Political realities force DUP to change tune

Would you have thought that the DUP would be playing hurling and speaking Irish? ‘No, Never’, you might reply, but they have just done both – and that’s not fake news. What on earth is going on, and why?

The DUP’s Deputy First Minister, Emma Little-Pengelly, was out last week with hurl in hand, visiting a GAA ground. She was accompanied by the First Minister, Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill, who not so long before had gone to Windsor Park to see the Northern Ireland women’s team play an international soccer match, itself no small matter.

But that hurling visit wasn’t just a First Minister/Deputy First Minister balancing act. For also out and about last week was Paul Givan, the DUP MLA and Education Minister, who visited a school which teaches through Irish. His visit was one thing; what he said was even more notable.

"I think it’s important that we remember that the language isn’t unique to one particular community in Northern Ireland. It does have value right across our community,” he commented, before adding: “It is something that I believe can be a shared language for everybody in Northern Ireland.” 

To put those words into action, Mr Givan greeted the pupils of Gaelscoil Aodha Rua with a 'maidin mhaith', and to round off, danced a little bit of céilí. It wasn’t reported if it was The Walls of Limerick that was being played, though the Walls of (London) Derry might appeal more to him.

But regardless of the tune, a DUP minister went to a school that teaches as gaeilge and said and did all those things. It is certainly true that Mr Givan was not always so sensitive to the Irish language. Eight years ago, there was a controversy about an Irish language bursary scheme which he tried to get rid of while a minister in a previous Northern Ireland Executive. But as he said last week: "That was in the past. This is today. What I’m sending out clearly is a message that I will be a Minister for Education for all of our sectors.” 

In politics, these things do not happen by accident. Whatever is going on, it is coming from the top. Less unusual, but nonetheless noticeable, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson was in Dublin for the Ireland vs Wales rugby match, happy to have himself photographed supporting Ireland.

So, there is a strategy at play. But what is it? After a long number of years of DUP leaders sounding intransigent, militant and divisive, this is very much at odds with recent practice. Is it that after doing a deal on the post-Brexit Windsor Framework, they have decided that they are ‘in for the penny, in for the pound?’ The DUP were never known as people who gave away anything for free, so we can be confident there is more to it than that.

There are two aspects, one short term and one for the longer horizon. The short term aspect has nothing to do with hurlers or speakers of the Irish language, but the longer term one definitely does.

In the short term, the DUP wants to retain and win seats in the upcoming Westminster elections. The deal on the Windsor Framework has alienated some hardliners so they need to regain some more moderate support to compensate. By attending schools that teach through Irish, GAA clubs and Ireland rugby matches, they are showing that they intend to make the deal work. They know fine well that the people who play hurling and speak Irish to their kids won’t vote for them, but they are using their engagement with hurlers and gaeilgeoirs to appeal to moderate unionists and middle of the road people in Northern Ireland. Those moderates have been alienated from the party by the DUP’s hardline Brexit stand and rhetoric. These are people who more or less support the Union, but who want to live in ease and peace with their neighbours. They currently vote for the more moderate Ulster Unionist Party or the Alliance. The DUP, hurl in hand, and 'maidin mhaith' on their lips, is making a play to get some of them back.

That is their short-term political objective, and so for now the hurlers and the Irish language speakers are only a backdrop to make a point to someone else entirely. But the wider and more longer term objective of all this does involve those hurlers and Irish language speakers. There has long been a strand of opinion in the DUP – led by their former leader, Peter Robinson – that looks down the track at how the population of Northern Ireland is changing. There are more nationalists each time there is a census. There are more and more people who do not identify as either nationalist or unionist. These people within the DUP know that the English would be glad to be rid of Northern Ireland if only they could find a way to do it without losing face. In fact, unionists believe this far more than republicans.

This point of view within the DUP knows that unionism has two options. It can bury its head in the sand and keep hoping that they will always have a majority if it ever came to a vote. Or it can get out ahead of it and try and make Northern Ireland somewhere many more people think of as ‘their place’. They can do that by portraying a society where playing hurling and speaking Irish is quite normal and even celebrated. Because – this line of reasoning goes – if people who identify as Irish can do all the things that make them Irish in Northern Ireland, they would be far less likely to support and ultimately vote for a united Ireland. It would, in short, take the edge off.

And for those who do not identify themselves as unionist or nationalist – the pivotal swing vote these days – this is all designed to play up the idea of the North as a place apart, unique because of its mixed tradition. It is designed to make people comfortable about living in a place which the Deputy First Minister refers to as ‘this wee place we call home,’ a place where people can express their identity be that British or Irish or Northern Irish or bits of all them.

It can simply be described as a pro-union strategy that reflects the new reality of life in Northern Ireland. If you make things normal, and calm, and if you make the expression of identity normal, people are far less likely to want and ultimately vote for convulsive political change. Brexit had put that under strain and amidst all the bluster, wiser heads in the DUP know it.

In respect of this strategy, the DUP will have enough to be doing to carry it off. For it is all well and good going to hurling matches and saying your cúpla focail. It will become much harder to sustain this approach when the debate over the big bill for Casement Park looms or when there is some row over parades or Irish language signs or whatever it may be. Can this new DUP strategy of inclusiveness be sustained when it comes under strain? And the question for those who want a United Ireland is, do you want it to succeed? And what is the equivalent strategy to make the case for a United Ireland?