IT was grin-and-bear it time for the majority community in the North of Ireland — and for the majority of Ulster University students — yesterday as President Biden came to Belfast with stern orders not to spook the unionist horses.
Thus we had the tropes familiar to those of us who witnessed the first US foray into local politics back in 1990s City Hall, though admittedly some of the bending-over-backwards approach did at times stray into Bill Smart Circus acrobatics territory.
There was the perfunctory nod to the Ulster emigrants who harried the British in the Revolutionary War and played a key role in the birth of America. In the US, these folks are known as Scots-Irish. Refer to Ulster-Scots and you will get only blank stares – even in the Appalachian wilds. Dutiful to a point, President Biden bodyswerved the Irish appellation like a Messi possessed.
"The family ties and the pride in those Ulster Scots immigrants — those — those Ulster Scots immigrants who helped found and build my country, they run very deep — very deep. Men born in Ulster...."
You get the picture.
Of those whose heritage hails back to the mere Irish, there was no mention – even though the census tells us they now form a majority in this benighted statelet. No mention even for those like me who are a mongrel mix of Scots and Irish (with a dollop of English thrown in). Which brings us to the delightful story of the President's English roots also rolled out at the University of Ulster address to stifle any rumblings in the unionist undergrowth. Delightful and ingratiating - the subtext: I'm not just a nasty Irish nationalist, just a hair's-breadth short of toe-curling embarrassment for the poor guy who had to deliver the lines.
As we wait in the arrival of @POTUS at @UlsterUni Belfast, James Martin is the star ⭐️ of the show.#bidenbelfast #BidenIreland pic.twitter.com/DLMGbdCqyG
— Deirdre Heenan (@deirdreheenan) April 12, 2023
And, of course, it goes without saying that when you're sweet-talking your separated Presbyterian brethren, the Irish language is verboten. Forget that fact that the largest Gaeltacht in Belfast isn't on the Falls Road or in the Short Strand but in....the Ulster University York Street campus, where under polymath and professor Art Hughes they have been churning out model Gaeilgeoirí for two decades – and by the bucketload.
Nevertheless, in order to woo the wee man, not one word of Irish was uttered by any of the speakers. We can forgive the Yanks that omission, but in 2023 for Ulster University to boast about inclusion but then refuse to recognise the community on its doorstep is pitiful. And I mean on its doorstep: Bunscoil Mhic Reachtain, on the site where another American visitor, escaped slave Frederick Douglass, spoke in 1845, is a stone's throw from the President's podium. That's if we were still throwing stones.
You know the rest – apologise before even saying that the DUP should return to the power sharing institutions. Pretend it's an issue for all the local politicians when in fact the solution lies with one party only - the DUP. And then couch the remarks as a passing comment from a guy walking by on the other side of the street and not wanting to interfere in a domestic: "As a friend, I hope it's not too presumptuous of me to say that I believe democratic institutions established by the Good Friday Agreement remain critical to the future of Northern Ireland."
With help from @POTUS, we have a massive opportunity to create jobs, change the economic fortunes of Northern Ireland for the better and fix our underfunded public sector.
We need political stability and a government in Stormont. The DUP need to get back to work now. https://t.co/OqfwOnEEhB
— Colum Eastwood 🇺🇦 (@columeastwood) April 13, 2023
The rest of us, marooned on hospital waiting lists, laid off from Europe-funded community posts, forced to pretend that Belfast is still a unionist bastion, are left to bite our tongues.
But we do so gladly because we have seen this movie before.
In 1997, I sat in a City Hall banquet room while a US representative peddled the same picture of Ulster as Paradise. Sinn Féin had gone to court to enjoy the right to attend civic functions, a right denied our councillors until then as part of a battery of restrictions on our mandate. At this stage, we hadn't managed to dump the toast to the Queen at the same civic functions and had to remain seated as the rump of the Empire rose to salute Her Majesty.
But then the tide of change swept in and unionism's empire on the Farset crumbled into the water. On a good day, unionists can muster about 40 per cent of the votes in Belfast City Council. What was once a cold house for half the populace is a welcoming people's palace. Change was driven, of course, not by unionist generosity but by changing demographics and hard-nosed political decisions.
Which is why, while understanding the President's unenviable task yesterday of coddling unionism, one doubts if even the sweetest words will move the yesterday's men of the DUP.
Still, we salute the diplomatic sleight of hand and thank President Biden for his stopover in the certain knowledge that at Ulster University, he was, au Sun Tzu, building a golden bridge for a retreating adversary.
