Workers and outlaws: Unionism and fair employment in Northern Ireland

Abstract

This paper considers unionists’ perspective on fair employment. The most central aspect of the unionist position involves, paradoxically, the simultaneous denial of discrimination against nationalists and justification of their exclusion from employment. It is only through setting the unionist perspective in the context of nationalist rejection of the state that it can be seen as consistent. Unionism's position puts those who refuse to accept the legitimacy of the state into the category of outlaw. As outlaws they are beyond the protection of the law and without citizenship rights, and citizens are therefore entitled to exclude them. This is not, in unionists’ eyes, discrimination but the logical outcome of nationalists’ rejection of the polity. As the debate on fair employment is often rightly seen as a proxy debate about the nature and status of the Northern Ireland state, this analysis of unionism's viewpoint also has implications for general theories of unionist ideology. It points towards a more coherent political ideology within unionism than the “two cultural traditions” model or models based on a moderate versus reformer division can explain.