Jon Burrows went too far with his call for the Irish Government to apologise for the Troubles.
Speaking to The Irish Times last weekend, the new leader of the Ulster Unionist Party said it would be “seismic for good relations” for Ireland to make a “major statement” saying “some of [its] conduct during the Troubles was unjustified and unjustifiable”.
He compared this to the 2010 apology for Bloody Sunday delivered by British prime minister David Cameron. Burrows equated Bloody Sunday to Ireland’s failure to extradite terrorist suspects during the Troubles, claiming this was “a decision at the highest level” that must ultimately have cost many lives.
Such a cold analysis of law and security might have been expected from Burrows in his former role as a senior police officer. As a politician his remarks were clumsy and insensitive, no matter how well-intentioned. They will have offended nationalists and left many unionists bemused.
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It is true that unionists were outraged by the extradition issue during the Troubles, although there was as much anger towards the United States for the same reason.
[ Ireland should apologise for ‘unjustifiable conduct’ during Troubles, says new UUP leader ]
People may feel Irish governments made mistakes and left questions to answer.
But in my own recollection, at least, there was remarkably little unionist hostility towards the Republic throughout the Troubles.
Even during the violence surrounding the Anglo-Irish Agreement, anger was directed at the British government for its betrayal and most shamefully at the RUC for trying to keep order. Many officers were forced from their homes.
Unionist parties supported a boycott of Irish goods at the time, but this was ignored and ridiculed by their own supporters. A barman in Portadown once told me he had served pints of Harp, fresh off the Dundalk train, to two prominent loyalists plotting it.
Burrows is not the first unionist leader to portray the Irish Government as a protagonist in the Troubles, with a culpability to match others, but this has never chimed with the unionist population. The comparison is so clearly wrong in scale that it looks like a desperate stretch even in principle.
Recent years have increasingly seen unionist politicians accuse the Republic of “colluding” with the Provisional IRA. There are a number of cases where these concerns are valid and the wishes of victims must be respected. Nevertheless, this choice of word feels like a Troubles equivalent of Ulster Scots – a contrived attempt to match a perceived republican advance.
In most other contexts, unionist politicians tend to dismiss allegations of collusion as mistaken or duplicitous – an exaggeration of genuine problems or a political objection to legitimate intelligence tactics. That makes it doubly strange when they levy the accusation at the Republic.
If unionist people think of An Garda Síochána or the Irish army in security terms they are most likely to think of those murdered by the IRA, to whom they feel a bond of suffering. This sits uneasily with attempts to create a collusion narrative.
In general, however, most unionists spend no more time thinking about the Republic than the Republic spends thinking about them – the gift of partition works both ways.
There is some evidence attitudes are polarising. The Centre for Cross Border Studies has been conducting quarterly surveys of councils and community organisations across Ireland since 2021. Respondents report unionists becoming steadily less engaged.
A 2022 opinion poll by Northern Ireland’s two universities found one-fifth of Protestants “completely mistrust” the Irish Government, double the rate for Catholics. However, Protestants were more mistrustful of the Northern executive, the Alliance Party, the EU and – amusingly – the DUP.
That points to the main reason for souring relationships: Brexit. Many unionists believe the Irish government misrepresented the Belfast Agreement to secure a sea border. Many are asking how this ruthless cynicism might apply in the future, so it would be natural if they are also asking how cynical Dublin might have been in the past.
But there is still no sign of this extending to popular pressure for an apology for the Troubles. That would be another desperate stretch.
Unionist parties would be better focusing on a few serious matters of dispute, rather than concocting some grand balancing notion.
Michael McDowell, the former minister for justice, wrote in this newspaper five years ago that Irish governments had operated a de facto Troubles amnesty since the Belfast Agreement at the insistence of Sinn Féin. This merely confirmed what the passage of time has made plain.
How can the Government reconcile this with its pious opposition to the previous British government’s de facto amnesty law? Why is it still maintaining its interstate human rights case against that law after the present British government has repealed it?
There is no need to demand an apology for this apparent double standard. An honest acknowledgment would be seismic enough.
