‘Safeguarding the Union’ with Reynolds and Shirlow

On Thursday 26th September, I attended a double lecture on ‘Safeguarding the Union’ at Belfast Orange Hall.

This was a joint presentation, first by former DUP SPAD and Together UK colleague Lee Reynolds, followed by Eminent Professor Peter Shirlow FAcSS, Head of Irish Studies at Liverpool University.

Both talks are of capital importance to anyone who is against the abolition of Northern Ireland.

Reynold’s address was entitled ‘Where we are. Where we need to get to.’

This work is evidently the fruit of many hours of mining a mixture of hitherto insufficiently exploited voting data, an understanding of the attitudes and failings of a downtrodden Unionist community and an intrinsic knowledge of the Republican campaign of attrition to bring about a United Ireland.

It was a masterly expose of the functioning THREE TRIBES now playing out in NI politics. Unionists, Nationalists and the all-important Neither’s.

What was uplifting during the talk was that Reynold’s not only explains the obvious problems the status quo pro-UK side is facing, and there are a few inconvenient truths spelt out in an impassioned tone, but he also offers solutions, many extremely simple in their execution.

Professor Peter Shirlow’s address was entitled ‘The Case for the Union’.

Shirlow is a seasoned academic, skilled in presenting heavy data in an entertaining and inspiring way. His lecture was a masterclass in engaging a congregation, feeding them fact-based evidence through audience participation and leaving the crowd educated to face any hostile Nationalist with confidence.

His well-grounded work of empirical data, shows how Northern Ireland has become an economic dynamo of global success in cyber security, financial service technology, software development, aerospace, agribusiness etc… the list goes on and on and the professor backs this all up with indisputable statistics.

After the documentation of how successful Northern Ireland is performing within the UK and the world stage, Shirlow moves on to the results of various NI surveys espousing a ‘seismic’ shift in wanting a United Ireland, here he comes into his own by dismantling those surveys and producing the inconvenient truths that there is in fact a negative trend towards a UI, something that no Nationalist commentator or Republican fantasist would ever admit.

Shirlow’s lecture is genuinely trail-blazing and like Reynold’s superb presentation, demands a wider audience, especially within the ranks of elected Unionist politicians, community representatives and dare I say it, card-carrying Northern Ireland journalists. I intend to arrange such a wider audience.

Andrew Grocock, CEO of Together UK Foundation