BRENDAN Behan was only half right. He said that the first item on a republican agenda was a split.

The other half of his observation might have been that a split is also high up unionism’s agenda, as evidenced by the three unionist parties currently tearing strips off each other.

In fairness, Behan died in 1964, a few years before the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association created the deep divisions in unionism by saying, “If we are British, give us British rights.”

That demand exposed unionists’ confusion as to what exactly unionism was.

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Unionists were British, but not so British as to accept British laws and values.

It was as if unionists had looked across the Irish Sea and said, “You think you’re British? We’ll show you Britishness”, as the RUC batoned civil rights marchers off the streets.

Had it not been for Rev Ian Paisley, unionist confusion might not have been so acute.

He wrote a new agenda for unionism by creating the concept of a politico-religious heaven, where intransigent unionism and hardline Protestantism would fuse seamlessly to form a promised land which he........

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