From: tony@cactus.org (Tony J. Hurson)
Subject: Economist Article on N. Ireland Census
Organization: Capital Area Central Texas UNIX Society, Austin, Tx
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 03:37:07 GMT

Here's what the November 7th edition of The Economist said about
the recent Northern Ireland census. The article was insensitively
entitled "Breeding For Change":

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	Demography is creeping up on Northern Ireland's politics.
Just as another session of political talks is about to wind up,
having achieved little, the latest census figures show how the 
balance of population between Protestants and Catholics is 
changing. The Catholic share stands at 43%, and is rising fast.
With the 70 year-old Protestant majority crumbling, the attitudes
of the two sides to negotiating an end to the conflict could
start changing.

	Nobody was sure how fast Catholic numbers were growing:
the 1981 figures were considered unreliable because the IRA hunger
strike led some to boycott it. It now seems that there has been a
six-percentage-point rise in the Catholic proportion of the 
population over 20 years. If that rate continues, there will be a
Catholic majority in another 20 years or so. Locals see the trends
on the streets. In Belfast, which is already about 45% Catholic,
Protestants have been leaving areas where Catholic numbers have
increased. During the current round of talks, the most flexible
Unionist has been Ken Maginnis, MP for Fermanagh-South Tyrone in
the west of the province, where Protestant schoolchildren are
already outnumbered three to one.

	It was Mr Maginnis who cheerfully led the Official
Unionist team to Dublin to meet the Irish government, while the
smaller Democratic Unionist Party, led by Ian Paisley, stayed at
home and hollered "sell out". The sky however, refused to fall on
the Official Unionists. At their annual conference last week, the
party's leader, Jim Molyneaux, who has kept the talks at arm's
length, was sufficiently emboldened by his delegates' mood to
offer a vote of congratulations to Mr Maginnis.

	This tentative enthusiasm is too late for the current 
round of talks. Unionist delegates were never mandated to make an
offer grand enough, on power sharing or north-south relations, to
turn a fairly arid exercise into something approaching negotiation.
Nationalists remain determined to settle for nothing less than the
existing Anglo-Irish agreement, which unionists hate because it 
gives the republic a nominal consultative role in northern affairs.
The IRA meanwhile, blasts away as ruthlessly as ever. Nothern 
Ireland's police chief this week predicted a pre-Christmas bombing
blitz in London.

	Both unionist parties have said they will leave the talks
on November 10th because an Anglo-Irish conference is scheduled 
for the 16th. The [British?] government hopes that this break-up
will be merely an intermission and that a new set of talks will
resume soon. Officials are sweeping the floor for scraps of hard-
won consensus to justify the process so far and encourage another
try. On sharing power and the fundamental clash of loyalties, the
two sides are as far apart as ever. But, what if the demographic
ground is shifting under their feet?

	Unionists could react with aggression, or by becoming
more conciliatory; nationalists with triumphalism, or with polite
patience; and the IRA, almost certainly, by stepping up its 
violence for one last push. But it is also possible that the 
prospect of ceasing to be a minority will encourage those 
Catholics who support the IRA to put their faith instead in their
growing numbers, and in constitutional politics. The British
government, after all, is pledged in the Anglo-Irish agreement
to help establish a united Ireland should a majority of Northern
Irish ever vote in favour of it.

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| Tony Hurson                        | Email: tony@ross.com   (work)     |
|                                    |        tony@cactus.org (home)     |
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