What do you think?
Rate this book
The Twilight of Unionism: Ulster and the Future of Northern Ireland
The crisis of Ulster Unionism and the future of Northern Ireland
The fissures that have split the United Kingdom in the last decades have run through Northern Ireland. Since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, the fragile peace has been threatened by Brexit, the rise and fall of the D U P and the failure of power-sharing arrangement between the main parties at the Stormont Assembly. As the very future of Northern Ireland is now in jeopardy, will Britain face up to its imperial legacy and address the deep inequalities that remain in the aftermath of the Troubles, and the uneven development of the 'New Ireland'?
Geoffrey Bells offers an insightful history of Ulster Unionism from the 1960s to the present day. In recent years this has come to a crisis point. What is the future of the Union in the post-Brexit reality? How will the relationship between Northern Ireland and Westminster develop? Can the United Kingdom survive?
The fissures that have split the United Kingdom in the last decades have run through Northern Ireland. Since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, the fragile peace has been threatened by Brexit, the rise and fall of the D U P and the failure of power-sharing arrangement between the main parties at the Stormont Assembly. As the very future of Northern Ireland is now in jeopardy, will Britain face up to its imperial legacy and address the deep inequalities that remain in the aftermath of the Troubles, and the uneven development of the 'New Ireland'?
Geoffrey Bells offers an insightful history of Ulster Unionism from the 1960s to the present day. In recent years this has come to a crisis point. What is the future of the Union in the post-Brexit reality? How will the relationship between Northern Ireland and Westminster develop? Can the United Kingdom survive?
283 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 29, 2022
3 people are currently reading
100 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 11, 2023
A decent book. It is very strong on the details regarding recent events concerning Northern Irish politics. For this, I am truly grateful. The analysis is a bit slipshod with a certain conflation occurring between Protestants, Unionists, Loyalists, and paramilitaries. It tends to conflate them all as well as offers a singular understanding of Unionism as opposed to more hard and soft versions of this. It clearly is written with a Irish Republican stance in mind, which at times clouds its analysis into somewhat bygone frameworks. The section on colonialism is useful. Bill Rolsston and Robbie McVeigh in *Ireland, Colonialism and the Unfinished Revolution* (2022) truly develops this framework while perhaps overstating the case of overlooking prior recent academic settler colonial frameworks in understanding Northern Ireland, which *The Twilight of Unionsm* does a better job of chronciling.
Some other good books that offer alternative theoretical frameworks or considerations are: Daniel Finn's *One Man's Terrorist: A Political History of the IRA* (2021), Lyra McKee's *Lost, Found, Remembered* (2020), Katharine Keenan *Belfast Imaginary: Art and Urban Reinvention* (2022), and Susan McKay's *Northern Protestants on Shifting Grounds* (2021), which Bell somewhat disparagingly suggests she was selectively looking for more diversity of Protestant voices than were warranted.
Some other good books that offer alternative theoretical frameworks or considerations are: Daniel Finn's *One Man's Terrorist: A Political History of the IRA* (2021), Lyra McKee's *Lost, Found, Remembered* (2020), Katharine Keenan *Belfast Imaginary: Art and Urban Reinvention* (2022), and Susan McKay's *Northern Protestants on Shifting Grounds* (2021), which Bell somewhat disparagingly suggests she was selectively looking for more diversity of Protestant voices than were warranted.
February 4, 2023
Overall, a very interesting and easy read. The book is a fairly detailed look into unionism as a broad political tendency in Northern Ireland, it's history from the late 19th century to the present day - and the ways it has manifested and evolved in that time. It also looks into it's interactions and relationships to other political tendencies in Northern Ireland and within Britain.
I enjoyed reading this book though I did feel as I was reading it that I benefitted from reading books like The Reactionary Mind and The United Irishmen, Rebellion & The Act of Union beforehand. As there are parts of this book where the author will explore the contradictions of political unionism and the Ulster protestant community, but won't always explore as thoroughly as I personally would have liked.
That aside, this is a very good book exploring this complicated and often contradictory reactionary tendency.
I enjoyed reading this book though I did feel as I was reading it that I benefitted from reading books like The Reactionary Mind and The United Irishmen, Rebellion & The Act of Union beforehand. As there are parts of this book where the author will explore the contradictions of political unionism and the Ulster protestant community, but won't always explore as thoroughly as I personally would have liked.
That aside, this is a very good book exploring this complicated and often contradictory reactionary tendency.
January 10, 2025
Really excellent and worthwhile read for anyone who wants to get to grips with the north. I unfortunately don’t share Bell’s apparent optimism that unionism’s conservatism will play a part in its decline: isn’t it just as likely that unionists join the new international wave of right-wing, “traditionalist” movements, and see a huge upsurge in popularity as a result?
December 28, 2025
Nice quick easy read. Really thorough explanation of the historical foundations of unionism and how each of them either no longer exist or are being weakened as time goes on.
Northern Ireland will not see its next centenary.
Northern Ireland will not see its next centenary.
June 30, 2025
I give it maybe 20 more years
Read
February 4, 2024with Sinn Féin taking "power" in the newly resurrected Northern Irish govt, this was a timely read.
NI is a fascinating geopolitical sphere to me, and I have long found Unionism to be a confounding ideology - a loyalist cause devoted to a motherland that is very clearly less and less interested in maintaining that relationship. Rooted ultimately in maintaining a bigoted colonial order (of which the very existence of Northern Ireland is a gerrymandered contrivance), developments in the Republic of Ireland, the UK and the world at large have made many of Unionism's core tenets fundamentally contradictory, backwards or simply irrelevant.
This tight and accessible work paints a portrait of an ever diminishing and fragmented political ideology, relevant for understanding much outside of Northern Ireland.
NI is a fascinating geopolitical sphere to me, and I have long found Unionism to be a confounding ideology - a loyalist cause devoted to a motherland that is very clearly less and less interested in maintaining that relationship. Rooted ultimately in maintaining a bigoted colonial order (of which the very existence of Northern Ireland is a gerrymandered contrivance), developments in the Republic of Ireland, the UK and the world at large have made many of Unionism's core tenets fundamentally contradictory, backwards or simply irrelevant.
This tight and accessible work paints a portrait of an ever diminishing and fragmented political ideology, relevant for understanding much outside of Northern Ireland.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews