The View
In 1838, the Under-Secretary at Dublin Castle Thomas Drummond delivered a magisterial rebuke to the landlords of the Tipperary Grand Jury agitating for greater security (including my great-great grandfather), by reminding them: “Property has its duties as well as its rights.” Today, public discourse generally tends to highlight people’s rights more than their responsibilities.
There is an Irish Council for Civil Liberties, but no Irish Council for Civic Obligations. Further priority also needs to be given to how people might safely observe their religious and family obligations.
In times of crisis, there is great need for government that is both responsive and responsible. The Financial Times, commenting on New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s emphatic re-election, described the ideal exemplified by her leadership on Covid-19 as “charismatic competence”.
The two immediate all-Ireland challenges, which are in danger of getting entangled with each other, are to reach safety on the far side of Covid-19 and Brexit, minimising lasting damage.
Provided difficulties are ironed out, Northern Ireland could have through the Protocol continued access to the Single Market and Customs Union, including EU trade deals, and be part of the single island economy in Ireland, while remaining integrated into the UK market. If, as expected, an EU-UK deal is struck, which avoids tariffs and quotas, the inconvenience of adjusting to new regulations, while new cross-channel routines are established, should be short-lived.
Shared island
The Irish Government is right to concentrate on building a shared island, which will be beneficial, regardless of any future constitutional development. It is not abandoning the hope of a united Ireland, but recognising realistically that it is not an immediate prospect. The Secretary of State will hardly exercise his discretion under the Good Friday Agreement to approve a border poll, while Scotland is denied a second independence referendum.
A border poll is only mandatory, when there is a prospect that it will be passed. Estimated support for unity in Northern Ireland would need to be nearer 60% than 50%. Most evidence suggests that it would be less than 40% at present. If under the Protocol NI retains de facto EU membership, and channels exist that enable its interests to be taken account of in Brussels, then Brexit is unlikely to precipitate a change of attitudes to Irish unity.
Nationalists have little reason to celebrate Northern Ireland”
In an interesting parallel, Gibraltar is looking for equivalent conditions to enable it to stay part of the Customs Union and join the Schengen area, without prejudice to opposing positions on sovereignty.
All the experience of the last century shows that purely nationalist opposition to partition, however marshalled, is unlikely to effect constitutional change. The situation could be altered by external events. One of these might be a positive vote for Scottish independence, to which, when it gets down to debate, the currency question, i.e. adoption or not of the euro, is likely to prove a formidable obstacle, as the NHS might be to Irish unity.
Everyone would be wise to keep down the temperature on the cent-enary of Northern Ireland and partition. Johnsonian hyperbole about the Union post-1921 being the best political construct in the world clearly takes no account of Northern Ireland, or there would have been no 25-year conflict.
Nationalists have little reason to celebrate Northern Ireland, but total rejection is not going to advance a serious hearing for an alternative either. Since 1998, there is a commitment on all sides to try and make Northern Ireland work in the interim.
Participation
Regrettably, the proposed pre-1914 all-Ireland compromise of Home Rule within the Union was rejected by unionists and not just democratically. This had the consequence that, when the rest of Ireland voted for independence at the end of World War I, northern nationalists were excluded from participation, unless they moved south, while being treated by the unionist majority in Northern Ireland as unwelcome aliens.
Honouring the past, prompted by anniversaries and commemorations, can also be a healthy source of reflection. It is a drawback, if it ever leads us to forget that we mainly live in the present and for the future, and that many choices are no longer open.
When German unity came about unexpectedly in 1990, it posed major economic problems still not entirely overcome, but the will and the strength were there to do it.
Apart from Mrs Thatcher’s Britain, it had international goodwill and support. There was justified confidence that a united Germany would be an asset not a threat. Indeed, it has been the economic anchor of the EU.
It remains to be seen whether, if similar cir-cumstances arose at short notice, Ireland would have the confidence to seize the opportunity and make speedy adaptations. Amazingly, most of it did 100 years ago, when, taking advantage of unique national and international conditions, it established a bridgehead to independence against a vastly superior force, albeit at some cost.
Progress unfortunately has to contend with atavistic attitudes. A Northern Ireland Minister’s complaints about nat-ionalists’ alleged greater susceptibility to disease and republicans not being God-fearing people have a long pedigree. Across the world, domination of one national group by another is frequently reinforced by insulting generalisations with populist appeal.
Incompatibility
The Good Friday Agreement resolved the apparent incompatibility between the one- and two-nation theories, replacing rigidity with openness and fluidity. While in principle everyone born on the island is eligible to be part of the Irish nation, no one in Northern Ireland is compelled to be Irish or British at a personal level.
They have the right under any constitutional dispensation to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish or British or both. As the late David Ervine of the loyalist PUP once said, his grandparents were Irish, he was British, but he did not know what his grandchildren would be.
The best way forward may be to continue working towards a situation where it makes less practical difference which of the two States in question Northern Ireland is part of, rather than to push the constitutional issue upfront, before it can be resolved.