The tide seems remorseless, inevitable. Unity advocates are at pains to avoid triumphalism. There are no Irish tricolours or rebel ballads at Ireland’s Future events. Gerry Adams stays behind the scenes. The message is: unity is coming, unionists will be welcome, let’s discuss details. “Constitutional change will require planning and preparation. It’s not about imposing a preordained result on anybody,” said John Finucane, a Sinn Féin MP. In the last assembly election, in 2017, Sinn Féin won 27.9 percent of the vote and 27 seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly, compared with the DUP’s 28.1 percent and 28 seats. This year, it’s running candidates in 34 constituencies, and thanks in part to internal problems in the DUP, which is expected to lose seats, Sinn Féin is expected to emerge as the largest party.

The language was kept deliberately vague during the drafting of the Good Friday Agreement to ensure buy-in from all political traditions. In reality, any decision to hold a referendum would likely be taken by London in consultation with the government in Dublin — but a strong showing by Sinn Féin would add to the pressure to call a vote. Sinn Féin election workers carry posters in Belfast | Charles McQuillan/Getty Images

Select a format:

In competition with this model, O’Leary poses what he calls an “integrated Ireland” — a more drastic process whereby Northern Ireland would be absorbed into a unitary Irish state. At present, the devolved model seems the most tolerable option for cultural Protestants, while nationalists and republicans will naturally prefer full integration. O’Leary argues, however, that “a future convergence” of the two models could develop, with devolutionary structures in a united Ireland “as a transitional arrangement, provided that it is fully intended to lead to an integrated Ireland.”

Mr Allister predicted there would be large-scale emigration to Britain and further afield of Unionists resentful of being “shunted off under an Irish tricolour” after reunification. So did the MacBride campaign, begun among the Irish diaspora in the United States under the auspices of the former Irish foreign minister Seán MacBride, which begat the Fair Employment (Northern Ireland) Act of 1989, enacted by Margaret Thatcher’s government to replace the failed act of the same name of 1976. The draft bill was effectively redrafted by Belfast-born legal scholar Prof Christopher McCrudden, then lead adviser on law to Kevin McNamara MP, the British Labour Party’s frontbench spokesman on Northern Ireland. The Fair Employment Act proved to be remarkably effective legislation. Among other accomplishments it made cultural Catholics more likely to stay in Northern Ireland. I am just an occasional visitor to Ireland for holidays and academic conferences, but I try to be sensitive and informed as I travel and encounter scenes in the landscape that relate to the historical struggle to stay alive in a land which offered little comfort. Sadly, holiday travel has been brought to an end for us by cessation of the pet passport scheme with the EU. Why are more Catholics disposed to the Union than Protestants to a United Ireland and what can be done to reverse that?The six counties of Northern Ireland could not, would not, and should not fit into the 26 counties of the Republic of Ireland. Monarchist, Protestant, English-speaking people could not live in the Republican, Catholic and Gaelic nation-state. The statement was a slogan – a word derived from the Irish for “war cry”. It proclaimed an “impossibility”. That control has now been lost, however. The ramparts of the new Pale are long gone. Unionist control went in 1972 when the London government shut down the Northern Ireland parliament, which the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) had dominated for 50 years. The ramparts were the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), the armed police force, and the B Specials, its armed reserve. The former was mostly Protestant; the latter, originally recruited from the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), entirely Protestant. Meanwhile, younger pro-Union voters are alienated by the staunchly conservative views on issues such as LGBT rights held by some Unionists.