Working in media I walk a tightrope every day trying to adequately reflect the nuance of life and political perspectives on the island of Ireland, in particular Northern Ireland.

Come election season, how people here choose to vote is never about just one issue. But, as always, the question of whether Northern Ireland should reunify with the Republic of Ireland is a consideration on many people’s minds—even though it isn’t on the ballot.

Northern Ireland is currently part of the United Kingdom. Along with voters in England, Scotland, and Wales, the electorate here will head to the polls tomorrow, July 4, to select members of the Westminster Parliament in London.

Northern Ireland is very small, with a population of less than 2 million people. It holds just 18 of the 650 seats in the British parliament so influence can be challenging. Northern Ireland’s devolved legislature, known as Stormont, has limited powers, as do local council bodies.

The Westminster election has been a lackluster campaign but will likely throw up some surprising and significant results. What it means for Northern Ireland depends entirely on whom you ask—nationalists, who want reunification with the Republic of Ireland; unionists, who want to remain part of the U.K.; or others with varied views on the future.

There are hundreds of years of complicated history and identity issues in the mix. Many people consider the island of Ireland to have been Britain’s first colony: the whole thing was once part of the U.K. But in the early 20th century, 26 of Ireland’s 32 counties formed a new republic, leaving the six counties in the north still part of the U.K. This new region of Northern Ireland, essentially gerrymandered into existence, was rife with inequality and structured to ensure unionist electoral dominance in perpetuity.

From the 1960s to the late 1990s violence between British loyalist and Irish republican paramilitaries, and the U.K. state, left over 3,500 people dead and tens of thousands injured. People in Northern Ireland still feel the impact today, through inter-generational trauma and in political discourse.

While the 1998 Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement peace accord largely brought an end to 30-plus years of devastating violence, people in Northern Ireland continue to explore what the future will look like. Peace is a process, not an event.

Over the last quarter century, Stormont has been dominated by fragility, disagreement, and collapse. Indeed, this year it has only been fully functioning since February following a two-year unionist-led dispute over post-Brexit trade arrangements that apply to Northern Ireland but don’t apply to Scotland, England, and Wales.

The government was resuscitated just recently and now the political parties that form the mandatory power-sharing government are trying to present a united front while also competing with each other for Westminster seats.

British unionists standing for office talk a lot about strengthening Northern Ireland’s position as part of the U.K. Non-unionists tend to focus on what they view as the failure of the current U.K. government to adequately provide for the region.

The latter group currently has more seats at Westminster, having overtaken the British unionist parties’ hold on the Northern Ireland delegation for the first time in the 2019 Westminster election. That year, the nationalist parties Sinn Féin and SDLP won seven and two seats, respectively; the unionist DUP won eight seats, and the Alliance Party, neither nationalist nor unionist, won one.

The main aim of Sinn Féin—the Irish political party with historical links to the Irish Republican Army (IRA)—is the reunification of Ireland.

It believes the island should never have been partitioned, and that its people would be best served by an all-island government in the future.

It has an electoral presence in both jurisdictions on the island of Ireland, and in recent years has emerged as the largest party of local and devolved government in Northern Ireland.

Sinn Féin MPs do not take their seats in London. Rather, they abstain from parliament as a form of protest—on the basis that British and Irish people are better off taking control of their own fortunes. They do not accept Westminster MP salaries but do claim expenses to carry out constituency work around areas such as housing, amenities, and public services.

The smaller Irish nationalist party, the SDLP, while rejecting the British oath of allegiance, say the words to be able to take their seats. SDLP MPs believe that for as long as Northern Ireland is part of the U.K., it’s their duty to try to influence policy from the inside, and not leave unionists as the only voices inside the London parliament.

Ultimately Sinn Féin and the SDLP want the same thing: a new, reconciled and reunified all-Ireland constitutional future.

The Alliance Party, formed more than 50 years ago, has emerged in recent years as the third major electoral force in Northern Ireland. It is a “cross-community” party, takes no fixed position on unification, and therefore is described as “other” on the political spectrum, along with the likes of the Green Party.

Alliance attracts support from unionists and republicans, from those who could be persuadable in either direction, and from those not motivated by the topic at all. In this way, they offer representation for those who want an alternative to the traditional binary constitutional positions of political parties in this part of the world.

With society dividing roughly 40-40-20 (unionist, nationalist/republican, and others, respectively), Alliance voters will be extremely important when it’s time for people in Northern Ireland to decide to vote to reunite with Ireland at some time in the future.

The Good Friday Agreement allows the U.K. government to call for such a referendum, known as a border poll, under any circumstances; it is accepted that the most likely scenario in which they would do so is when it’s clear most people would vote for Irish unity. That day may not be as far away as it once felt.

I do not see Northern Ireland existing as it has in the years ahead. Its foundations aren’t solid, and its demographics and political landscape are changing. The old certainties of the past no longer exist. Background does not automatically indicate a constitutional preference but statistics suggest that the youngest people here, and the next batches of voters, are more likely to come from Catholic, nationalist, republican communities. The oldest citizens are more likely to be from Protestant, unionist, loyalist communities.

Post-Brexit, conversations about the constitutional future have only accelerated. There is a widespread view that the U.K.’s departure from the E.U. has been disastrous, which has provided impetus to those who seek an alternative future.

Of course, the constitutional future isn’t the only issue citizens care about.

The health service, the economy and cost of living, education, climate, and a host of other issues are important to citizens, too—if poorly addressed because of the general dysfunction that permeates all areas of life, and the structural inadequacies that sometimes make progress feel impossible.

The July election results will impact life in Northern Ireland in a variety of ways. Some people will vote tactically, declare “none of the above,” or not bother voting at all.

As frustrating as it can be, participating in the democratic process is an important function of any society, and it’s important to vote. It is a privilege. Throughout the history of the Irish civil rights movement and other rights movements around the world, people have died for their rights. And as a feminist, I am acutely aware that women were denied the right to vote in the not-so-distant past.

As dysfunctional as it is here, I love this place and its people. We deserve a bright future, an abundance of opportunities, and peace and reconciliation to be central to it all. There is something about a community that has experienced great suffering that produces many decent, empathetic, loving, and funny people. Dark episodes often build resilience and humanity. Every election in Northern Ireland offers an opportunity to channel those strengths to build a better future—even if indirectly, for now.

Labour is most likely to win. Once a new parliament is formed, Labour’s response to Northern Ireland’s political reform, funding levels, equality provisions, the legacy of the violent past, infrastructure projects, and a future border poll, will be where the focus shifts.

The post What’s at Stake for Northern Ireland in the U.K. Elections? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

To govern a divided city, you need to balance your remembering with some forgetting.

That was my takeaway after moderating a recent public event that used Zoom to link live audiences in two famously divided cities, on opposite sides of the world.

One city, Belfast, is a place so full of physical divisions that the differences between people can feel inescapable. The other, Los Angeles, lacks a shared historical memory and thus manages to forget the depth and persistence of its divides.

Of course, these are two very different places. The city of L.A., with a population of 4 million, has 10 times as many people as Belfast and twice as many as all of Northern Ireland. But both are fast-paced, aggressive places that produce a lot of art. L.A. is Hollywood, and Belfast is a UNESCO City of Music (thanks, Van Morrison), and a center of literature (from C.S. Lewis to Sinéad Morrissey) and TV/film production (Game of Thrones).

And they face similar predicaments.

Both cities are defined, locally and internationally, by long histories of internal unrest and violence. The whole world watched L.A.’s riots in 1965 and 1992 (the latter the largest urban riot in U.S. history). And the whole world followed news of the Troubles, one of the 20th century’s most violent and longest conflicts, between pro-United Kingdom Protestants and pro-secession Catholics.

Over the past generation, both cities have celebrated progress in bridging divides. L.A. rebuilt South L.A. after the 1992 riots, and the city has seen greater diversity among its political elites. Meanwhile in Belfast, the 1998 Good Friday Agreement ended the Troubles, disarming violent groups and creating power-sharing between Protestants and Catholics.

But in the past decade, and especially during the pandemic, both cities experienced renewed divisions—racial and ethnic in Los Angeles, sectarian in Belfast. And those divisions have paralyzed governments in both cities.

Trying to understand how each city got to this point, our event began by turning the clock back a decade, to 2013, when both cities had more hope—at least, officially. That was when departing Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa declared that his city had gotten past its bigger problems, with “the old Los Angeles is fading in the rear-view mirror.”

That same year, leaders in Northern Ireland pledged to remove all of the physical walls and barriers separating Protestant and Catholic communities in Belfast within a decade—by the year 2023. They also promised to desegregate a city divided by religion.

Triumphalism in L.A. and Belfast did not wear well. Divisions have proved more durable than either city’s leadership anticipated.

In Belfast, stability and optimism waned after 2016’s Brexit, when Northern Ireland voted narrowly to remain in the European Union, but Britain as a whole voted to leave. A 2017 energy scandal then forced new elections, which produced a split result between the leading Protestant and Catholic parties causing persistent governmental dysfunction and inoperation. Since the 2022 elections, Northern Ireland has not had a government.

That lack, combined with Brexit-related cuts, has diminished government services, including vital health programs. And amidst the political turmoil, polls show rising sectarian divisions. This is true especially among the young, who were already too divided; less than 10% of Belfast children attend religiously integrated schools.

No wonder the walls dividing communities did not come down as promised this year, as people continue clinging to separation and the promise of security. Indeed, as I saw firsthand during a visit last year, Belfast has erected new divides—most of the “peace walls” now in place were constructed after the Good Friday Agreement.

A world away, Los Angeles also has gone backward. Racial, ethnic, and generational divisions grew more pronounced during the Trump presidency and in the pandemic, which saw more attention to high-profile local cases of police violence, as well as the Minneapolis murder of George Floyd.

Last year, a Loyola Marymount University survey found big increases in the percentage of Angelenos who say race relations are getting worse. Over two-thirds of Angelenos told pollsters that they expect to see new racial unrest, like what the city experienced in 1992.

Then came the leaked tape of Los Angeles County’s top labor official and three L.A. city councilmembers saying bigoted things about almost every major racial or ethnic group in the city—a recording that all but brought the L.A. city government to a standstill for months. Unrelated federal corruption investigations have ensnared a third of the city council, adding to the difficulty of getting anything done. Meanwhile, public anger grows at the city’s inability to handle increasing crime and homelessness.

A recent event linked the struggles of the two cities, organized by Imagine! Belfast (a democracy and ideas festival) and the Huntington Institute on California and the West at the University of Southern California. Panelists and audiences in both cities (one audience sat in Belfast’s Accidental Theater, the other at a USC library) lamented their divides but also offered ideas for progress that involved leaving some parts of the past behind but keeping those that might serve communities in the future.

Belfast’s many walls make divisions seems permanent and unchangeable, said Duncan Morrow, a lecturer and conflict mediator at Ulster University. But how can Belfast remove barriers that some people believe keep them safe? Perhaps, if walls can’t be removed, new integrated spaces and institutions can be built on top of them, Morrow suggested.

Los Angeles panelist Joumana Silyan-Saba, director of policy and enforcement at L.A. Civil Rights, said that divisions in L.A. are usually covert, and not confronted, until they “manifest as intercommunal divides, intracommunal divides, and—in the worst forms—they also manifest in civil unrest and violence.”

That argues for memorializing more of the city’s past conflicts, and making L.A. divisions more visible so that Angelenos must reckon more directly with them. Forgetting divisions in the name of getting along can sometimes make it harder to get things done. Silyan-Saba recounted how many conversations it took to gain widespread community support for the Expo Line through South L.A. and the large, ongoing expansion of L.A.’s Metro rail system.

Panelists and audience members in both Belfast and Los Angeles seemed most pessimistic about the ability of local governments to transcend divides (though Southern Californians were upbeat about L.A.’s new mayor Karen Bass and her devotion to getting Angelenos to “lock arms together”).

To a remarkable degree, Belfast and Los Angeles participants agreed that making progress in divided cities is unlikely to come from politicians. Instead, people themselves, through their institutions and organizations and movements, must lead the change. Belfast artist and photographer Stephen Wilson said that it was still important for divided governments to provide long-term resources to neighborhoods and promising individuals. “You don’t know who will turn into leaders in the future,” he said.

“The greatest power that we have is our civil society,” said USC sociologist Jody Agius Vallejo. “These dividing lines are created. They’re created over time. They’re created historically. They’re created to make advantages for some. And because they aren’t natural, we can change them.”

The post What L.A. and Belfast Have in Common appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.