The Irish Question revisited¹
Here be ghosts that I have raised this Christmas
tide, ghosts of dead men that have bequeathed a trust to us living men. Ghosts
are troublesome things in a house (or a family), as we knew even before Ibsen
taught us. There is only one way to appease a ghost .You must do the things it
asks you. The ghosts of a nation sometimes ask very big things; and they must
be appeased whatever the cost. Of the shade of the Norwegian dramatist I beg
forgiveness for a plagiaristic, but inevitable title.
Padraig Pearse
Political
cultures are shaped by decisions those in the media make to present, or not to
present, particular political options to their audiences. To withhold a
position from publication is to withdraw it from
consideration. This is very much illustrated by an examination of the Irish
Question today. What is the Irish Question? If we did but know that we could
give it an Irish answer and send it packing. We are, however, presented with
few options either for interpreting the past or for considering the future.
Narratives are imposed upon moving events which defy narrative structure, or
else whose course is determined by currents unseen by those who tell the
oft-told stories. Hence the march of events may be misunderstood to disastrous
effect. Many political decisions appear to have been made by those who have
bought into the ‘hype’ surrounding a plausible story instead of having
conducted any kind of independent analysis of the questions at issue.
I
will begin by saying that, while Ireland’s independence is many things – a
dream, a proposal, a myth, an interpretation of history, a fantasy future –
what it is not is a reality for all that twenty-six of her counties constitute
themselves as a Republic. Historically, various elements of the archipelago
traditionally known as the British Isles have organised themselves in a variety
of combinations or configurations, but they have always amounted to a single
unit of interdependent parts. Politically that may be denied or ignored,
economically it cannot. The Brexit process looks set to bring that
uncomfortable fact into stark relief.
The
separatist or Republican proposal has always been that Ireland as a single unit
could and should be independent from Britain. The modern media accept this
claim without question, quibbling only over the question as to whether
‘independence’ should be as a single unit. The reason for this is simply that
what has actually happened is generally regarded as having been in a sense
inevitable, what is the case as the only option that was ever truly viable, and
the only futures that are genuinely possible as those compatible with the
accepted narrative or interpretation of the status quo. Hence we have heard a
great deal about the prospects for a united Ireland all of it predicated on the
assumption that such a country would be much the same as the present Republic
only six counties larger.
Historically,
the claim to independence was asserted opportunistically in wartime and
generally accompanied by suggestions that it was a viable prospect because
Ireland’s ‘gallant allies in Europe’, first Spain then France and then Germany,
would provide markets for Irish goods and produce within their empires once
whichever war it was then in progress had culminated in victory over ‘the
British’. The EUrophilia of Ireland’s political class today appears to be
rooted in such claims. Indeed, the bipartisan policy on Brexit has about it
more than an echo of Sir Roger Casement’s proposal that the Central Powers
should act to circumscribe British action in the world on a permanent basis
while Ireland acted on their behalf to limit access to the open sea. The post-imperial age and the end of the cold
war have very largely brought an end to closed trading blocs and opened the
world’s markets to more or less free trade, enabling trade between the Republic
of Ireland and the United Kingdom to be cut to not much more than ten per cent
of Ireland’s tangible exports in cash terms and something under twice that when
it comes to invisibles or services. In
the other direction, the United Kingdom runs a trade surplus with Ireland,
supplying about a quarter of Ireland’s imports.
Cash
terms only go so far, and while it is perfectly possible to devise any number
of theoretical schemes to replace any aspect of the current arrangements by
trade to the same value with some other trading partner; practically speaking,
there is likely to be little change, and such change as there will be will not
be made under Irish initiative and is unlikely to be to Ireland’s advantage.
The production and procurement of food and drink are entirely integrated, with
similar foods crossing the sea in both directions – the North/South aspect of
trade is always entirely trivial when compared with its east/west aspect. Ireland might very profitably pursue a much
greater level of agricultural self-sufficiency, and it is possible that trade
frictions arising from Brexit will result in such a development although I
think business as usual with higher prices a rather more likely outcome. Another possibility is a sudden major
withdrawal of trade if the United Kingdom were to transfer its dealings with
computer and information services companies to their North American operational
headquarters. Whether or not that
happens will depend on how post-NAFTA trading arrangements develop. The number of Americans claiming to have a
little Irish blood is legendary, but few appreciate quite how much of that
blood gets there by transfusion rather than by descent. Blood fractions constitute Ireland’s most
lucrative export by far, and I would expect that the new abortion laws will see
the evolution of a trade in foetal tissues worth quite as much or more – how
far that was a consideration for the many politicians who supported the change
must be a matter for speculation.
I
could carry on making small suggestions as to how this, that or the other might
change in future, but all such suggestions are to miss the point which is that
even though a supposedly satisfactory Brexit deal was negotiated, Ireland can
only be left at a permanent disadvantage by a significant institutionalised
division between the peoples of these islands.
The difference between the current situation and the much anticipated
“no deal” Brexit is that between a slow decline and a sudden crash. EU membership will be of little assistance
under current circumstances, and would have been even less help if matters had
gone the other way. Ireland was promised
an immediate aid package in that eventuality, and we all remember what happened
last time round. We also know what the
Continental powers and EU institutions have to say about Irish fiscal policy,
so we may make an informed guess as to what the future has in store if Ireland
should slip back into being a net beneficiary of EU spending as the Brexit
effect comes into play. In the unlikely event, that is, that Ireland was ever
allowed to become a beneficiary again, even briefly, rather than being simply
subjected to ever more menacing demands for cash whatever the domestic costs of
paying might be. The EU has, after all, quite literally banked upon Ireland’s
making up the greater part of the shortfall caused by Brexit by the end of the
last budgetary term². Ireland was making the same net contributions as the UK, €1Bn per annum, and is now due to pay €1¾ Bn over the course of the 2021-27 budgeting
period. ‘Europe’ is no friend to Ireland.
With the experience of Troikanomics behind them, the EU institutions
will be rather less easygoing in future than sometimes seemed to be the case
back in the old EEC days. Any failure to keep up the projected contribution
rate would seriously inconvenience the central institutions of the EU, so very
little short of a catastrophic collapse of the economy would persuade them to
accept it. Poland and Hungary have
received various threats over a number of policy issues, and an Ireland in
default of payment might expect a certain amount of rough handling to enforce a
requirement to offer a less competitive corporate tax regime and remove any and
all inducements to do business in or from Ireland that might give the country
any competitive advantage whatever. The decision to comply with the OECD
initiative will do little to appease the firmly held Continental opinion that
Ireland engages in sharp practice and should be made to pay the price of her
own policies.
It
could all have been very different. We are where we are today because the
bipartisan Brexit policy was ill-conceived from the outset, being a product of
the mythology of independence rather than an objective assessment of Ireland’s
best interests. It has done nothing but alienate those in Europe who wanted a
quick and easy deal followed by business as usual. Spain agreed with the
European Union that the EU would accept the result of a bilateral negotiation
over Gibraltar; there is no reason to suppose that the EU would not have
allowed Ireland to settle the details of her own future, indeed it was
generally expected that Ireland would insist upon doing so. Instead of that, a desire to play the
nationalist and beat Sinn Fein at its own game coupled with the myth of a
benevolent Continent led Leo Varadkar, the once and future Taoiseach, to
delegate the task of negotiating over Northern Ireland to the EU without
reference to relations across the Irish Sea. The delegated task amounted to squaring
circles as the archipelago is not amenable to discussion other than as a
whole. The only deal that would have
made any sense for Ireland would have been one that saw a restoration of the
customs union of the British Isles without requiring Ireland to leave either
the EU itself or its single market (the EEA).
No such deal was sought because it would have been seen as an
unacceptable compromise of sovereignty as opposed to the acceptable compromise
of EU membership in which the rôle of the old enemy was small enough to
overlook. An illusion is not maintained without cost and the phantom of
independence is generally one of the costliest myths of all.
This
decade of centenaries has allowed for a certain measure of reassessment of the
events of a hundred years ago; but I would question how far the reappraisal has
gone, and whether its fruits are being accorded any relevance today. The hall mark of Irish identity down the ages
has been ambiguity; Ireland is generally both one thing and the other, but
sometimes neither. A recognition of that
characteristic was at the heart of the more serious proposals of the
half-century or so surrounding the 1922 Treaty.
Ideally, anything to be said about Ireland today should allow ample
scope for obfuscation by all parties and some self-deception to go with it.
The
centenary of the Government of Ireland Act 1920, the fourth Home Rule Bill, was
easy to overlook. It was not a serious exercise in lawmaking but, rather, a
piece of legislation as rhetoric, a negotiating position. That is not to suggest insincerity, only a
knowledge on the part of its authors that it would be contested rather than
implemented. It offered both Northern
and Southern Ireland, separated by a border in the present position, home rule
with continued representation at Westminster; provision was also made for a
joint council and an eventual reunification of Ireland. Representation at Westminster would have
offered the reassurance necessary to facilitate an end to partition once the
generation that had known bitterness had left the scene, especially as the
patriotic loyalty to the Crown of the Irish troops during the War had done so
much to dispel that bitterness and the suspicions of earlier years. A further argument in favour of
representation was that it would have allowed Irish MPs (who might easily have
been supplemented by the admission of the entire Irish peerage to the House of
Lords as happened with the Scots peers in the 1950s) to make representations
against, and perhaps to block, British measures detrimental to Ireland’s
interests.
It
was, however, felt that continued representation would have left too many
separatists unsatisfied to allow for a peaceful future. It was the sole point of difference on a
question of detail between any of those involved in negotiating or fighting
over the future of Ireland however they cared to describe themselves; the other
distinctions were rhetorical differences between factions divided as to the
precise measure of ambiguity they thought appropriate in which to veil the
agreement. It was not a position
represented when the agreement was made, but neither were positions in favour
of immediate reunification or an immediate break with Britain i.e. the views of
those most likely to favour continued use of political violence. It should also be noted that the continuing
representation position had been systematically sidelined amongst the
‘constitutional nationalist’ faction for decades, so it would not have been
represented even if the Irish delegation to the Treaty talks had been inclusive
rather than an exclusively Sinn Féin affair; at the end there were no real
differences on policy between the Parliamentary Party and the then Sinn Féin,
only the difference in character between those who have a visceral attachment
to the rule of law and those without such superstitious prejudices.
In
the Civil War both sides were led by men who had agreed to accept dominion
status, although precisely what that entailed was not clearly defined until the
1930s. It was assumed that it did not include representation in the House of
Commons as Canada had no such representation, but peers were a moot question as
were the extent to which the imperial parliament could legislate with respect
to a dominion, and the degree of independence it might exercise in foreign and
military policy. Sir Charles Coghlan,
Southern Rhodesia’s first prime minister and the first Catholic to receive an
honorary degree from Trinity, who described himself as ‘an Irish nationalist
and a Liberal’, expressed profound regret that the separation was too great to
ensure that the Empire would always move together. He was also involved in sending gatecrashers
to nationalist gatherings before the Great War which invited diaspora
representation only from the traditionally anti-British communities in America
and Australia and ignored Irish communities in more recently established
colonies where loyalty to the Crown and acceptance of some sort of West Briton
identity were the norm. The difference
being between the descendants of those transported whether for political action
or ordinary crime and those driven abroad by poverty or famine on one hand, and
the descendants of the many voluntary emigrants military and civilian who
followed the flag on the other. How much
the former dominate all public discourse surrounding Irish history, and how
little is heard of Ireland not colonised but colonising as equal partner in the
imperial project.
This
all goes to point up the meaninglessness of the party and faction names. It is fair to say that a large majority of
separatists were ‘republicans’ once the outcome of the First World War had
killed off any hope of an alternative royal family from Germany, and papal
hopes of rapprochement with Italy had put paid to any thoughts of becoming the
Pope’s new fiefdom. Otherwise, the labels sat lightly to the people with
‘nationalists’ loyal to the Crown, and ‘unionists’ who preferred a dominion to
the Union, gave up on the South, and even dreamed of going it alone. The relevance of this is to the present and
the near future when neither labels nor party histories can provide very many
clues to future conduct.
We
hear a good deal about a border poll now because now is the only time since
partition when it has looked even reasonably likely that such a poll might be
won for reunification, and when I say ‘now’ I really do mean now. Polling has
always shown that even the supposedly nationalist Catholics are unenthusiastic
about leaving the United Kingdom let alone the Protestants; now, however, the
disruption caused by Brexit has led to a temporary change of heart within both
communities. When an Taoiseach says a
border poll should not be held within five years, he is well aware that when
matters have settled the mood will pass and the moment with it. He is aware also that incorporation of
Northern Ireland into the Republic would call all aspects of the institutional
life of the Republic into question, and shrinks from a prospect he would be
obliged to welcome unreservedly whatever his inward feelings on the
matter.
From
where he stands his misgivings are eminently sensible. He has led one of the great parties back into
government after its catastrophic defeat of 2011 and will drop any mention of
not going into coalition with Sinn Féin at the next election to give himself as
many options as necessary. The political
ecology of the twenty six county Republic offers fine if unexciting
prospects. A thirty two county country,
however, would not be the same only bigger, but a different game with different
players. Far from being the culmination
of the separatist dream, departitioning might well become the trigger for its drawing
to a close. As I was saying, political
labels can sit quite lightly, and party history or traditions count for about
as much as thistledown on the breeze, so all manner of alignments would be
possible and individuals could end up voting for or representing the most
unlikely of parties. The Fianna Fail
Senator who became a Conservative and Unionist life peer would be remembered as
a man ahead of his time, rather than one of history’s outliers. Certain areas of the political spectrum are
not well represented in today’s Oireachtas, and it is a truism of political
life to say that those who are in are keen to keep those who are out out. Thirty two county politics would fill some of
the gaps in unpredictable ways that many would find most unwelcome.
That,
of course, raises the prospect of a disguised attempt to limit what the
political class might well perceive as the damage by combining continued
devolution with disproportionately low representation in the Dail. As the six county unit of Northern Ireland is
not meaningful in an all Ireland context, being simply as much land as the
Protestants thought they could hold at the point of partition, the unit of
devolution would have to be the nine counties of Ulster in its entirety; and,
once anything of that kind comes under discussion, the entire structure of the
country will be up for grabs. Nothing so radical could be accomplished with
simple amendments to the 1937 Constitution; a new, probably entirely federal,
constitution would be necessary, and who can say now what that might bring? These considerations are likely to deter the
attempt, leaving straightforward integration as the sole option for
departitioning.
The
political ecology of Ulster is unlike that of the rest of Ireland; and there
are deepseated cultural differences as well, many of them applying to the three
counties as much as to the six. The
Protestants might be predominantly descended from plantation Scots, but the
Catholics are and always have been Scots too; a people apart since the coming
of the Gael. The historians have yet to
establish a firm consensus as to whether Ulster’s union with the other Irish
provinces under the High Kings of Tara – the only polity under which the entire
island was essentially united without reference to the English or British Crown
– lasted longer than its union with southern Scotland in the Dal-riada. We can only speculate as to how far this
ancient history has shaped the differences in outlook we have seen more
recently.
The
fact that Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU is best interpreted as
having been a vote to avoid foreseeable difficulties over the land and sea
borders. It should not be mistaken for
an indication of enthusiasm for the European Union. Ulster is EUrosceptic. On the unionist side, the majority moved from
supporting the Ulster Unionist Party to the Democratic Unionist Party round
about the same time the former reconciled itself to EU membership in the belief
that it was integral to the success of ‘the peace process’. On the nationalist side, although Ulster had
always preferred participation in political institutions to abstensionism, a
majority moved from the EUrophile SDLP to Sinn Féin when party policy was still
to withdraw a united Ireland from the EU.
It should be noted that Ulster members and supporters are far from
enthusiastic about the smooth southern end of SF’s conversion to a remain and
reform position. Republicans who have
quit SF maintain the previous policy in favour of an Irexit, and the Donegal
voters who supported Independent Fianna Fail are still there and still vote
EUrosceptic.
Departitioning
would amount to bringing the unionists and the loyalists into the life of the
Republic. While nationalists and
republicans are alike in their objectives and differ only in their methods, a
loyalist is not simply a unionist with the makings of a bomb in the outhouse,
nor is he very much like the romanticised figure of the brave young IRA man
answering the call to arms from hill or farm.
They are, rather, drawn from the urban criminal underclass and, while
firmly opposed to entering the Republic, cannot be described as British
patriots in any real sense. While a
unionist taken out of the United Kingdom would very likely see the folly of
having abandoned the South back in the 20s and start campaigning for reunion,
the loyalist would start having pipe dreams about setting up a mafia
microstate, a Kosovo of the west, and initiate a bombing campaign with that
goal in view. Support for their bombing for separation would be even lower than
it was for their bombing for the Union, but they never had very much interest
in gaining popular support as fear was quite sufficient to meet their
requirements.
Reunion
is an option seldom considered in today’s Republic. It has been well over thirty years since we
had a Unionist candidate in Cork, and he came last twice running. Reunion would not, therefore, be the
principal issue the reunionists would promote in their appeals to the
electorate but it would always be part of their programme. Northern Ireland remains divided; but, while
cross-community voting is rare there, a voter from any of the twenty six
counties would be most unlikely to consider a unionist or a Protestant to be a
member of a different community and would consider the electoral appeals of any
candidate on their own merits. Due to
the division between the communities, Northern Ireland’s unionists are Protestant,
a united Ireland’s reunionists would not be.
They would begin by appealing, on the basis of the Evangelicals and
Catholics Together agenda that has proven so successful in America, to the
socially and morally conservative third of the electorate who reject same sex
marriage, abortion and transgenderism.
Having secured an electoral base by campaigning on culture war issues
they would be in a position to make their appeal to history. By that stage the economic effects of Brexit
would have begun to take effect in Ireland, and both the EU institutions and
the individual Continental nations would have shown themselves decidedly
unsympathetic to a country they see as awkward and given to financial
irregularity, so there would be practical as well as theoretical arguments to
advance.
The
ghosts of the Irish nation have been evoked often enough, but some few among
their voices have been amplified and repeated while a majority has had its
voice left unheard. What is a unionist?
If the definition used is that of members of, or votes for, certain political
parties numbers will be somewhat limited.
If people attached to movements described as nationalist but
nevertheless consciously loyal to the Crown are included that takes in active
nationalists from O’Connell through to Redmond.
That still makes a minority, but it is still too narrow a
definition. In practical terms, every
Irish man or woman who has spent part of his or her working life in Britain, or
has voluntarily enlisted in its armed forces, or even who has stayed at home
making goods or raising produce for the British market or providing services to
the British is a unionist. Count them
down the generations, count them even now.
In practice a majority has always recognised that the archipelago is a
single unit whose parts must be coordinated closely if its peoples are to
thrive. The ghosts of the prosperous and
the miserable testify alike to that, each speaking of the relations pertaining
between the islands’ peoples and the effect at various times on the welfare of
all. I do not refer merely to economic
costs and benefits, but to what we have all lost through disunion in terms of
the moral leadership Ireland might have offered, and the balance and wider
perspectives she would have received in return.
The trust bequeathed has been left unnamed, the implications of the
lives of so many dead men left uninferred.
The ghosts of the Irish nation have not been fairly polled, so what they
ask has not been understood. They must
be appeased, whatever the cost.
¹ Footnote: A version of this article was written
for Catholics Unplug your Televisions (CUT) at Christmas 2020. A mutual friend
has since passed me a copy of Dr. Ray Bassett’s excellent Ireland and the EU
Post Brexit He concurs with my view that Ireland should rejoin the UK
customs union, but does not draw the same inference that the Varadkar
administration’s failure to negotiate to that end was largely responsible for
the European decision as to how much of the Brexit bill Ireland should foot. He
confirms that the 75% increase in Ireland’s contribution is a figure under
general discussion outside Ireland while the Irish media report lower numbers.
² The EU publishes lower contribution figures,
which RTÉ prefers, but the first number is the official figure from the Department
of Finance and the second comes from adding the projected increase to the first
number.
By Prayer Crusader St Philip Howard
