REGINALD MAUDLING, during his stint as colonial overseer of Northern Ireland, had a particularly trying couple of days there once and on his way home on the British government plane he ordered a large Scotch, pronto. “What a bloody awful country,” he gulped. We natives, outraged, responded that ours was a grand wee enclave entirely and the problem lay with bloody awful gooks like him.

Some natives responded less sincerely than others. The nationalist sector shared his assessment, to a point – to the extent that he was referring to the unionist sector. It is not said often enough – I can’t think when it was last said in print – that those who vote unionist are voting to remain forever as the political pygmies of the Western world. Their mind-set is indeed bloody awful.

Nobody ever voluntarily asks a unionist out to dinner. Not in this country, or over in Britain or anywhere on the globe. Your average unionist is a tight wee anal-retentive, purse-lipped, narrow-minded, plodding Northern bore. Your super-Unionist is even worse. None of them are any fun at all.

I wouldn’t mind if the matter rested there, for they have many a counterpart in the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child down here, but the difference is that SPUC is becoming increasingly irrelevant and all right-on people are openly encouraged now to dismiss them.

Not so with the unionists. There is pressure on fun-loving, open-hearted, sunny-natured Northern nationalists to love them. Love them? This directive is usually penned by journalists from the Sunday Independent who – as far as I can judge from reading the newspaper anyway – wouldn’t, won’t and don’t touch the same brethren with a barge-pole. Ask yourself this: when was the last time one of Tony O’Reilly’s hacks wrote a piece about “My night of joy, laughter and jokes in a pub in Sandy Row,” or “Post-prandial pranks with the jet-set in County Down”?

The truth is that the condition of unionism, like the condition of the working class, must eventually wither and die if we are to have any shred of happiness on this island. The difference is that the working class, who are burdened with sickness, poverty and misery are trying to burst out of their condition. They know it’s nothing to boast about. They wish that people who would faint if they came within a hundred pounds of their income, and who never desist from praising their stoic heroism, would shut their traps and bend their energy towards making the concept of a working class redundant.

Unionists, however – Jesus preserve us from unionists. Their every waking moment is directed towards entombing themselves – and Northern nationalists – in the lowest strata of the darkest corner of the impregnable monolith that is Britain. Unionists form less than two per cent of voters in the UK – less than three per cent even if they formed an alliance with Northern nationalists. They will never have more than seventeen MPs out of six hundred and sixty-six in Westminster (that’s assuming all Northern nationalists would elect them). AND THEY WANT IT TO REMAIN THAT WAY. THEY LOVE THAT. THEY THINK IT IS A WONDERFUL THING TO BE FOREVER DENIED THE DIGNITY OF DETERMINING THEIR OWN AFFAIRS. Even if they got a devolved sub-administration in the North, they want Britain to retain control of the purse-strings, while they handle the garbage-collection.

The don’t even want a Channel to connect the North with the island across the water. They want a barbed-wire fence to keep them separate from the South. Unionists like being cut off. Stick oranges in their mouths while they truss themselves beneath a picture of the Queen and you know what I’m saying?

This is before we consider the unionist political proclivity for heavy metal, bondage, and death, under a subterfuge of support for armoured cars, jails and shoot-to-kill policies. Unionists don’t mind erecting huge towers from which soldiers peer through infra-red lights into people’s bedrooms.

Up with this one could put if they cracked the odd smile, made the odd interesting comment, mentioned what is going on in the rest of the world once in a while – had an unqualified word of praise for anyone outside unionist circles. Or showed the slightest interest. Have you ever heard a unionist express an interest in anything – like, for instance, food? Or books? Or music? Or rock ’n’ roll?

The only reason I mention this is that Sinn Fein is the latest in a long line of sanctimonious, mealy-mouthed, pious hypocrites to call for understanding and tolerance of the bums. Understanding I’ve got, but one good reason for tolerating unionism, other than sheer good nature and unquenchable optimism that all human beings are capable of enlightenment, I have not got.

A paper from Sinn Fein on the positive aspects – no, let us not be too demanding here – on even one positive aspect of Unionism as a political philosophy would be helpful, this writer being nothing if not open-minded. No mention of Prods, please. My granny was a Shankill Prod. Proud to be Prod is self-evident.