Fortnight Publications Ltd.

Diverse about UnityAuthor(s): Jennifer ToddSource: Fortnight, No. 296 (Jun., 1991), pp. 11-13Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25552930 .

Accessed: 28/06/2014 09:35

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Fortnight Publications Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Fortnight.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 91.220.202.141 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 09:35:27 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Ireland is the fact that no British government has committed itself to the

proposition that Northern Ireland is a permanent part of the UK.

And, whether unionists like it or not, outside opinion matters. It

matters because international doubts about the viability of Northern

Ireland have helped to sustain the credibility of the IRA campaign. Indeed, it is questionable whether the IRA could have sustained its

campaign without this factor, and the belief of much of the world that

Northern Ireland is a semi-colonial entity where a 'settler' majority dominates a 'native' minority. In this context, the idea of the Social

Democratic and Labour party leader, John Hume, of holding referenda

simultaneously in Northern Ireland and the republic to endorse a

settlement is extraordinarily important. It effectively trumps the Pro

visionals' argument that their campaign is justified by the denial of the

right of the people of Ireland as a whole to 'self-determination'.

While it is widely recognised?at least in the west?that only a small

minority on the island support the IRA's methods, the Provisionals have

been able to point to majority support on the island for the principle of

unification. It is a thin enough basis for justifying their campaign. But

they could not get away with this weak argument if the constitutional

parties were able to agree on a settlement?still less if such a settlement

were endorsed in referenda. The comments of Sinn Fein on the talks, and

their evident relief when they ran into trouble, provide eloquent testi

mony of the threat that the very possibility of an agreement among the

parties presents to their position. In this month's Marxism Today, the

Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams, admits: "Talks involving all the main

political parties except Sinn Fein are difficult for us." (That is not to say, of course, that the violence would magically come to an end if the talks

were successful.)

But a settlement remains a remote prospect as long as unionists see

no constructive role for the republic in it. In the past, unionists have had

good reason to complain about southern irredentism. From time to time,

southern politicians have exploited the grievance of partition as an alibi

forthe failure of their own policies. As, however, the republic's standing in the world has risen?particularly through its membership of the

European Community?the issue of partition has become less and less

salient to the southern electorate, with the desire for unity matched by readiness to postpone its realisation to facilitate an internal settlement

(as Jack Jones of the MRBI polling organisation indicates below).

Despite all the coverage given to Mary Robinson's election as

president, the change in southern attitudes towards the north seems to

have made scant impression on unionists. In part, this reflects simple

ignorance of the state of southern opinion, but in part it is because the

change still falls short of what unionists want?acceptance of partition as permanent and irremovable. In the debate on articles two and three of

the republic's constitution, the unionists want the claim to Northern

Ireland removed entirely?not replaced by an aspiration to Irish unity, conditional on the consent of the people of Northern Ireland.

In fact, it is unlikely that the south would agree to repudiating the

aspiration to unity altogether?for the simple reason that such an

unconditional acceptance of partition could undermine its own legiti

macy as a political entity in the eyes ofthe outside world and in the light of its own history. However, without repudiating the goal of unity, the

south could become indifferent to events in Northern Ireland and

concerned simply to insulate southern society from the effects of the

conflict. Indeed, that seems a rather more likely outcome of the failure

ofthe present process than any revival of southern irredentism. Union

ists need to appreciate that southern indifference, far from being a step towards the lifting ofthe siege of Northern Ireland?as unionists might

be tempted to see it?would be deeply damaging to the prospects of

creating stable political institutions in the north.

The fundamentalist nature of unionist objections to an 'Irish dimen

sion' to any settlement almost certainly means that attempts to get unionist acceptance of a role for the republic in return for concessions

on the internal government of Northern Ireland will fail. Progress is

most likely to be achieved if unionists themselves recognise that an

'Irish dimension' is in their own interests, being necessary to establish

the legitimacy of Northern Ireland as a political entity. If that happens, there will be no need for the issue ofthe Irish dimension to be linked to

bargaining over the institutions for governing Northern Ireland. In such

circumstances, it would even be possible for elements ofthe integration ist agenda, freed from their ideological context, to be picked up to

improve the way that the region is governed. The task of the two governments, secure in their own relationship, is

to persuade unionists ofthe disadvantages of their isolationalism in an

increasingly interdependent world in which absolutist notions of sover

eignty are increasingly obsolete. It is time for unionists to stop behaving as if attitudes in the south had remained unchanged since the much-sung death of the IRA man Sean South in 1957.

EP A CROWD OF 1 SMILING FACES

AS A CHILD FT was day-trips to see red buses and red pillar boxes, to buy sweets we couldn't get at home, to marvel at bits from the Bible written on

walls. Then a bit later it was still day-trips to see banned films, to buy big clothes, to watch the boys sneak into chemists' for condoms.

Then it was as a reporter, the world bad changed and anything could

happen?lives became stories for the woman's page or news items and it was hard to stand back and see the north as a real place anymore.

Then i went to England, and everyone seemed to say they were sick of Northern Ireland. While, back in Dublin, fewer and fewer people I knew were going north for visits, or just to see what the place was like.

The time came when I was invited to sign books in Northern Ireland, and I said to the bookshop nobody would come, it was lump-in-the-throat time when 1 saw the crowd?the smiling faces, thanking me for making the

trip. Even though I am far from small, and very far from young, they called me a good wee girl. Nobody had ever called me a good wee girl.

As far as I could see, the readers were from both cultures?I seemed to

sign as many books for Sammy and Heather as for Maire and Sean. People brought me gifts: soda bread, potato cakes, a few daffodils.

It opened a floodgate of gratitude in me to think I was so welcome in a

place that I had only flitted in and out of. Like all woolly liberals far from

the action and the issues that have torn a place apart I looked into the

faces and looked into the future, towards a day when it would be solved.

We may be full of pious wishes?we individuals who are no part of the

solution, who visit and have our hearts warmed. But if there were enough of us with that kind of goodwill, then the talks would have a public that

could from sheer force of numbers and hope just will them to succeed.

Diverse

about unity Jennifer Todd

^ | ?|HE SOUTH IS a modern European state, with modern Euro

I pean interests: young, modernising, Dublin-centred, mad about

JL I soccer, not Gaelic games, increasingly secular, feminist, open to Europe, rejecting de Valera's rural nationalist ideals, content as a 26

county state. The war in the north is a tribal war, a conflict between two

sects. Conditions in Belfast are better than in Ballymun. The real

political issues are class and economy, nationalism is a distraction.

European integration is the way forward. The politicians haven't kept up with the people."

So one group of intellectuals, many themselves young, modernising, Dublin-centred ... presents the emerging society in the south. They deride the social conservatism and nationalist ideals of the older genera tion who, they believe, created a small-farmer dominated state which

drew its self-esteem from hatred of England and whose nationalism

excluded northern Protestants and unionists.

The new project accepts that unionists are different, and have a right to their own state. It rejects republican violence and republican politics. It accepts partition. And it brings with it a new set of stereotypes. In place

of the bowler-hatted Orangeman comes the nice Protestant, liberal and

pluralist. And all northern Protestants are British and unionist.

This anti-nationalist, modernising project is put forward by influen

tial columnists and commentators in newspapers and the media. Some

politicians accept it. But it is not the project of the political elite.

Governments, of whatever party, and the senior civil servants

concerned with the north are not traditional nationalists. Irish unity is not

FORTNIGHT JUNE 11

This content downloaded from 91.220.202.141 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 09:35:27 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

REVISIONIST UNIONISTS, PLEASE SPEAK UP

Declan Kiberd

THE TALKS?if they continue?offer a chance to remedy some defects in

the Anglo-Irish Agreement The accord conceded the right of the Dublin

| government to act as a second guarantor of the entitlements of the minority in the north, and it provided mechanisms with which to monitor violations.

Unfortunately, no similar provisions ere stipulated for the republic, to

aflow for the monitoring of violations of the civil rights of Protestants and

other groups, Had such been made, they would have powerfully assisted the

liberal lobby in debates during the divorce referendum; and Garret

FitzGerald could hove used the popularity of the agreement with voters to

cajole more into taking a libertarian tine.

; ft is often said that the accord asked more of unionists than of national

| ists. In fact it asked a lot of both sides. The 'nationalists' conceded a major

point of principle, acknowledging the reality of Britain's involvement in

; Northern Ireland. This was electorally possible because, for almost two

j decades beforehand, politicians, historians and schoolteachers in the south

had been trying in their daily work to balance aspiration against actuality. As a consquence, there was a tremendous seating-down of rhetoric and

expectations. School history-books were rewritten by scholars who bent

over backwards to downgrade militant republicanism and to cast the

i British and the unionists in a more positive light The annual Easter

commemoration ceremonies were all but abolished, and this year's 1916

anniversary was diminished to such a degree that it caused even moderates

to wonder about the psychic health of a state which could deny its own

origins. When interviewed on RTE the taoiseach, Charles Haughey, was not

asked to justify his derisory ceremony?instead, it was put to him that any

I commemoration at all would upset unionist opinion and fuel the IRA.

| In effect, the official broadcasting media and large sections of the press

I in the republic are now patrolled by anti-nationalist ideologues?the Irish

i Times no longer has a columnist who could by any stretch of the imagina

i tmn be termed 'nationalist'?and strenuous efforts have been made to divert

! what nationalist sentiment remains in the community away from politics

| into such activities as support for the Irish soccer team,

I Have there been similar reappraisals of loyalist nostra? How many

| historians in Belfast have engaged in an energetic deconstruct!on of the

| mythology inspiring Ulster's Freedom Fighters? How seriously have i teachers in Protestant areas tried to awaken the interest of students in the

I '^ther' traditions, in Gaelic culture or nationalist history? Have artists in

i these communities produced works which offer imaginative explorations of

I the mind of their historical opponents?works to match Frank McGuinness'

j Observe the Sons of Ulster or Brendan Kennelly's Cromwell? \ know of some history-teachers who have made the attempt but they j

report little support from colleagues nervous of offending a people who feel!

themselves under siege. Yet, until these unionist revisionists' receive the

support they deserve, official political representatives will continue to cry no surrender' over symbolic minutiae and little progress can be achieved.

it is futile to expect politicians to transform a society single-handed,

j without support?indeed leadership?from the intelligentsia.

their priority: like de Valera they accept Ireland can be Ireland without

the north. They now take seriously the ethnic and cultural distinctive

ness of northern Protestants and unionists, which they know cannot be

encompassed within an 'expanded' southern state. But they haven't

given up on Irish unity as a longer-term goal. And they certainly don't

accept the revisionist view that they should stop interesting themselves

in the north and stop supporting constitutional nationalism there.

On the contrary, they are well-informed and they see constitutional

nationalism as the sole alternative to Sinn Fein. Their immediate priori ties are to defeat republicanism and to stop any conflict spilling over into

the south. Whatever their personal aspirations (in all parties, some

individuals are more and others less strongly 'nationalist'), this is reason

enough to persist in their present policies. The main political parties do differ on strategy. Fine Gael, the

Progressive Democrats, the Labour leadership and the Workers' party believe that an internal settlement?power-sharing devolution?is the

immediate priority, a prerequisite of constitutional change or closer

north-south relations. Fianna Fail is sceptical of the possibilities of an

internal settlement, at least prior to more radical constitutional changes. But no southern government has yet distanced itself from the SDLP.

The southern media, and particularly the main newspapers, give much space to revisionist and partitionist arguments, although generally

in columns rather than editorials. Editorials tend rather to the dominant

political line, although with a revisionist slant: nationalism is bad and

Europe good. Both columnists and editorials?in which the single most

common theme is argument against the IRA?typically present internal

power-sharing as the only way forward.

Despite revisionist tendencies, however, when the crunch comes

newspapers come in behind the dominant political project: editorial criticisms of the SDLP are only recent, very muted, and they aren't made

at times of political crisis. When Conor Cruise O'Brien criticised John Hume too harshly in the Irish Independent in 1989, Garret FitzGerald was wheeled out to defend Mr Hume in a full-page article.

What of the southern public's views? The answer is that we know

relatively little about them. Southerners are not well informed on the

north. Very few go north and fewer go regularly: in 1978, only 9 per cent

of the population had been north in the past year, and 52 per cent had

never been. They are repulsed by the violence?the political culture of

the south is extremely non-militaristic?and feel concern and goodwill for the people: everyone hopes for reconciliation. But they don't know

which of the northern politicians, or southern commentators, to believe;

and confusion quickly turns to frustration and impatience.

Voting behaviour does not shed much light, for the north is not an

election issue. Mary Robinson was elected president on a package of

'new politics'?pluralism, women's issues, social concern, reconcili

ation in the north. Her other views on the north were not made clear

during the election campaign: if she was partitionist, she did not declare

herself as such. Austin Currie was rejected as president but he had

already been endorsed as a TD by the Dublin electorate. The north is

certainly distant from the southern electorate's immediate concerns, but

that isn't a sign of a new partitionism: it has been true for over 50 years.

Opinion polls are difficult to interpret too. Just as unionists and na

tionalists have more nuanced views than can easily be measured, so for

the southern public. Southerners' attitudes are confused, contradictory and yet deep: their views about unity change as it seems more or less

possible, more or less necessary. Individual members of Fine Gael and

the Progressive Democrats have more complex, and more conditional

views on unity and the 'nation' than first appears?so much more so for

ll^N EUROPE LOOKS

W^H ON IN DISBELIEF

J&iT^J J?e Mulholland

\aa\^a)i4a*>}*tfL. I

AT THE TIME of writing the Brooke initiative seemed doomed, with no

agreement on the venue for the talks involving the Dublin government. One can't help thinking, as one has felt over the past 20 years, that an

Anwar Sadat is needed?someone with generosity, vision and statesman

ship that would make a gesture similar to that made by Mr Sadat when he

set foot on Israeli soil in November 1977. Are we to be bogged down on this

small island on the periphery of Europe in a quagmire of fear, suspicion, in

tolerance and sectarianism?worst of all, murder and destruction? Is there | no formula to raise us out and set both parts on the road to peace and j

prosperity, in the united, dynamic Europe of which we are constituents? i Whether that formula envisages some kind of unity of north and south, !

power-sharing in the north or, as has been suggested in the past a new

relationship between the two islands?or a combination of all three?is

immaterial. What is needed is a formula that will enable the peoples of this

island to live and work together in harmony and without fear.

And yet that prospect seems as remote as ever. Southern reporters

coming down from the north express their disbelief at how little attitudes

have changed. In some cases there is more bitterness than ever?and is it j

any wonder? There has been so much hurt, so many deep scars left by 20 |

years of killing and maiming.

Images flash before one's mind: the charred bodies of la Mon; the

father going to the cemetery, his hands on the two coffins of his murdered

sons; the young girl, Michelle, killed while sheltering with her father

outside a racecourse? "it's part of my life away", her mother said at the

time. There have been many cruel, evil, barbarous deeds over the years which have angered and moved.

As an Ulsterman from east Donegal, where two communities have

forgotten the past and have lived as neighbours for generations, it is hard to

witness the pain and suffering of fellow Ulstermen and women. A solution

has to be found that will enable democracy to be installed in the north?

institutions that have majority support in both communities. Violence and

its perpetrators?who have achieved nothing?have to be marginalised if

we are to take our full and rightful place in the modern Europe, which looks

on in disbelief at the litany of horrors coming out of Ireland.

12 JUNE FORTNIGHT

This content downloaded from 91.220.202.141 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 09:35:27 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

those without pricipled commitment to a party line. We know that this

year more people voiced their hopes for Irish unity than at any time since

1968, but then I was never convinced that the previous figures showed

a trend towards partitionism. Southerners' views of northerners are also difficult to read. Certainly

there is prejudice: a recent opinion poll showed quite surprising preju

dice, particularly against Methodists. But there is also great ignorance: I suspect most of the respondents didn't know what a Methodist was.

And sometimes ignorance combined with goodwill produces stere

otypes: at least some southerners are unaware that Northern Irish people

are entitled to Irish passports, and they are shocked to hear of northern

Protestants who don't consider themselves British. Prejudice and igno rance, however, are balanced by interest: at University College Dublin

the three most popular politics options are Northern Ireland, Women

and European Integration?most years, Northern Ireland wins.

Southern opinion on the north is, then, hard to assess. Southern

politicians don't embrace partitionism. Some say it is because of their

traditionalism and hypocrisy; others explain it in terms of self-interest.

A third interpretation is that the politicians know that the public's views,

like the northern conflict itself, are deep-rooted and complex.

Bordering on the ridiculous?lorries queue at the Newry crossing

^ ^^s^Tw/MmmmmmmmmmmF^L ^^^^B^^^^^^^H m^B^m^^mmm^mmmW^mmmmmw^^^KK^ - ̂ Jmmmmmmmmmmmm\Jmm\^Smmmmmmmmml^ ^MjmL ^^^^V^^^^^^^^^l

m^?^?^?^^?^?^?^EB/mMfii - fmmmwWWmmwm^BWMk ^C3k^?/ MMmmmmW^mw^WmmWmlSmmmWk ^K^-^i^^^^H

o^^^B^HEiB^ ^^^MVHHHBOIiHI^^H^I^^^^^^^^H m ^SJ^^M

Shaking hands

[ 'i.? 1 OR PETER SUTHERLAND, favouring closer north-south economic relations should?

W in the context of the 'new Europe'?be as non-controversial as being ill-disposed 1.?i??.1 towards sin, Robin Wilson writes. "The European Community was founded upon the

principle that the relationships between us are facilitated by the development of economic

relations. That has worked to enormous success without threatening the identities of people

throughout Europe," the republic's former European Commissioner argues. But a note of frustration comes into his voice when he suggests that the potential of the

European context has not been realised in Ireland: "There has been a failure over a prolonged

period of time to realise the positive advantages in terms of human contact through economic

activity between the north and the south. There has been very little perception throughout the

period between 1973 and the present time of this component of relationships on this island." The

community is seeking to create a single economic space throughout Europe, he says, "which also

ought to mean by definition a single economic space between north and south".

The fact that only 5 per cent of southern exports go north and only 4 per cent ofthe republic's

imports come the other way is "plainly a contradiction ofthe effects that ought to have flown from

the economic development ofthe community". Liam Connellan, the outgoing director general of

the Confederation of Irish Industry, claims that exports from south to north could be doubled and

imports increased by a factor of six. This would, Mr Connellan argues, increase trade by over ?3

billion and generate 32,000 jobs. Mr Sutherland agrees: "It is ludicrous that the economic

interaction between both parts of Ireland which should lead to growth on both sides has not been

developed over the years ... I think it is inevitable that there is going to be far greater interaction

in the context of a single economic space." He is also aware, however, ofthe regionalisation of that space, pointing to the establishment

of the Spanish autonomous regions, or the more-longstanding German Lander. He points, too, to

the coincidence of interests between Northern Ireland, the republic and Scotland within Europe,

apparent within the European Parliament. On agricultural matters, for instance, there is "a

complete coincidence of interest" between north and south. "If there were to be considered a

regional dimension to the European Community, it might form a basis for representatives to

express the same views without feeling in any sense threatened."

The Allied Irish Banks chair is keen to separate economic matters from questions of cultural

identity and political aspiration. While he sees merit in "creating contact in a non-divisive way", he sees simple mutual self-interest in treating the island as one market in distribution or as a

common focus for attracting inward investment. And if the economic disparities that make the

border necessary today (VAT differentials, for instance) were removed, he argues it would then

serve the purposes borders serve?controlling terrorist activity, for example. Mr Sutherland is also unselective in allocating blame for the economic partitionism he

bemoans. He says that north-south trade has "not been helped" by the republic's failed attempt to sustain the '48-hour rule' restriction on cross-border shopping. And there are problems about

infrastructural links, particularly the roads on the southern side. "I think it's just as big a problem in the south as in the north. They just don't think of each other in ways that are appropriate."*

SO MUCH HAS CHANGED

Thomas McCarthy IT IS 1965. The Waterford-bound train steams out | of a territory that is enclosed arid dominated by ] the Party. Nothing bat changed since 1932, the

year of Dev's victory. The Gaelic Athletic j Association, the Church, the Party run the show. j

But change has begun. The Programme for

Economic Expansion and, in the norm, the '64

Wilson report on economic development lift all

citizens on the rising tide. The taoiseach, Sean

Lemass, goes north; the Stormont premier, Terence O'Neill, comes to Dublin. Ministers stop

referring to the tkx counties'.

j My hope is that we might go back to 196S? that point of arrested growth when the Ferman

agh unionist Harry West ami the Donegal | j nationalist Neil Blaney got on so famously. Unionist Ulster is closer now than at the start of \ the troubles'?we have watched the collapse of

Stormont yet the community of which Stormont was the expression has come into focus.

Twenty years ago I would have gladly donated money for guns to protect northern

Catholics. Now I find the use of force against the

north absolutely revolting. Paradoxically, the IRA

campaigns have allowed as to see unionists as

victims?as fathers, mothers, children. A great

change has come over the the sooth. There is a

growing impatience with the politics of moan ar

groan, and growing anger at the SDLP.

Stormont was the unique expression of Ulste

unionists, just as tne Dail was the culmination of

all Irish nationalist activity. All Irish people have

the right to live under an administration that

promotes well-being and feeds their serf-esteem.

There must he a formula whereby one can love one culture without being a traitor' in the other.

Ami, yes, someone ought to talk to the Provos.

They seed grief-counselling after all they've done

and been through. In a secret letter to the IRA

leader liam Lynch, Eamon de Valera wrote: You

j must teach your gunmen to think politically" ff $ time the IRA thought of politics.

Of course we can never get back to 196. ur.

much has happened. 1 know northern Cathodes

would say that I'm too forgetful, too forgiving yot didn r get beaten up! I didn't But I know what It means to be the loyal crtzen of a nationalist

parliament. The integrity of the unionist argument with that Dail is absolute?politics is a cultural

| thing, an anthropological thing.

My hope for the north is that there will * a structure of relationships which admits bo u

unionist and nationalist value. Ordinary Iff has to

breathe upon politics and force a change. In 1965, at Cappoquin Station, there was a

battered poster in the ticket off ice. It read Ulster

Calling'?it must have hung there since th

Northern Ireland Tourist Board campaign of 1324. !

We have waited a long time for ordinary inter course of trade and neighbourliness.

It is not 1965, bm there are so many Ce^oiics

who were never beaten up. 1 am full of hoi for

the north. j

FORTNIGHT JUNE 13

This content downloaded from 91.220.202.141 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 09:35:27 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions