The View
Who America’s leader is matters to people around the world. With President Joe Biden there is now a Christian gentleman in the White House, whose ambition after all the turmoil of recent times will be to do what is right, working as much as possible with others at home and abroad. If he and his party are wise, they will analyse past shortcomings, and try to address the alienation that creates risks for democracy.
Course
The Republican Party will probably adjust their course. The revival of bipartisan co-operation that existed in the 1980s between President Ronald Reagan and House Speaker Tip O’Neill would be welcome. For all the criticisms of the recent past, US institutions held up, in stark contrast to systems where opposition is promptly repressed. In democracies, radical populism from the right or left may arouse strong partisan enthusiasm in the short term, but it is off-putting to others and rarely endures. Support for Donald Trump and for Brexit drew from some of the same sources, the difference being that Britain is stuck with Brexit, which is unlikely to make the country great again anytime soon. ‘Buccaneering’ is a positive gloss on piracy, which will be strongly resisted by the EU. As James Murdoch, son of Rupert, put it ten days after the mob invaded the Capitol, media proprietors are as culpable as politicians who “propagate lies” and leave the public believing a falsehood. Restoration of the integrity of public discourse is vital.
President Biden is only the second American President of an Irish Catholic background. President John F. Kennedy gave a strong, much-needed boost to national self-confidence, when he visited Ireland in June 1963. President Biden has already done Ireland a great service, when prior to taking up office he expressed strong opposition to the mooted breach of an international agreement, the Irish Protocol, designed to prevent a hard border following Brexit, by making clear that it would preclude a UK-US trade deal. His pledge to back a process that would regularise the position of undocumented immigrants is also encouraging, though experience advises caution, given the legislative obstacles.
It would be wise to be realistic about how much President Biden’s evident pride in his Irish Catholic background can achieve. American and EU economic interests, including Irish ones, will not always coincide. In the US, religion matters greatly to many people, but, when it comes to public policy, there is also a strong separation of Church and state, given the country’s diversity. The US return to international agencies and agreements has been welcomed by our Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney, speaking to the IEEA last Friday, even if aspects of this may disappoint the Church. The president’s predecessor in his final weeks demonstrated his strong support for the death penalty by expediting some long-pending executions, which is hard to reconcile with holistic support for pro-life values.
Ireland too is faced with the contradiction of reconciling with present religious convictions the little value too frequently attached to infants’ and small children’s lives that happened in Church-run mother and baby homes. One root cause of the problem was the insistence of the Irish Parliamentary Party in 1901 and previously, but carried over, like much else, into post-independence Ireland, that since no scandal could occur in Magdalen and similar-run institutions they should not be subject to inspection or be accountable to the civil authorities. While the ideal was to create a model Christian society, what Eamon de Valera called “a spiritual empire”, it had to be based on more than outward conformity and sweeping difficult human situations out of sight.
Pandemic
One side-effect of the pandemic has been to make talks and conference proceedings much more widely accessible online at home and abroad by not requiring a physical presence. Last week, I listened to a talk organised by the King’s School Canterbury which I attended in the early 1960s by David Alton, a member of the House of Lords, since being appointed by John Major, and whose mother was Irish. He was a Liberal MP, but left his party over its insistence on whipped support for unrestricted abortion, including late in pregnancy. He made the case that conscientious objection should be respected, but also that disagreement on fundamental principle should strive to be respectful, citing many public debates he had with Germaine Greer, whom he regards as a friend. He had a telling anecdote about Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who once replied to a question, “Where was God at Auschwitz?”, by retorting “Where was man?”
Many US presidents have been of Ulster Presbyterian stock, but that aspect is rarely mentioned, and not made much use of. The reason probably is that the spirit of American independence to which they contributed is difficult to match with the staunch British and unionist identity today of the community they are descended from.
Ancestors
America, and especially Irish-Americans, many of whose ancestors like Mr Kennedy’s and President Biden’s emigrated in the Famine era, played an indispensable role in forging an independent Ireland, but also a decisive role in the peace process and the modern Irish economy, where America accounts for 70% of inward investment. Wealthy backers of the peace process in the 1990s, mostly Republican Party supporters, would have loved the opportunity to support a peacefully reunited Ireland and help make a success of it, but it was not their decision.
In 100 years, the relative economic performance of Ireland and Northern Ireland has been reversed. It is to be hoped that an open debate about the future will be possible not just between but within communities without compromising anyone’s personal safety. Under the Good Friday Agreement, everyone in Northern Ireland can choose to be Irish or British, or both. Northern Ireland was a unionist creation, but people from more than one political and religious tradition, inside and outside of Ulster, have long contributed to making an independent Ireland that re-envisaged could work for everyone on the island.