The largely peaceful transfer of power in Eastern Europe was a miracle

The View

Many of the most uplifting international political events since the end of World War II took place in the ten-year period between the late 1980s and the late 1990s, reversing some of the effects of human catastrophes of the first half of the 20th Century. Foremost among them was the fall of the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall, ending the division of Germany and through the centre of Europe; the collapse of apartheid and the creation of a new South Africa; and also the Irish peace process.

The changes in Europe were initiated in the early 1980s by the Polish Solidarity Movement, which drew its strength from the shipyard workers, but which also had the support of the Catholic Church.

The election of a charismatic Polish Pope John Paul II in 1978 almost certainly greatly contributed to deterring Soviet armed intervention, such as had occurred in the 1950s and 1960s, in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), Hungary (1956), and Czechoslovakia (1968).

The playwright Bertolt Brecht famously said after the suppression of the East German uprising in 1953 that the Politburo would have to dissolve the people and elect another.

The largely peaceful transfer of power in Central and Eastern European countries, despite a heavily armed presence, was a miracle that had not occurred before on such a scale in world history. Revolution in France, later in the Soviet Union and in China, had come with heavy bloodshed.

Apartheid

What the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of apartheid showed was that even long-standing and intractable problems were capable of political solution. In the case of South Africa, international sanctions were in the long run more effective than right-wing world leaders were prepared to allow, and there was significant church involvement in them.

Minority rule based on crude and outrageous racial discrimination could not be allowed to stand. Building a new multi-racial South Africa poses huge social challenges with such a high level of inequality, though it is a beautiful country with great assets that few would want to leave. The unexpectedly decisive win by the Springboks in the Rugby World Cup is a feather in its cap, reminding people of the magnanimity of President Nelson Mandela towards the Springboks.

The current President Cyril Ramaphosa played an important role in facilitating the Irish peace process more than 20 years ago, where many looked to South Africa for example.

German unification was assisted by Ireland’s EU Presidency in the first half of 1990”

Partition in Germany was a consequence of defeat in the Second World War followed by Four Power Occupation. By the 1980s, the Eastern bloc was on the defensive. As the fictional TV series about the GDR, Deutschland ‘83 and Deutschland ‘86 with English sub-titles showed, the backdrop was first a fear partly based on taking Reaganite rhetoric too seriously that the US might launch a preemptive nuclear first strike, and then later in the decade a real struggle to keep the economy afloat.

Though swept away by history, the GDR did have a community-based economy with little unemployment and comprehensive social care. A lot of important heritage was allowed to survive, much refurbished with West German money since 1990. Though living standards have risen substantially, there is still a wide income gap between east and west.

The negative side is well known, the shoot to kill policy against anyone trying to cross the wall illegally, the pervasive surveillance of citizens, and the lack of freedom to travel or express critical opinions.

Both the German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the current German Ambassador to Ireland Deike Potzel have spoken of their experiences in the GDR, the latter crossing the wall as it was breached on November 9, 1989.

German unification was assisted by Ireland’s EU Presidency in the first half of 1990, and this has been generously acknowledged by successive German governments. The example of unification, which required both parts of Germany to agree to come together, mirrored the mechanism of concurrent self-determination by referendum in both parts of Ireland, that is at the core of the constitutional settlement in the Good Friday Agreement.

It was usefully confirmed by the EU at Ireland’s request in 2017 that the whole of a united Ireland would immediately become part of the EU, allowing Northern Ireland to reverse Brexit.

Where German unity is a much less relevant example is that it represented a takeover of the GDR by the Federal Republic. At least that was on the basis that most people in both parts of Germany wanted to come together. Even so, unification caused significant and long-lasting economic problems for Germany. No such agreement exists in Ireland.

The need for accommodation between those who want to maintain separation from Britain and those who want to be as close as possible is not much acknowledged beyond the abstract.

The GDR did have a community-based economy with little unemployment”

Seasonal commemoration of world war participation is a good illustration of this, with sharply differing attitudes to the wearing of the poppy. Undoubtedly, British broadcasters and others wear the poppy, often for weeks, to commemorate British servicemen who fell in two world wars and subsequent wars. People in the Republic, when they wear one at all, do so without ostentation only while attending a remembrance ceremony or religious service, without endorsing British military activities post-1945, unless they are British ex-servicemen.

While Ministers are free to make their own decisions, only a few have chosen even briefly to wear a poppy, given its divisiveness. Any wreaths laid are laurel rather than red poppies. Rejecting symbols, when used here, as exclusively British, while needing to accommodate the British tradition, is a yet to be resolved contradiction in Irish republicanism.

There is too little appreciation that national self-determination, championed by the Americans in the latter stages of World War I and which led to the creation of many new European states, gave vital impetus and encouragement to the achievement of Irish independence pursued by Irish separatists, and above all provided the international framework for it, something gratefully acknowledged by de Valera all his life.