New Unionist leader Doug Beattie calls for Irish unity – in the North
Unionism – the Northern Ireland version, that is – has to be one of the least fashionable causes in British politics and one that in electoral terms is withering on the Orange vine.
Its political leaders are not best-known for reaching out. In the past, when Westminster was content to leave them to their own devices, their instinct was to build up the ramparts. Most – James Craig, Basil Brooke, Brian Faulkner, Ian Paisley, Peter Robinson and Arlene Foster – saw their job as defending the keep, whatever the cost. Only Terence O’Neill and David Trimble dared to extend the hand of friendship to their nationalist fellow-citizens, and both soon after were discarded with what the CIA likes to call extreme prejudice.
Even Paisley, the man who taught Margaret Thatcher how to say No, was cast out, not only from his role as Stormont’s First Minister but as moderator of his own Free Presbyterian Church, when it was felt he had grown too close to Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness.
But change is in the air. The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which 25 years ago supplanted the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) as principle keyholder of the British link, is in trouble. According to an opinion poll published last week, its new leader, Edwin Poots – a Creationist whose views would raise eyebrows in a kirk in Cromarty – can count on the support of only 16 per cent of voters, level with the non-sectarian Alliance Party and 9 percentage points below Sinn Fein.
This year was supposed to be a big one for the Province. Northern Ireland, as a separate political entity, was created in 1921 out of the ashes of 1916. But the celebrations thus far have been low-key almost to the point of invisibility. Existential angst is blowing at Gael force. Loyalists (Unionists with a capital L) are fearful that they are living in the end times while Republicans (Nationalists steeped in the armed struggle) wonder how much longer they must wait before a united Ireland is achieved.
Significantly, however, caught in-between the two extreme camps is a growing swell of younger Ulstermen and women who wake up each morning without thanking God that they are either British or Irish. Once, theirs was narrow ground, to be walked as if it were a tightrope. But no longer. Now they have room to breathe and space to move freely, embracing same-sex marriage, abortion, the right to both British and Irish passports and, following Brexit, a unique status within the UK as citizens of the European Union.
Which brings me to Doug Beattie, the newly-installed leader of the UUP. Beattie, aged 55, is an impressive and engaging figure. Where David Trimble, his predecessor from 1995 to 2005, pressured the party into an acceptance of power-sharing with nationalists – and in so doing caused most Protestant voters to switch to the DUP – Beattie may just be the man to restore his party’s fortunes and lead it, two decades behind the calendar, into the 21st century.
In the same opinion poll, conducted immediately after Beattie’s election, that revealed a negative response to Poots’ Old Testament version of unionism, the UUP secured 14 per cent voter support, up from 12.5 per cent. But the word is that the Beattie Bounce could have some way still to go. The new man has attracted a flurry of interest not only in the North but in the Republic as well, where he is perceived as someone with whom they can do business.
Usefully, Beattie’s career prior to entering politics was already remarkable. Born “in barracks” as the son of a warrant officer in the (now defunct) Royal Ulster Rifles, Beattie grew up in Portadown, where his father, upon his retirement from the regular army, joined the Ulster Defence Regiment. In 1982, aged 16, young Doug joined the Royal Irish Rangers, serving in Berlin (where he guarded Rudolf Hess in Spandau Prison), Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, rising to be Regimental Sergeant Major, with a reputation for leading from the front.
So respected was he by his superiors that towards the end of his service he was granted a commission, winning the Military Cross as a captain for his part in retaking a key town from the Taliban in Helmand Province against overwhelming odds. His memoir, An Ordinary Soldier, published in 2008, was an acclaimed bestseller, described by one reviewer as “a profound and humbling account of a truly epic piece of soldiering”.
With his CV, Beattie could easily have pursued a lucrative career in the corporate security sector. Instead, he returned home to Portadown and joined the UUP, becoming first a local councillor, then, in 2016, a member of the Stormont Assembly for Upper Bann. In 2019, it was suggested that he might run for the leadership. But, perhaps out of deference to a superior officer, he gave his support to Steve Aiken, a former commander of the nuclear submarine HMS Sovereign, who had been closely involved in the planning of British military operations in the Middle East during Beattie’s time in the Royal Irish.
As it happened, Aiken proved not to be a natural fit for the UUP. He was perhaps more used to issuing orders that led to things actually happening. At any rate, when he decided to give way in the late spring, Beattie stepped forward and was elected unopposed.
His mission impossible, which he has chosen to accept, is two-fold. First, he has to establish himself as a strong Unionist presence, able to mix it with Poots and his tambourine-based religious following. That should be the easy bit. No one pushes an RSM around and no one can doubt his dedication to Queen and country. But to make real progress in the jigsaw politics of Ulster, Beattie must also forge links with other players in the game, most obviously the Alliance Party, with its extreme moderate agenda, and the SDLP, whose refusal to abandon constitutional nationalism has for years left it trailing in Sinn Fein’s wake.
A coalition between the three second-ranked parties could, in theory, produce an upset in the Assembly elections that are due to take place next spring but could happen sooner. There is even an outside chance that the trio could claim bragging rights in the formation of the subsequent Stormont Executive, which for the first time ever could turn on policy, not identity.
For this to happen, Beattie’s personality has to be front and centre in the coming months. So what sort of a man is he when he’s not leading the charge, and what does he offer voters?
He is a confirmed believer in the welfare state. His 18-month-old grandson, Cameron, stuck on a waiting list for urgent surgery, died on the day Beattie was elected to Stormont – a family tragedy that reinforced his support for the proper funding of public services. On Brexit, he is a Remainer turned pragmatist. It has happened and there’s no going back. On the NI Protocol, he wants urgent talks to take place that modify it to the extent that it is simply there in the background, like a security camera, not bothering anybody. He is opposed to a border down the Irish Sea, but as someone proud to call himself an Irishman, with a taste for Guinness, he is equally clear that the land border, stretching from Londonderry to Newry, is not about to make a comeback. Surprisingly perhaps, he is a strong advocate of LGBTQ rights. As the author of a motion in the Assembly to ban gay conversion therapy, on which Arlene Foster abstained, it might even be said that he hastened Foster’s downfall and her replacement as DUP leader by Edwin Poots.
If Beattie can entice former members of the UUP, conceivably including Foster, who left in 1998 in protest against the Good Friday Agreement, to re-rat and return to the fold, the stage could be set for the most fascinating Assembly elections ever. The party, together with Alliance and the SDLP, could end up as the beneficiaries of a Union-neutral sea-change endorsed by a growing number of the under 40s on both sides of the political and religious divide.
But no one in Ulster ever lost money betting on sectarian intransigence, and it could equally be that the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone will yet re-emerge, meaning five more years of stalemate along a demographic path that ultimately leads to Irish unity.
As Beattie sees it, the ideal future would be a united Northern Ireland living in harmony with Britain and the Republic as effectively an outpost of the European Union. He told the Irish Times last week that, as a committed unionist, he was ready to listen to the concerns of Loyalists, who have no time for the NI Protocol and little enough for the Good Friday accords:
“But if the vision of a union of people, which I genuinely have, is focused purely on loyalists and unionists, then immediately I have failed. The reality is that there are those who do not identify as I do, and they need the same level of engagement. If they want to live here and help make this place work for everyone, then we share the same purpose.
“There are those from a nationalist background who may well see themselves through an Irish identity, but who may actually want to remain in Northern Ireland as it is, a great small nation as part of something bigger with all the positives that brings. For them their identity is about their culture and history. If that culture is respected, allowing them to be who they wish to be, then I believe they would be willing to stand with me to make Northern Ireland work.”