The darker truth here is that Sinn Féin has chosen to weaponise the language question for political ends, less to protect a minority than to antagonise unionists. Unionists have duly been antagonised. The Gaelic language is the main tongue of a mere 0.2% of the Northern Ireland population. Around 10% claim to understand it to some degree (perhaps just a few phrases). But Sinn Féin does not do things accidentally. Its proposals have become a weapon of tribalism in communities where identity politics always looms large and divisively. Fears that Irish may be made compulsory in schools, that a language qualification might become a job requirement and that street signs would be made bilingual are not all well grounded. But some are. Bilingual road signs, for instance, would take the issue into every street in Northern Ireland, with pointless provocative effect.
Another glum truth is that the terms of Northern Ireland politics have been unhelpfully reset by two actions for which responsibility lies squarely with the Conservative party in London. The first of these is Brexit, and the seeming willingness of many irresponsible Tories to countenance a hard border in Ireland. The second is the pact between the Tories and the DUP, which undermines the British government’s role as a co-guarantor with Ireland of the power-sharing agreements of 1998. The two communities may indeed be enduringly suspicious of one another, as the language issue once again shows. But the current London government has all but abdicated from its responsibility to bring them together. In fact it has made things worse.
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