The \u2018Brexit\u2019 referendum in 2016 upset this delicate constitutional balance. While Northern Ireland and Scotland voted to remain in the EU, English voters\u2019 predominant wish to the contrary produced an overall UK majority for Leave. And so, the UK Government started on a pathway to a so-called \u2018hard Brexit\u2019 that contradicted the expressed wishes of the devolved governments while worsening the domestic consequences of leaving the EU.<\/p>\n
Hechter\u2019s \u2018internal colonialism\u2019 theory of the British state places the UK Government\u2019s management of the post-Brexit Union in sharp historical relief. This goes particularly for Northern Ireland, which in Hechter\u2019s words was organized \u2018around the establishment of a colony of English and Scottish settlers\u2019. Northern Ireland, readers will recall, was formed from six Ulster counties by the partition of the island of Ireland set up by the UK\u2019s Government of Ireland Act of 1920. Compare Hechter\u2019s characterization of the situation at the time of partition with the region\u2019s post-Brexit predicament:<\/p>\n
\nIdentified by the Catholics of Ulster as colonial settlers who had stolen the lands of their ancestors, the Orangemen clung to Union with Great Britain as if it were a lifeline \u2026 Thus, even though Northern Ireland was more economically disadvantaged than any other peripheral region, she became the greatest supporter of the Conservatives and their ideology because of this ethnic imperative. Like the white trash [sic] of the southern United States \u2013 many of whom, by chance, are of Ulster ancestry \u2013 the Orangemen were despised by those socially beneath them, and disparaged by the very group they identified with so strongly. Thus they suffered the peculiar disabilities of the man in the middle who, denied the millenarian eschatology of the truly oppressed, must content himself with a self-definition as merely second-best.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Hechter\u2019s theory of internal colonialism explained how Northern Ireland came to be both so under-developed and so divided, afflicted with the poor decision-making of a dominant group wracked with insecurities. Today, Protestants are no longer in a majority and the future of the region hangs in the balance. Yet the centre-periphery dynamics remain much the same.<\/p>\n
There is a sense, perhaps, that Northern Ireland is in a constant gloaming or twilight zone: a realm that is never quite in light and ever close to darkness. For unionists this sense of precariousness is a reason to cling closer to the \u2018lifeline\u2019 of England; for nationalists, it is an incentive to seek unification with Ireland. Post-Brexit, the haze of the twilight has taken on a new intensity, ironically due to the actions of those who purport to be the Union\u2019s strongest champions.<\/p>\n
Having committed to a sharing of fates in a \u2018confidence and supply\u2019 arrangement after the snap election of 2017, the UK\u2019s Conservative Government and Northern Ireland\u2019s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) remained in an uneasy pasodoble<\/em> in the aftermath of Brexit. The insecurity of both, and their mutual distrust, is reflected in two developments for which they were jointly responsible, and which manifest the harm that continues to be caused by internal colonialism.<\/p>\nA region held to ransom<\/h2>\n
Having campaigned to leave the EU, the DUP was particularly enraged that the UK\u2013EU Withdrawal Agreement contained a Protocol that de facto<\/em> kept Northern Ireland in the EU\u2019s single market for goods and in the EU\u2019s customs union. Of particular concern to the DUP was the fact that the Protocol enabled free movement of goods across the Irish land border, while necessitating checks and controls on goods entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain. It had a point.<\/p>\nOne of the legacies of internal colonialism is Northern Ireland\u2019s trade dependency on Britain, for which continuation of the region\u2019s free access to the EU\u2019s single market after Brexit was poor compensation. But the DUP\u2019s objections focused primarily on the constitutional rather than the economic implications, and particularly what it meant for Unionism that the UK Government had apparently chosen to prioritize North\/South over East\/West ties. In protest, the party exercised its powers of veto over the functioning of the Assembly and Executive after the 2022 Assembly election, in which it had lost its status as the largest party and holder of the position of First Minister. As a result, the governance of Northern Ireland was once again placed in the hands of its civil servants.<\/p>\n
The subsequent lack of legislation, oversight, scrutiny, accountability and decision-making in Northern Ireland would never have been tolerated elsewhere in the UK. But in Northern Ireland it was made possible by deep social and political divisions, which prevented a consensus from forming \u2013 another legacy of internal colonialism. Most shocking was that the UK Government used the absence of devolved government to make major cuts in public services and spending in the region. The Head of the Civil Service in Northern Ireland, Jayne Brady, warned that the budget outlined by the Conservative Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, which required some 10% reduction in departmental spending in the region, would cause \u2018enduring harm to public services, society and economy\u2019.<\/p>\n
The situation was made worse by the failure of the UK Government to issue any specific direction to civil servants, meaning they were effectively acting as ministers \u2013 and having to take decisions regarding cutbacks \u2013 without political legitimacy. In defence of the Government, the Secretary of State commented that, \u2018the difficulties that Northern Ireland departments face are a result of tough decisions not having been taken by elected representatives in Northern Ireland\u2019. This is but a modern expression of the \u2018haughty culture\u2019 of central authorities that helps explain the \u2018persistence of backwardness\u2019 in Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n
Internal colonialism is evident in this situation in several ways. First, in the exertion of England\u2019s \u2018great influence on the economy of peripheral regions, through its banks and ministries\u2019, combined with the failure of the core to offer sufficient economic support for the periphery. Second, the UK constitutional failure to allow the region adequate political representation in Westminster during \u2018normal\u2019 times compounded the vacuum of democracy when the Assembly and Executive were not functioning. Third, the Government\u2019s eschewing of responsibility for both the economic and the political effects of its decisions.<\/p>\n
Most egregious, however, is the pretence that the type of democratic processes that are assumed to work in England apply in Northern Ireland. The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland claimed that the solution to the problem of the governance gap and budget cuts ultimately lay with the people of Northern Ireland, whose responsibility it was to impress on their politicians \u2018the importance of returning to Stormont and forming an executive\u2019.<\/p>\n
Such a remark could only either come from wilful ignorance or shameless gaslighting. The power-sharing arrangements at work in Northern Ireland enable either of the two largest parties to veto their operation; what is more they are explicitly designed to ensure that the will of the majority cannot override the will of the minority, especially when the matter in question relates to cultural identity.<\/p>\n
The UK Government took very seriously the DUP\u2019s claim that its objections to the Protocol were on the grounds of cultural or ethnic identity; more to the point, it described the DUP\u2019s objections as having been \u2018legitimately expressed\u2019. So much so that the Government took the exceptional course of engaging in negotiations with that party, to the exclusion of all others and the Irish Government (co-guarantor of the 1998 Agreement). The outcome of those negotiations \u2013 the Safeguarding the Union<\/em> command paper \u2013 may be viewed as a pristine vestige of internal colonialism.<\/p>\nSafeguarding the Union<\/h2>\n
A UK\u2013EU agreed revision of the Protocol to soften its effects (the \u2018Windsor Framework\u2019 of February 2023) failed to offer enough assurance to the DUP to allow Stormont to return. Nevertheless, it was increasingly apparent that the DUP\u2019s boycott, while endorsed by the vast majority of their voters, risked winning the battle and losing the war. Support for the Union among the wider population was steadily falling during this time, while Irish unification was appearing more attractive almost by default.<\/p>\n
The Safeguarding the Union<\/em> deal that arose from the DUP\u2013UK Government negotiations needed to give cover to the DUP to return to power-sharing. Without further EU concessions, however, the only impact any deal could make on the post-Brexit situation for Northern Ireland was limited to what was in the gift of the UK Government to offer. The resulting document is the most pro-unionist official document produced since the peace process began, its reliance on tub-thumping rhetoric reflecting the limitations of the UK Government\u2019s power and unionism\u2019s trust in it. In Safeguarding the Union<\/em>, the UK Government went beyond supporting Northern Ireland\u2019s place in the UK to promising to secure it:<\/p>\n\nThe measures will copper-fasten Northern Ireland\u2019s integral place<\/em> in the United Kingdom, fulfilling the Acts of Union 1800; strengthen the UK\u2019s internal market; and safeguard new protections into the future \u2026 The Government is clear that it will countenance no diminution in Northern Ireland\u2019s place in the Union at all<\/em> \u2013 partial or total \u2013 except in accordance with the principle of consent.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nThe unionist fundamentalism exemplified in this and other passages contradicts the approach taken by the British and Irish governments and the Northern Ireland parties that made peace possible in 1998. The assumptions about what is good for Northern Ireland are entirely zero-sum (as if strong relations between Northern Ireland and Ireland are automatically detrimental to Northern Ireland\u2019s relations with Britain) and Union-focused. And it is brazen in trammelling some of the most carefully-nuanced principles of the 1998 Belfast\/Good Friday Agreement. The irony is that in demanding such reassurances from the centre (and from a Government willing to put diplomatic relations at risk to provide them), political unionism in Northern Ireland merely underscored the peripherality<\/em> of its culture in the wider Union.<\/p>\nThe UK Government\u2019s management of the domestic fallout of Brexit has compounded problems in cultural integration, economic integration and political integration in the Union. Despite the grand promises and one-sided assertions to reassure Ulster unionism, few would disagree that this form of internal colonialism is useless to the centre and ultimately doing little good to the periphery. But, post-Brexit, indulging those who increasingly depend on English support to wield even a negative power over a peripheral cultural group may carry a nostalgic appeal. England\u2019s first colony is now its last; proof that England still matters somewhere other than in England.<\/p>\n
And so it is that Northern Ireland continues to linger in twilight, where inequalities, injustices and non-democracy are allowed to fester \u2013 the foetid fruits of a friendly colonizer\u2019s neglect.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
[ad_2]
\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[ad_1] In 1975, the American sociologist Michael Hechter published a book on the evolution of the United Kingdom; fifty years on, its insights are strikingly<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":346562,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[154],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346561"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.eurozine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Hillsborough_Orange_arch_-_panoramio-1024x787.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\nThe \u2018Brexit\u2019 referendum in 2016 upset this delicate constitutional balance. While Northern Ireland and Scotland voted to remain in the EU, English voters\u2019 predominant wish to the contrary produced an overall UK majority for Leave. And so, the UK Government started on a pathway to a so-called \u2018hard Brexit\u2019 that contradicted the expressed wishes of the devolved governments while worsening the domestic consequences of leaving the EU.<\/p>\nHechter\u2019s \u2018internal colonialism\u2019 theory of the British state places the UK Government\u2019s management of the post-Brexit Union in sharp historical relief. This goes particularly for Northern Ireland, which in Hechter\u2019s words was organized \u2018around the establishment of a colony of English and Scottish settlers\u2019. Northern Ireland, readers will recall, was formed from six Ulster counties by the partition of the island of Ireland set up by the UK\u2019s Government of Ireland Act of 1920. Compare Hechter\u2019s characterization of the situation at the time of partition with the region\u2019s post-Brexit predicament:<\/p>\n\nIdentified by the Catholics of Ulster as colonial settlers who had stolen the lands of their ancestors, the Orangemen clung to Union with Great Britain as if it were a lifeline \u2026 Thus, even though Northern Ireland was more economically disadvantaged than any other peripheral region, she became the greatest supporter of the Conservatives and their ideology because of this ethnic imperative. Like the white trash [sic] of the southern United States \u2013 many of whom, by chance, are of Ulster ancestry \u2013 the Orangemen were despised by those socially beneath them, and disparaged by the very group they identified with so strongly. Thus they suffered the peculiar disabilities of the man in the middle who, denied the millenarian eschatology of the truly oppressed, must content himself with a self-definition as merely second-best.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nHechter\u2019s theory of internal colonialism explained how Northern Ireland came to be both so under-developed and so divided, afflicted with the poor decision-making of a dominant group wracked with insecurities. Today, Protestants are no longer in a majority and the future of the region hangs in the balance. Yet the centre-periphery dynamics remain much the same.<\/p>\nThere is a sense, perhaps, that Northern Ireland is in a constant gloaming or twilight zone: a realm that is never quite in light and ever close to darkness. For unionists this sense of precariousness is a reason to cling closer to the \u2018lifeline\u2019 of England; for nationalists, it is an incentive to seek unification with Ireland. Post-Brexit, the haze of the twilight has taken on a new intensity, ironically due to the actions of those who purport to be the Union\u2019s strongest champions.<\/p>\nHaving committed to a sharing of fates in a \u2018confidence and supply\u2019 arrangement after the snap election of 2017, the UK\u2019s Conservative Government and Northern Ireland\u2019s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) remained in an uneasy pasodoble<\/em> in the aftermath of Brexit. The insecurity of both, and their mutual distrust, is reflected in two developments for which they were jointly responsible, and which manifest the harm that continues to be caused by internal colonialism.<\/p>\nA region held to ransom<\/h2>\nHaving campaigned to leave the EU, the DUP was particularly enraged that the UK\u2013EU Withdrawal Agreement contained a Protocol that de facto<\/em> kept Northern Ireland in the EU\u2019s single market for goods and in the EU\u2019s customs union. Of particular concern to the DUP was the fact that the Protocol enabled free movement of goods across the Irish land border, while necessitating checks and controls on goods entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain. It had a point.<\/p>\nOne of the legacies of internal colonialism is Northern Ireland\u2019s trade dependency on Britain, for which continuation of the region\u2019s free access to the EU\u2019s single market after Brexit was poor compensation. But the DUP\u2019s objections focused primarily on the constitutional rather than the economic implications, and particularly what it meant for Unionism that the UK Government had apparently chosen to prioritize North\/South over East\/West ties. In protest, the party exercised its powers of veto over the functioning of the Assembly and Executive after the 2022 Assembly election, in which it had lost its status as the largest party and holder of the position of First Minister. As a result, the governance of Northern Ireland was once again placed in the hands of its civil servants.<\/p>\nThe subsequent lack of legislation, oversight, scrutiny, accountability and decision-making in Northern Ireland would never have been tolerated elsewhere in the UK. But in Northern Ireland it was made possible by deep social and political divisions, which prevented a consensus from forming \u2013 another legacy of internal colonialism. Most shocking was that the UK Government used the absence of devolved government to make major cuts in public services and spending in the region. The Head of the Civil Service in Northern Ireland, Jayne Brady, warned that the budget outlined by the Conservative Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, which required some 10% reduction in departmental spending in the region, would cause \u2018enduring harm to public services, society and economy\u2019.<\/p>\nThe situation was made worse by the failure of the UK Government to issue any specific direction to civil servants, meaning they were effectively acting as ministers \u2013 and having to take decisions regarding cutbacks \u2013 without political legitimacy. In defence of the Government, the Secretary of State commented that, \u2018the difficulties that Northern Ireland departments face are a result of tough decisions not having been taken by elected representatives in Northern Ireland\u2019. This is but a modern expression of the \u2018haughty culture\u2019 of central authorities that helps explain the \u2018persistence of backwardness\u2019 in Northern Ireland.<\/p>\nInternal colonialism is evident in this situation in several ways. First, in the exertion of England\u2019s \u2018great influence on the economy of peripheral regions, through its banks and ministries\u2019, combined with the failure of the core to offer sufficient economic support for the periphery. Second, the UK constitutional failure to allow the region adequate political representation in Westminster during \u2018normal\u2019 times compounded the vacuum of democracy when the Assembly and Executive were not functioning. Third, the Government\u2019s eschewing of responsibility for both the economic and the political effects of its decisions.<\/p>\nMost egregious, however, is the pretence that the type of democratic processes that are assumed to work in England apply in Northern Ireland. The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland claimed that the solution to the problem of the governance gap and budget cuts ultimately lay with the people of Northern Ireland, whose responsibility it was to impress on their politicians \u2018the importance of returning to Stormont and forming an executive\u2019.<\/p>\nSuch a remark could only either come from wilful ignorance or shameless gaslighting. The power-sharing arrangements at work in Northern Ireland enable either of the two largest parties to veto their operation; what is more they are explicitly designed to ensure that the will of the majority cannot override the will of the minority, especially when the matter in question relates to cultural identity.<\/p>\nThe UK Government took very seriously the DUP\u2019s claim that its objections to the Protocol were on the grounds of cultural or ethnic identity; more to the point, it described the DUP\u2019s objections as having been \u2018legitimately expressed\u2019. So much so that the Government took the exceptional course of engaging in negotiations with that party, to the exclusion of all others and the Irish Government (co-guarantor of the 1998 Agreement). The outcome of those negotiations \u2013 the Safeguarding the Union<\/em> command paper \u2013 may be viewed as a pristine vestige of internal colonialism.<\/p>\nSafeguarding the Union<\/h2>\nA UK\u2013EU agreed revision of the Protocol to soften its effects (the \u2018Windsor Framework\u2019 of February 2023) failed to offer enough assurance to the DUP to allow Stormont to return. Nevertheless, it was increasingly apparent that the DUP\u2019s boycott, while endorsed by the vast majority of their voters, risked winning the battle and losing the war. Support for the Union among the wider population was steadily falling during this time, while Irish unification was appearing more attractive almost by default.<\/p>\nThe Safeguarding the Union<\/em> deal that arose from the DUP\u2013UK Government negotiations needed to give cover to the DUP to return to power-sharing. Without further EU concessions, however, the only impact any deal could make on the post-Brexit situation for Northern Ireland was limited to what was in the gift of the UK Government to offer. The resulting document is the most pro-unionist official document produced since the peace process began, its reliance on tub-thumping rhetoric reflecting the limitations of the UK Government\u2019s power and unionism\u2019s trust in it. In Safeguarding the Union<\/em>, the UK Government went beyond supporting Northern Ireland\u2019s place in the UK to promising to secure it:<\/p>\n\nThe measures will copper-fasten Northern Ireland\u2019s integral place<\/em> in the United Kingdom, fulfilling the Acts of Union 1800; strengthen the UK\u2019s internal market; and safeguard new protections into the future \u2026 The Government is clear that it will countenance no diminution in Northern Ireland\u2019s place in the Union at all<\/em> \u2013 partial or total \u2013 except in accordance with the principle of consent.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nThe unionist fundamentalism exemplified in this and other passages contradicts the approach taken by the British and Irish governments and the Northern Ireland parties that made peace possible in 1998. The assumptions about what is good for Northern Ireland are entirely zero-sum (as if strong relations between Northern Ireland and Ireland are automatically detrimental to Northern Ireland\u2019s relations with Britain) and Union-focused. And it is brazen in trammelling some of the most carefully-nuanced principles of the 1998 Belfast\/Good Friday Agreement. The irony is that in demanding such reassurances from the centre (and from a Government willing to put diplomatic relations at risk to provide them), political unionism in Northern Ireland merely underscored the peripherality<\/em> of its culture in the wider Union.<\/p>\nThe UK Government\u2019s management of the domestic fallout of Brexit has compounded problems in cultural integration, economic integration and political integration in the Union. Despite the grand promises and one-sided assertions to reassure Ulster unionism, few would disagree that this form of internal colonialism is useless to the centre and ultimately doing little good to the periphery. But, post-Brexit, indulging those who increasingly depend on English support to wield even a negative power over a peripheral cultural group may carry a nostalgic appeal. England\u2019s first colony is now its last; proof that England still matters somewhere other than in England.<\/p>\nAnd so it is that Northern Ireland continues to linger in twilight, where inequalities, injustices and non-democracy are allowed to fester \u2013 the foetid fruits of a friendly colonizer\u2019s neglect.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n[ad_2]\nSource link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[ad_1] In 1975, the American sociologist Michael Hechter published a book on the evolution of the United Kingdom; fifty years on, its insights are strikingly<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":346562,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[154],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346561"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Hillsborough_Orange_arch_-_panoramio.jpg\"){kind=link}