Growing up in a Protestant family in south Belfast, Ross Neill was never taken to Orange Order parades, “or any of those kind of trappings, though we would still have considered ourselves Protestants”.
Today, Neill, a solicitor in his early 20s now living in Dublin, is a member of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), something he says with a chuckle would probably have been seen by his grandparents “as a rather shocking development”.
The family’s cross-Border links began to change as his sisters “went against the system by going down to study in Dublin”, Neill told The Irish Times during a break in the SDLP’s conference in Belfast at the weekend.
“It was through seeing their lifestyle there that began to break down my perceptions and understandings,” Neill goes on. He considers himself Irish but recognises that “is very hard for a lot of my fellow Protestants to feel at the minute”.
RM Block
Within that community, however, change is happening, he says. “A slow drift away from a Protestant identity is taking place. Equally, the concept of Britishness and British identity is shrivelling. Post-Brexit, it’s becoming a more narrow thing.”
The changes taking place, however, pose challenges for nationalists and republicans in Northern Ireland, and those in the Republic who favour Irish unity to broaden their understanding of what it is to be Irish.
“If people down South want more people from my background to feel Irish, they need to make it something that is more about shared values and less about cultural markers, such as the GAA and the Irish language.”
Neill, to be clear, has no issues with either: “People feel very passionate about them, and they absolutely are part of the tapestry of what it means to be Irish. But if they become the defining things, they can begin suddenly to exclude people.”
[ Irish Government must lead unification preparations, says VaradkarOpens in new window ]
Throughout the conference, there were calls from leading SDLP figures, including the party’s leader, Claire Hanna – supported by former Fine Gael taoiseach, Leo Varadkar – for greater urgency from Dublin on the unity question.
Hanna favours the creation of a Cabinet-rank minister for unity to take charge of preparations, while everyone, including Varadkar, believes Dublin’s days of simply talking about “aspiring” to unity are over.
The abundance of talk, matched subsequently with a lack of action by the South is illustrated for SDLP members by the fact they are, yet again, unable to vote in the presidential election.
Strangford, Co Down-born Will Boland, who is also a solicitor, declares: “I am a massive believer in voting rights. Extending the franchise is the fulfilment of what the Good Friday Agreement was about, in my opinion.
“We can identify as Irish, we can hold Irish passports, I am an Irish citizen, and I’m proud to be. I should be able to speak and have my voice heard in the conversation about who my head of state should be.
“Our voice is being silenced and that just isn’t right. We always hear kind words, usually around election time when people are passionate about looking towards a new Ireland, but nothing happens afterwards.”
Like Neill, 23-year-old Karl Duncan, from Creggan in Derry, who is now also living in Dublin, will be able to vote to choose between Heather Humphreys, Catherine Connolly and Jim Gavin on October 24th, since both are now registered to vote in the capital.
So far, Duncan, the son of a mixed marriage, has not encountered anti-northern sentiment, or opposition to the idea of northerners being allowed to vote in the presidential race since he moved South for work.
On his first night in Dublin, he went to the local chipper in Kilmainham: “There was an old fella who came over and said, ‘Where’s that accent from?’ I said, ‘Derry.’ He said, ‘The accents are lovely up there. You’re very, very welcome.’
“He said, ‘I’m so glad we see more people from where you live moving down.’ It was very nice, I appreciated it on what was my first night. I’ve received a really strong welcome, the opposite of the caricature.”
Thirty-one-year-old Rosie McKenna, originally from Ballymena but now living in south Belfast, is sure, too, that there are changes taking place in the views of ordinary people across Northern Ireland that are not being heard.
A willingness to hear messages about Irish unity, if not to accept them, began in Protestant communities after Brexit, she believes: “Talking to friends of mine from unionist backgrounds, their immediate instinct was: ‘No, I don’t want this.’
“Then they began asking questions about unity. About what would it really mean and what would the difference be in their lives? And it’s like, actually, not as scary as what they thought it would be,” she argues.
“People are more open to the conversation, I think. If it’s not something they would instinctually support, but they’re not as vehemently against as I think they might have been historically.”
Like Neill, she believes many younger Protestants – those who are culturally Protestant, if less so with strong religious beliefs – are experiencing “a detachment from Britishness”.
“I think a lot has to do with the rise of the far-right. Nigel Farage has a lot to do with that as well. People are looking at what’s happening over the water and thinking, ‘I don’t feel like that represents me’,” she told The Irish Times.
Neill, perhaps, represents the view of many of the young delegates attending the SDLP conference at the Crowne Plaza hotel that often the Republic fails to understand Northern Ireland: “They see it’s broken, it’s backward.
“But they fail to see it on a micro-level,” he goes on, that for some it works, especially those with good public sector jobs, or those wanting to buy a house and start a family in a place where property prices are far shy of those across the border.
“Those landmarks in life are easier for people to do up here than they are in Dublin, at least. And people might be more comfortable in that world, maybe, than people in the South think, if they can push the negatives into the background.”
People outside Northern Ireland, he says, “don’t realise the extent to which people in Northern Ireland are conditioned to normalise the abnormal. I realised that myself only after I left.”
