BELFAST

AS CREEPING NATIONALISM begins to invade their turf, and the idea of a united Ireland becomes plausible, Ulster Unionists and their supporters in the state to their south, have begun to argue that the millions of Irish south of the now non-existent border that doesn’t separate the two polities on the island or Ireland, are complete strangers to their northern bretheren.

“Having slipped into the position of a minority in a state established to ensure they would be a permanent majority, Unionists have fallen back to the ‘we’re strangers to each other on this island’ argument,” says Dr Brian Fee Fee, a columnist for the Six County Examiner, a nationalist newspaper. “And they’re receiving quite a bit of support from people south of the border who are horrified by the thought of unity. You see the irregular articles in newspapers and magazines and on the internet, about how southern Irish people are even strangers to their nationalist brothers and sisters in the North. Usually peddled by people for whom a trip to the North side of Dublin is a journey abroad. It’s a strange phenomenon, worthy of study, and given the dominance of the old *Pale area in southern Irish politics, probably applies to most of the island. It’s amazing how much Dublin is still a land unto itself, and particularly south Dublin. Quite a few of its folk are more at home in Paris and London than in the countryside of their own land. And they are terrified by the prospect of unity. Possibly even more so than many Ulster Unionists. And not for the same reasons. The partitionist southerners are scared of Northern Nationalists, not Unionists. The Unionists just want to be British. But, alas, they live in Ireland. Which may be beginning to dawn on them.”

*Seat of British power in Ireland for centuries, cut off from the rest of the island for much of that time – ED