furthermore, it will be hoisted over the buildings which house the departments of Sinn Féin ministers Martin McGuinness and Bairbre de Brún on those days - a fact that they resent and continue to challenge.
Moreover, as nationalists such as the SDLP's Eddie McGrady have argued, many moderate nationalists are antipathetic to the notion of "crude majoritarianism". Those who follow this logic he dismisses as "51 per centers". The contention is that even if the demographics eventually went against unionists, nationalists might not be so quick to vote for a united Ireland the next time a border poll comes around if unionists were taking a more positive approach to the agreement.
In that light, it is difficult to explain the current unionist malaise. But unionists around the dinner table will point to a more visceral unionist vision of politics and society. They will talk about the world gone topsy-turvy from a unionist perspective, of their concerns and fears being ignored or dismissed while every complaint from nationalists gets top-of-the-agenda attention.
Why, they will ask, is there so much concentration on Bloody Sunday, Pat Finucane and Rosemary Nelson while there appears to be a memory lapse in terms of the suffering of the RUC, the UDR, the Royal Irish Regiment and the Protestant community generally?
They will also ask: "Are republicans the only victims of the Troubles?" Because that is how it appears to them in terms of the media focus. They will talk of the "in-your-face" nature of militant nationalism, chiefly represented by Sinn Féin, which will always find other grievances and battles to fight rather than allow Northern society and unionism time to catch its breath. They will say that every time there is potential for stability another problem comes hurtling along, as in, for example, the current Nuala O'Loan versus Ronnie Flanagan clash. And how come the police and not the Omagh bombers are being censured?
Some nationalists may gloat at the current fragmentation of unionism, but the more reflective know that everybody loses if recent history is revisited. Even Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness must figure that it is strategically more in their interests to have the UUP rather than the DUP as the chief representative of unionism. There could be a more understated but dangerous corollary between the explosion of nationalist anger and frustration in the late 1960s and what unionism is experiencing.
WE can already see some of the warning signs and, as ever, they are coming from the working-class Protestant areas rather than the middle-class belt. What is Holy Cross about? Primarily, it is about territory and loyalists lashing out in a nihilistic, sectarian, incoherent fashion, which damages both loyalism and unionism on the world stage - to say nothing of Northern Ireland's economic interests. But it is also symptomatic of a deeper depression within unionism, something which the whole of society in the North would be wise not to ignore.
Most of the violence in the North last year was perpetrated by loyalist paramilitaries. (Here, too, nationalists - with a fair degree of justification - will query why the main unionist concentration in 2001 was on IRA decommissioning. Saturday's unspeakable UDA murder of Danny McColgan only reinforced that nationalist sense of unionist concerns about republican violence sometimes being bizarrely misfocused.)
But while the UDA, fighting under its various cover names, does not require evidence of unionist alienation to justify its sectarian gun and bombing campaign against Catholics, the prospects of marginalising such paramilitary groups will only improve if more unionists - especially those at the volatile working-class coalface - can see the merit and logic of the agreement.
Politically, the Belfast Agreement would appear to be in serious danger of unravelling if David Trimble cannot bring more unionists to support the accord. Maybe his North Down colleague, Sylvia Hermon, was right when she told south Dublin Fianna Fáilers that pro-agreement unionists were an "endangered species".
Decommissioning and the internal Ulster Unionist squabbling won't go away, but there is a chance that, if he can get over his Ulster Unionist Council annual meeting in early March, he may have a reasonably clear run to the Assembly elections in May next year to persuade more unionists to come on board.
Mr Trimble certainly needs a fair wind, but he also needs the two governments, as well as nationalists and republicans in the North, to play their parts in levering the unionist balance back in favour of the Good Friday deal. The interests of all sides - like their challenges - overlap significantly. That is the clearest measure of the quiet revolution prompted by the Belfast Agreement.