The state of the Union, RIP

AS OF this week, the Conservative and Unionist Party, born in 1886, is dead. The declaration by a Tory government that 'it is for the people of the island of Ireland alone . . . on the basis of consent, freely and concurrently given, North and South, to bring about a united Ireland, if that is their wish' is a declaration of neutrality which ends any pretence that today's Tories are Unionist, in the original and accepted meaning of the word, which was all about Ulster. As an important and good week in British politics closes, we should not let this glide by us.

It was only 10 weeks ago that John Major reminded his party conference, 'we are and we will remain the Conservative and Unionist Party . . . for us, the union and all it means is immensely importance'. If that was so in October (and it wasn't), then it is certainly no longer true in December.

For many Ulster Unionist supporters there is no conundrum. London has long been appeasement-minded when it comes to Irish nationalism and chicken- hearted in the face of IRA terrorism; the London establishment, from the Foreign Office to the highest in the Conservative Party, has dreamt and occasionally plotted to get rid of Ulster.

This analysis, which we will hear more of in the weeks ahead, is a deluded conspiracy theory. All evidence, anecdotal and through polling, suggests that the London establishment is far less interested in appeasing Irish nationalism than are the majority of the plain people of Britain. Far from being cowardly, British politicians have been extraordinarily, almost insanely, phlegmatic about terrorism. Like caricatures of themselves by Pont of Punch, they barely shrug as the mortars go off. And, in contrast to majority opinion among voters, ministers have been staunch upholders of the status quo.

Why, then, the death of Tory Unionism? To answer that, it is essential to recall a little of its modern origins, which go back to the great Liberal split over Irish Home Rule. Conservative Unionism, though now a live issue for Scotland, was born from an Imperial and Protestant, even racial, determination to defend Ulster. Its greatest oratorical exposition was Randolph Churchill's speech in Belfast in 1886, when he called for physical resistance to any attempt to hand over Ulster to 'a foreign and an alien assembly' in Dublin.

That Churchillian defiance was followed a generation later by one of the most disreputable episodes in modern Conservative history. In 1912, the Tory leader Andrew Bonar Law told a Unionist gathering that he could imagine 'no length of resistance to which Ulster can go in which I should not be prepared to support them'. This call, amounting to support for armed insurrection against the elected government, was made to dukes and famous, whiskered parliamentarians gathered in splendour at Blenheim Palace, the heart of Conservative England.

If you compare such extreme support of the Ulster link with this week's nationalist-tinged declaration, the contrast is stark. But the essential point is that, through the long years of Partition and Stormont, Ulster Unionism, with its strongly Protestant character, grew away from the centre of English concerns, where it had been from the 1880s to the 1920s.

In success, it atrophied. On the mainland, during the search for a new British role, Ulster became peripheral. Southern Irish neutrality in the Second World War revived the emotional appeal of the link, but the preoccupations of post-war Britain had little to do with the Catholic threat or the Irish border. In a mixed and European society, anti-Catholicism, once very widespread, is now about as disreputable as anti-Semitism. Ian Paisley and his like are regarded by Tories as being almost as alien as Croats or Bedouin. Standing outside Downing Street this week, Dr Paisley echoed Randolph Churchill's speech of more than a century ago by describing the Irish Republic as 'a foreign and alien power'. His choice of words almost inspires pity. Does he really not understand what has happened to him?

The same Churchill, after promising that 'Ulster will fight, Ulster will be right', prophesied that Ulster would also be victorious because it 'will command the sympathy and support of an enormous section of our British community'. Likewise, Bonar Law believed an Ulster insurrection would be supported 'by an overwhelming majority of the British people'. That Unionism, profoundly Imperial, profoundly Protestant, is part of a lost world.

Though Unionists of the Stormont era took the Tory whip, they were merely auxiliary Conservatives, imaginatively adrift. Of the old Tory Unionists, Enoch Powell is the last substantial living exponent. It was Nicholas Budgen, the Powellite MP for Wolverhampton, who asked the sharpest Unionist question in the Commons, picking up the words of the declaration to inquire if the British government still had 'a strategic or economic interest in Wolverhampton?'. But his rebuke was a spark in the darkness, compared to the firestorm of old.

For a Union is not merely a constitutional device. It requires profound mutual sympathy and understanding to thrive. The Union between Ulster and the rest of Britain is short on sympathy and that, not Whitehall treachery, has been its problem. Unionism atrophied in Ulster, too. Decades of anti-Catholic discrimination and smug introspection took their toll even before the bombing and the shooting restarted. It is even possible that IRA violence, by asserting a more immediate sympathy between mainland British and Ulster victims, has strengthened the spirit of Unionism. (If irony could be mined and sold like gold, Ulster would be the richest place on earth.) Decent Unionists, if they would revive the spirit of the Union, have a lot to do.

On Wednesday, Mr Major replied to those who questioned his Unionism by reminding MPs of his speeches in defence of the Union between England and Scotland during the election. And indeed, who could forget them? 'To toss aside the Union through which, over 300 years, this country has moulded the history of the world. That is unbelievable. Can you, dare you, conceive of it? The walls of this island fortress that appear so strong, undermined from within . . . Wake up, my fellow countrymen. Wake up now, before it is too late.'

Can you imagine him saying that about Ulster, even before the joint declaration? He was talking about a different Union: Scotland remains part of the British Conservative world-view in a way Northern Ireland does not. Scottish Tories, who once called themselves simply Unionists, fight on the ground for their Union. English Tories still see the Union with Scotland as important to England's position and punching-power in Europe and the rest of the world.

So while the Conservatives can call themselves anything they choose, their Unionism, in its original meaning, has expired. The word is passed on from one struggle to the next, from Ulster to Scotland, as if nothing had changed. That Union moves the leader of the Conservative Party to fiery eloquence in its defence. But then, the Union with Ulster once had the same effect on his predecessors.