Tom Griffin (London, OK): Gareth Young points us to the FT where John Lloyd provides an overview of the emerging balance between unionism and nationalism across the UK:
This might be the high tide of nationalism, before the turn, and the beginning of a neo-Unionism no longer afraid to speak its name – for fear of appearing bigoted, or imperialist, or simply out of touch with the zeitgeist. In the Royal Gallery of the House of Lords, where huge murals of great British military encounters – by the Irish painter Daniel Maclise – blaze forth from the walls, David Trimble, former first minister of Northern Ireland and the progenitor of the Stormont Assembly, dismissed SNP successes as more a matter of Labour unpopularity than nationalist support. “The presence of devolved government in the UK greatly reduces the main nationalists’ argument – that a Westminster government of a different stripe gives the central government no mandate,” he said. “There will be friction – but that is in the nature of such arrangements. The Union remains.”
This weekend's events in Belfast perhaps underlined the resilience of unionism in that part of the UK, albeit a unionism that retains more of the old imperial pattern than Lloyd allows.
It was telling that even some local politicians who opposed the Iraq War, such as Alliance MLA Naomi Long, supported the Royal Irish Regiment's homecoming parade and opposed the counter-demonstration against it:
Much of the political opposition to the homecoming events is less about the rights and wrongs of the Army in foreign conflicts and more about deep-seated resentment at the presence of the British armed services in Belfast.
The debate around it has shifted on to more familiar territory and, on occasions, has strayed into anti-British rhetoric and naked sectarianism.
Yet the connection between the Army's record in Belfast and in Iraq are very real. Among the protesters on Sunday were the family of Peter McBride, a teenager shot dead by soldiers who went on to serve in Iraq, and whose commander Tim Spicer went on to lead one of the largest private military companies there.
Nationalists in all parts of the UK are entitled to make the case that episodes like the Iraq war are not an aberration, but a reflection of the reason the union exists, to be the basis of a great power that can 'punch above its weight' in the world.
Long's comments underline the particular problem confronting Irish nationalists, to show their position is not simply a tradition belonging to one community but an analysis that can stand on its own merits. Last Sunday's peaceful demonstration was perhaps evidence that they are further down that path than their critics are prepared to give them credit for.
