Census figures on religion and national identity in Northern Ireland reveal how social change has produced a more pluralist society than is normally imagined by its political parties, or allowed for in its political structures. It shares these changes, and associated problems, with Ireland and parts of Britain.
The two historical stable and dominant ethno-religious blocs that made Northern Ireland distinctive and exceptional are melting and reconfiguring. Declared Catholics now outnumber Protestants by 46 per cent to 38 per cent, but 17 per cent say they have no religion and nine per cent grew up without it.
On national identity the picture is even more fluid, with 32 per cent defining themselves as British only, 29 per cent as Irish and 20 per cent as Northern Irish. An interesting mix of smaller hybrid identities combines these categories, as anticipated in the 1998 Belfast Agreement which talks of being Irish or British or both.
There is a definite overlap between those with no religion, those who describe themselves as Northern Irish and those categorised as “others” who now give the Alliance Party its 16 per cent share of the vote. Asked separately about everyday concerns and political priorities Northern Ireland voters put cost of living, health, welfare and economic prospects well before preferred constitutional futures — as do voters in the Republic and Britain.
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Britishness has different meanings across the UK’s four national territories
That makes it hazardous to infer preferences for Irish unity or UK union from these latest census figures. Increasingly such choices will be made on more pragmatic grounds by larger numbers of voters concerned with their likely wellbeing in either a new Ireland or a reformed UK. Will political competition centre on such choices rather than on older polarities, or will the existing powersharing structures with their many veto points frustrate the emergence of such a new politics?
Much will depend on how the wider political setting in which Northern Ireland is embedded performs and responds to its concerns in coming years. The rest of the United Kingdom, Ireland, the European Union and the United States are all involved.
Britishness has different meanings across the UK’s four national territories. In England Londoners and ethnic minorities opt for its supposed cosmopolitan values over more nativist English ones and have a vague understanding of what that means for the UK union. Britishness is mobilised quite differently in Scotland and Wales, where national identifications are strengthening.
Understandings and practices of unionism are similarly diverse across the UK. Traditionally unionism has been more a matter of practical statecraft than of ideological propositioning. It has weakened and fragmented in recent decades, as the experience and memory of empire and warfare waned and as health and welfare were constrained by austerity and then devolved to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Devolution represented a big change for Conservative unionism after its long opposition to home rule; but unionism also had a genius for adaptation to local and regional identities in peripheral parts of Britain. Unionism in England took the form of an Anglo-British imaginary, functionally sufficient for imperial times, for war-making and welfare but now badly in need of repair.
Neo-unionism involving new forms of Britishness is being floated by Labour and Liberal Democrats who want to keep the UK together.
This puts Northern Ireland’s unionists in a strange and rather isolated position compared to those elsewhere in the UK
Brexiteer Conservatism has opted for a more assertive, “muscular” or unitary unionism from the centre, much less respecting of peripheral sensitivities and increasingly relying on the force of law rather than negotiated consent. It overrides Northern Irish and Scottish preferences to remain in the EU. Under Liz Truss that will be combined with assertive Thatcherite economics that could provoke deep recession and impoverishment compared to better performances of EU member states.
This puts Northern Ireland’s unionists in a strange and rather isolated position compared to those elsewhere in the UK. The DUP’s opting for the hardest Brexit reinforces its reliance on the Truss government, exposing it to wider priorities, choices — and betrayals.
It has few links to the new unionism, especially to Wales where the most innovative unionist thinking is under way through a vision of UK-wide co-operative federalism.
The big question facing UK unionism is whether they can cohere around performance and response from each territorial part.
British links with the EU and the US will play into that.
So will the Irish Government’s role. Preparing for potential constitutional change is prudent given UK instability. It will become more pressing as we face elections in 2025.