The poet John Montague once wrote of getting a bus from Belfast to his native Tyrone, “through Lisburn, Lurgan, Portadown; solid British towns, lacking local grace”. Montague was a Catholic, born half a dozen years after partition created Northern Ireland, a time when the solidity of British, Protestant Ulster overwhelmed and demoralised the non-unionist minority which had been created when the state was formed.
That firm, unyielding structure is one reason Northern Ireland has often erroneously been called a state, even by those who created it in order to remain inside an actual state, the United Kingdom, and outside an independent Irish State. It was built, the late David Trimble memorably said, as a “solid house, but a cold house for Catholics”.
Now that we are all minorities in the North those of us who aspire to constitutional change have the opportunity to explain how a vision for a changed Ireland will move us genuinely beyond sectarian competition
Though the imposing structure was changed fundamentally decades ago, first by the civil rights movement, then ultimately by the Belfast Agreement, the simple fact of majority and minority “communities” inside Northern Ireland has persisted. The last census, a decade ago, confirmed that Protestants (either those practising or raised that way) were no longer a majority, but there were still more of them than Catholics. As of Thursday’s results, that is no longer true. Not only has the structure of the Northern state been changed, the central animating fact that led to its foundation has gone.
What should we do with this information? The most important thing to do with it might be to try to forget it. I hate even writing the words Protestant and Catholic down, depressed by the fact that in 2022, labels that may or may not represent actual religious observance (having no religion myself) still have a political meaning. But they do for one big historic reason. Though sincere feelings of national allegiance and rational economic interest also informed unionist opposition to Irish self-government, the crude headcount nature of Northern Ireland’s creation tragically encoded sectarian competition from the beginning.
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Now that we are all minorities in the North, as the census demonstrates, those of us who aspire to constitutional change have the opportunity to explain how a vision for a changed Ireland will move us genuinely beyond sectarian competition and towards celebration of one another. And not just celebration of traditional identities, but of the actual diversity that exists around us – not least in my own constituency of Belfast South.
[ Northern Ireland census: Another psychological blow for unionismOpens in new window ]
[ More Catholics than Protestants in Northern Ireland for first time, census findsOpens in new window ]
[ Opinion: Northern Protestants at a crossroadsOpens in new window ]
The non-white population of the North has doubled in the last decade, the proportion of the population born outside the UK or Ireland is now at its highest ever level, and those with no religion are now the second largest denomination.
Until recently, Northern Ireland was not only defined by a binary of national identities demarcated by religion, it was virtually exclusively white, had experienced tiny levels of inward migration and the public space was heavily religious. As in the Republic, all those things have changed – for the better.
Does any of this mean that a referendum on a new proposition for the island is guaranteed to be won, or that it should happen in the immediate future? No, but it does mean that what once seemed like stony, unyielding facts of identity have changed and been replaced by a complex, diverse society. That diversity means a new replacement Catholic, nationalist majority in the North is not coming any time soon – a majority for change can only be built on a plural, diverse coalition of people who want to build something new. It is also clear that Northern Irishness is now in itself an identity that commands real attachment and even affection, either in conjunction with other allegiances or on its own, including from many whose parents or grandparents were entirely disaffected from the entity of Northern Ireland.
To be relieved of the burden of division is one of the great challenges left by Irish history. To build something new, and solid, together, is another
My own party is fundamentally a social democratic as well as constitutionally nationalist one. We care most about the material welfare of working people of all identities. None of the census statistics released this week will change the energy bills or food costs people face this winter. But the cost-of-living crisis also points to the serious structural shortcomings in our current arrangements. Because of the DUP boycott of Stormont, Northern Ireland is without a government and reliant on Tory ministers and Whitehall officials to manage the response to the biggest economic crisis in generations.
Despite two-thirds of households in the North being on home heating oil, and prices more than doubling, Tory ministers this week promised a derisory £100 (€113) to people with oil tanks, a move that will guarantee not just cold homes, but destitution for some here. The next day, the chancellor of the exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng announced a mini-budget that was nakedly aimed at cutting taxes for rich people and corporations. It is hard to argue that the needs of any working people of any background in Northern Ireland are served by political structures that serve up outcomes like this, with little or no influence to change them.
My father sometimes reminiscences about Presbyterian neighbours on the farm next to my grandparents in Co Down. They were friends, small farmers with common experience and outlook despite one being in the GAA and the other in the Orange Order. I’ve heard my father use the same word to describe them that Montague used to describe those Ulster town: “solid”. But my father meant it in a different, warmer way; that they could be depended on, relied upon for support. And that solidity didn’t lack local grace, it was a kind of grace of its own, achieved against the heavy burden of historical division.
To be relieved of the burden of division is one of the great challenges left by Irish history. To build something new, and solid, together, is another.
Matthew O’Toole is SDLP MLA for Belfast South