David QuinnThe EU is in danger of stretching bonds of fraternity past breaking point, writes David Quinn
British Prime Minister David Cameron has been told he made a huge mistake holding a referendum on whether or not Britain should remain a part of the EU. This was despite the fact that about half of his backbench MPs favoured ‘Brexit’, despite pressure from the conservative press, and despite the loss of votes to Nigel Farage and his United Kingdom Independent Party (UKIP). It is despite the fact that Brexit won thereby showing it had majority support.
I point this out because it is insisted that Enda Kenny must hold a referendum on abortion. Enda Kenny is under much less pressure to hold a referendum on this matter than Cameron was to hold a referendum on the EU.
It’s true that some of his TDs want a referendum, including some of his senior ministers. It’s true that he is under pressure from the media and from lobby groups and from left-wing TDs. But it is not true that he is under real pressure from the public. That should be the key consideration. Who or what would Fine Gael lose votes to if it refused to hold a referendum? Not Fianna Fáil certainly because it is more pro-life than Fine Gael is, and certainly none of the parties of the left because no-one on the left votes for Fine Gael anyway. Nor will a refusal to hold a referendum result in a party split.
Pressure
There was pressure for years to hold a referendum on EU membership before a British prime minister succumbed to it. Cameron is now being condemned for giving in because it is adjudged that the matter was too important to be put to the vote.
Enda Kenny is being told he must have a referendum on abortion out of respect for democracy. But if ‘respect for democracy’ is the decisive factor, then surely David Cameron was right to call a referendum on EU membership?
On the other hand, if EU membership is too important a matter to be put to the vote, then surely the right to life of every human being, born or unborn, is even more important, especially when Enda Kenny is not under the sort of genuine electoral pressure Cameron was under?
I make these points as a sort of preliminary to getting around to the main purpose of this article, which is to comment on one very important aspect of the Brexit vote, namely what it reveals about the bonds of fraternity and how far we can stretch them before they break.
No nation, no community can exist without fraternal feeling, that is, without people we relate to. Why are people in Cork willing to pay tax to help people in Dublin, and vice versa? One reason is undoubtedly self-interest, not fellow feeling as such. The vast majority of us use the things our taxes pay for.
But that doesn’t explain why we are more willing to pay large amounts of tax on behalf of people living on the far side of the country rather than on behalf of people living on the far side of the world.
The reason we are willing to be taxed on behalf of people living in the same country as us is because over time a sense of community, a sense of fellow feeling builds up among people who have a common history, common values, sometimes a common religion, a common language and so on. It is very hard to build up a sense of community when none or few of these things exist.
When they do exist, the bonds of fraternity can become quite strong. The EU wants us to stretch those bonds until we have as strong, or almost as strong a sense of fellow feeling for say, the Greeks or the Bulgarians or the Danes as we do towards our fellow Irish.
Can this work? There is growing evidence that it cannot. The Brexit vote is one piece of such evidence. A majority of Britons decided that EU leaders do not properly represent their interests because they are too removed from them and they are not really part of their community.
Many of these voters believe the Government in London (be it headed by Labour or the Conservatives) does not represent their interests and so are even less likely to believe that the heads of the major EU institutions in Brussels properly represent their interests. We believe our interests are properly represented by people like us, which brings us back to fraternity.
Problem
Unless the EU is seen to represent everyone equally, its legitimacy problem, the so-called ‘democratic deficit’, is only going to get worse. The problem is that it may be inherently impossible for it to represent everyone equally, and to make everyone feel they are equally represented.
It might be the case that we are all Europeans, but we belong to our national communities first. The EU was devised, of course, to overcome the sometimes baleful effects of nationalism, of one group pitting itself against another, and this is a worthy aim, fully in keeping with Christianity.
However, the project assumes we are going to have the same fellow feeling for people on the other side of Europe to what we feel about those close to us and that may be very naïve. In fact, unless these fellow feelings develop naturally, the EU’s attempts to tie us together against our will may eventually have the effect of not just destroying the goal of ‘ever closer union’, but of reigniting some of the worst forms of nationalism, which would be a disaster.
Nor is it wrong to feel more strongly about those who are close to you than towards those who are distant from you. If it is wrong, then it is wrong to feel more strongly and to feel more responsibility towards members of your own family than it is for people outside your family.
On the other hand, we cannot pretend that we have no responsibilities towards those outside our community either. That would be completely against Christianity which makes everyone our neighbour. It is a matter of getting the balance right. My fear for the EU is that it is pulling the bonds of fraternity past breaking point and is inviting a rebellion against the whole project with Brexit only being the start of it.