Search for the word “reactionary” on Google and the search engine gives you a rather handy definition: “Opposing political or social progress or reform. Synonyms: right-wing, conservative, rightist, ultra-conservative; blimpish, diehard; traditionalist, conventional, traditional, old-fashioned, unprogressive”. Is there any better description of the anachronistic attitudes of the Democratic Unionist Party?
THE DUP HAVE accused the Irish government of getting involved in the Stormont Assembly talks by urging the North to legalise same-sex marriage, which is a Sinn Féin policy demand.
Both powersharing parties have already missed three different deadlines this year to form a Stormont Assembly, and leaves an uncomfortable precedent to the British and Irish governments on how to react.
The DUP’s Sammy Wilson told Morning Ireland today that it wouldn’t come to an agreement on Sinn Féin’s terms.
“The Irish government is sticking its nose in business it has no responsibility for,” he said, before criticising the Taoiseach for urging the North to change its laws to allow same-sex marriage.
He said he hadn’t heard the Taoiseach urging any other member of the EU who haven’t legalised same-sex marriage to change their laws.
There is a certain irony in the deeply Europhobic DUP attempting to construct a defence of its bigoted policies by referring to the European Union. Especially as the party is striving to bring about a “Hard Brexit” of the United Kingdom from the EU, including the UK’s legacy colony in the north-east of Ireland. A colony the Democratic Unionists have no intention of sharing with a section of the majority community on this island, or at least of doing so on a basis of mutual respect and equality.
The peoples of Ireland and Britain are going to pay a heavy price for the reactionary-encouraging pact between the governing Conservative Party in London and the DUP over the coming months and years.
AN SIONNACH FIONN 
I agree with your description of the DUP and their attitudes.
However, I do not agree with your description of a ‘colony’, even though I know what you mean.
To me, a colony, particularly an English one, was the overthrow of a government and the establishment of one which had as its aims, firstly, the introduction of the proper form of Christianity, that is the Established or Anglican church; and secondly, to so manage the colony as to extract the maximum financial benefit from it.
Ireland as an English colony did both; think of ‘absentee landlords’ and the CoI. But, in the ‘residual 6 counties’ the English now have to subsidise this colonial remnant. Colonies are for profit, not to be a burden on the English taxpayer, unless they are a ‘failed colony’ that the English cannot get rid of.
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