A Brief history of the whole northern ireland thing 

Under power sharing, peace and relative prosperity returned to Northern Ireland. The major employers of the past (industrial jobs such as the shipyards) were now long gone which actually created a more level playing field for employment opportunities. With Protestants no longer guaranteed better jobs in Unionist dominated companies, the best jobs finally started to go to the best-educated and most qualified, regardless of education.

Although unemployment remained high and the economy and incomes were now far behind the Republic (which had seen its economy magically grow from being around the 50th best in the world to the 4th in the space of about a decade between the mid-90s and mid 2000s) there was some international investment in the North. Most importantly there was real peace. Tensions would still flair at seasonal events such as during the Protestant marching seasons but bombings and shootings, which had formerly been daily occurrences became extremely rare. The British Army left the streets and the border checkpoints, which had previously been policed by armed soldiers, were dismantled. Under EU law people could now move freely across the border for the first time in decades, meaning that in many cases people could live their daily lives as if partition no longer existed. Northern Irish citizens could choose whether they wanted an Irish passport, a British passport of both. It even became possible for outsiders to enter the most notoriously violent neighbourhoods, such the Protestant Shankill Road and Catholic Falls Road, both in West Belfast. Northern Ireland even began to supplement its economy through tourism, something that would have been impossible only 10 years previously.
 

With a greater number of people enjoying more opportunities and a better standard of living, the majority of the population in Northern Ireland began to adopt a live and let live attitude to their neighbours.

In truth, being a Catholic in Northern Ireland ceased to be a source of major problems.

Even though you might feel annoyed that the British flag flew over Belfast City Hall, you were now free to carry an Irish passport, speak the Irish language, play Irish traditional music or hurling and were no longer restricted in your ability to go to college or get a good job. This peace and prosperity flourished until 2016 when it was dealt a serious blow by Brexit.

In May 2016 the UK shocked the world by voting to leave the European Union. The overwhelming majority of leave voters were middle aged and older people voting on a desire to stop handing over their tax money to a bunch of foreigners, as well as most likely some even less noble sentiments.. The majority of the population in England and Wales voted to leave while the majority in Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain. Even many hardcore conservatives in Northern Ireland were opposed to Brexit as they knew only too well how beneficial EU funds were to the development of their region.

As the more or less invisible Irish border would now become an external-EU border, crossings would once again become a political matter due to the new customs arrangements that were going to have to come into place. Fears arose that a “hard border” (i.e. one manned with check-points reminiscient of the Troubles), as well as causing massive inconvenience for those who cross from one side to the other on a daily basis, could lead to a resumption in violence. This was deemed to be a completely undesirable option for all parties involved, with veteran journalist Eamonn McCann cutting through the bullshit and putting it very simply by saying ¨If you put up a check-point between the Republic and the North somebody is going to shoot at it.¨

Britain's ruling Conservative government favoured a Brexit deal with as few concessions to the EU as possible. Initially, this made it appear as though a hard border would have been inevitable, until, finally, after three years of convoluted negotiations, plans were hashed out for a border in the Irish sea as opposed to on land. As of January 1st 2021, certain goods entering Northern Ireland from the mainland UK are now required to go through a custom check, in an attempt to prevent smuggling from Britain into the EU and vice versa via transporting goods across the island of Ireland's open border. This has allowed Northern Ireland to remain in the European Single Market, an economic trade bloc made up of all EU countries and a select few willing others amongst their European neighbours, while the rest of the UK has departed. Unsurpsingly, this move has not gone over well amongst many members of the Unionist community, as, although Northern Ireland is of course still under the jurisdiction of UK law, economically it has now become even more closely tied with the Republic of Ireland than ever before. Those who are inclined to celebrate have the 100th anniversary of the foundation of Northern Ireland to look forward to in May of 2021, but beyond that the statelet's long term prospects for survival are looking ever more and more uncertain.
 

Although many Unionists feared that the power sharing government that came from the Good Friday Agreement would destabilize Northern Ireland´s position within the United Kingdom, it actually proved to be quite the opposite. Greater equality reduced the desire amongst many Catholics for a United Ireland, thus making Northern Ireland´s status as a part of the UK safer than it had ever been. Unfortuntately for the them, the 2016 referendum and the years of uncertainty that have been endured since have basically undone most of this good work in an unthinkably short amount of time, Brexit doing more to further the cause of a United Ireland than 25 years of IRA bullets and bombs. The enormous potential damage leaving the EU will do to the future of the UK's economy, as well as possible difficulties for British citizens travelling and getting visas has seen a surge in a demand for Irish passports, even from many staunch Unionists who have identified as British all of their lives. Many more educated Protestants are also beginning to question how much the mainland UK cares for them; in the UK general election which followed in the wake of the Brexit chaos, the ruling Conservative government lost their majority and were forced to go into coalition with the DUP (as well as their seats in the local government in Belfast they also send 10 MPs to the UK wide parliament in London.)

On the day the election results were announced the most Googled question in England was ¨What is the DUP?,¨ revealing the degree of complete ignorance which the English have regarding Northern Ireland. Possible economic devastation, (with food shortages already having been seen in NI supermarkets at time of writing, less than six months into the establishment of the new trade protocol) a return to the Troubles and the simple realization that for all their loyalty that the English actually care very little about them are seeing many question very long held beliefs and mentions of a United Ireland are now actually being seriously aired for the first time in political and economic discussions.

 

The essential problem that has caused of all of this to happen and has allowed it to continue to the present day is the confusing nature of Northern Irish Unionist´s sense of national identity. Before the partition of Ireland into north and south there was no contradiction between being a unionist and being Irish, as at the time, to be Irish was also to be British.

After the partition, when the people of the North had to choose between an Irish or British passport, most unionists ceased to identify as Irish at all and simply referred to themselves as British and nothing more. As it is impossible for an English, Scottish or Welsh person to be British without also being something else as well, this actually makes what they feel themselves to be and where they identify as their home very confusing and hard to pin down.

Similar to the resentment that Northern Irish Catholics feel towards the south for abandoning them, many Unionists similataneously manage to despise England while loving Britain.

The most dedicated and hardcore loyalists (and those most likely to become involved in violence) are often those who come from disadvantaged working class areas with a poor history of employment and education. Many of these people have long identified the disinterest that the mainland UK has for them, the growing awareness of which is currently causing many of their more educated countrymen to reasses their values, but rather than using it to lead them to question their own loyalty to the crown they have almost perversely used it as reinforcement.

The mentality goes something along the lines that the English are two faced snakes who would sell them out into a United Ireland overnight if they could and that the Ulster Protestant people are actually more truly the embodiment of the concept of Britishness than those who live in the real Britain themselves. The most revered icon amongst Unionists is the Queen of England; it´s as if the Unionists feel they are more deserving of her love for upholding the values she represents (whatever they might be) than her own people. This is almost headache-inducingly confusing when you are forced to ask the question that if you reject England, the home of almost all of the concepts of British culture, than how can you not reject Britishness itself? Indeed what are the key values of Britishness; tea and cakes? Enjoying British culture, like Shakespeare or The Beatles? Being polite and punctual? You have to ask if these are things really worth fighting a four hundred year ongoing civil war over?

It has also been claimed by Republicans that the key component of the Unionist identity is based not on the values they believe in but only on the values they are opposed to.

The Northern Ireland national football team is probably the best representation of the confusion of identity. The Irish Football Association was founded in Belfast in 1880. During the early years of the game in the country it was almost exclusively played in working class areas of Belfast and Dublin, with the majority of players in Belfast being Protestant and the majority in Dublin being Catholic. When Ireland was partitioned in 1921, the clubs of Dublin founded a new association, the Football Association of Ireland which began to select a team that represented the Republic.

The Northern Ireland team continued to oficially play under the name of Ireland until the 1950s, only abondoning this when FIFA ordered them to stop, and continued to use it unofficially until the 1970s. Because of their origins as the island-wide team, the Northern Ireland national team still plays in green shirts that have a shamrock on the crest for the sake of tradition, despite the fact that the team is almost exclusively supported by Protestants, as Northern Catholics prefer to support the Republic's national team. At Northern Ireland matches spectators are subjected to the sight of people carrying red, white and blue British flags singing songs mocking the famine, the pope and all other aspects of Ireland and its culture while they cheer on a team wearing green shirts with shamrocks on them, surely one of the most confusing spectacles in all of world sport. This reinforces the idea that Unionism truly has no national identity of its own and its only real values lie in it's opposition to everything that is Irish.

 

From the perspective of the majority of people in the Republic of Ireland the motivations of the Protestant people of Ulster as regards their fear of a United Ireland remain as mysterious as they are frustrating. However, based on my own (admittedly limited) research, there do actually appear to be some genuine aspects of Ulster culture that are not dependent on contrarianism.
There is the Ulster Scots language (although this is controversial as many linguists believe this is not a language at all, but simply a dialect of spoken English) and there are indigenous forms of Ulster Scots music and dance, although to my untrained eye and ear, these seem very similar to Irish traditional music, certainly not different enough to blow people up over.

The key issue for me is; in this secular age where the religious divide means next to nothing, whether or not there are actually any real reasons anymore as to why an Ulster man would feel so strongly that he was something other than Irish that he would, at the very least, actively campaign against it and, in the worst case scenario, take up arms against it.

There has been so much blood spilled over the status of Northern Ireland, that to many the lack of a clearly defined loyalist national identity is indicative that the whole thing is indeed nothing but a territorial pissing contest built on the bones of history.

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At the same time, every one of the almost 1 million people in Northern Ireland who come from Unionist backgrounds can´t be completely unthinkin; I remain convinced their must be some real reasons for why at least some of the population of Ulster feel so convinced of their status as non-Irish despite having been born on the island of Ireland. To take a quote I once saw on a Loyalist website; the Spanish and Portuguese share the same geographical region but nobody ever argues that they should be united into one country.

I believe that there has to be something, at least enough to form a legitimate opinion, in that point of view and would love some day to see an advocate for it being able to argue it's case publically. However, as the impact of Brexit becomes more and more accutely felt as more time goes by, their days for doing so may be numbered.