Fintan O'Toole wrote about the Good Friday Agreement in the Guardian yesterday. I happen to think Fintan is probably the best journalist writing in the English language right now, so I strongly recommend a read of what he has to say. But I most especially wanted to consider this paragraph that he wrote:
The genius of the agreement was that it took an unanswerable question and changed it. The unanswerable question was: what are you prepared to die for? A United Kingdom or a United Ireland? They were mutually exclusive concepts. The new question was not what are you prepared to die for, but what are you willing to live with.
I think this astonishingly insightful. But extrapolate it just a little and you will see why those who now think the Good Friday Agreement has overstated importance are so wrong.
Implicit in Fintan's exquisitely crafted paragraph is the idea that we can simultaneously be many things. Think of us as a Venn diagram if you like. Many interlocking identities overlap to make us the person we are. Frequently these identities might be in conflict. The paradox of living successfully is that we can embrace those differences. More than that, the tension they create adds poignancy to life. It is in their reconciliation as we negotiate our identity with others that much of life's pleasure is to be found.
Now contrast that with the Brexit view. This says we have single identities. We are British, and not European. Or English and not British. We are isolationist and not partners. We are alone and not together. We control and do not cooperate. These are forlorn worldviews. It is as if no part of our Venn diagrams can, let alone do, overlap.
To return to Fintan's suggestion; we need to be clear that this divisive perspective on identity is one that we do, afterall, reject. We have to. That's simply because it does not reflect who we are. I am, for example simultaneously East Anglian, English, British, Irish, European and just one of seven billion or more on this planet. There is no paradox in saying so. Each is true. Just as I can accept fluidity in gender and sexual orientation so do I in my locational identity with all that also implies.
Simultaneously that means I accept that my neighbour has a different mix of identity, and places different weight on each from me. But to paraphrase Fintan, that demands that I ask ‘what can I live with?' There will, I accept be boundaries. No society I know of is totally tolerant. Nor, I think, is that necessary. Societal norms do exist. They need to be respected. But Fintan's point is key: they are not absolutes. They are instead points of negotiation in the vast majority of cases. And my point is that we gain from that negotiation.
Brexit takes us back to fixed identities that most of us cannot identify and do not want demanded of us. It creates conflict where none should exist by imposing a demand where none is required and only harm can result.
To ask what we can live with is so much more useful. And we know it can be done. All of us can see the flaws in those we know and love. We co-exist with them in most cases despite those flaws, precisely because the capacity to negotiate tolerable solutions is innate in us humans.
So too should it be in our politics. The Good Friday Agreement recognised that. Brexit does not. One then stands head and shoulders over the other and must hold sway. Our common ground is what we must still value, come what may.
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I agree that what are we prepared to live with is a profound question and fluid. I reflect on the Irish history and wonder will it ever be one unitary island? For instance Ms Hoey MP might be playing a very long game as an ex IMG, snap, to create the fluid conditions that make the unity of Ireland a realistic opportunity. Are we prepared to live with it?
How does Brexit extinguish a European identity? I haven’t heard anyone in the Brexit camp suggest it does.
The Swiss and Norwegians aren’t in the EU and they are as European as anyone.
There are plenty in the Brexit camp looking for a globalist view – Hannan, Boris, Fox.
The British do have another identity that links them to other countries outside Europe – US, Australia, NZ, Canada in particular. No other European country has anything comparable.
With respect – that’s utterly wishful thinking at every level
Which bit is ‘wishful thinking’?
That the Swiss and Norwegians are Europeans?
That Hannan, Johnson and Fox have a globalist outlook?
That the British have strong ties with the US, Australia, NZ and Canada?
I’d have thought these things were so obvious they barely needed saying.
I actually do not see that any of those things are true: the approach adopted is isolationist and outside any known framework for international relations
So when we settle on something close to the Norway option, we will not be Europeans. Good grief.
If we are to define ourselves as being European by membership of a political club whose prime activity is transferring money to people who own qualifying land and then protecting them from competition, then I for one am ruddy glad we are leaving.
Not a single element of that can be based on what I wrote?
Why not try engaging with the issues rather than peddling your prejudices
James E says:
“That the British have strong ties with the US, Australia, NZ and Canada?
I’d have thought these things were so obvious they barely needed saying.”
Anybody who thinks that the relationship of Britain with the US and that with NZ, Oz and Canada are in any way similar is really not thinking.
“How does Brexit extinguish a European identity?”
Well, stripping people of their rights to travel and work freely across the majority of the continent doesn’t really help…
James E –
“How does Brexit extinguish a European identity? I haven’t heard anyone in the Brexit camp suggest it does.”
I’m going to suggest that the majority, if not all, of the members of “Britain First” voted for Brexit. That would put them in the Brexit Camp. I can’t think of another group of people so set on destroying a European identity in favour of their mythical British one. So, you’re wrong there.
“The Swiss and Norwegians aren’t in the EU and they are as European as anyone.”
Depends what you mean. Geographically speaking it’s arguable that nobody is more European than Switzerland, but culturally? I see no evidence of that. If you define European as being part of the great project attempting to unify the many nations of the continent, I suggest it’s unrealistic to say the Swiss are in any way European. If they were, they’d have joined the club. They didn’t. So you’re wrong about that too. QED.
I’m not making any value judgements – I’m sure it’s a wonderful thing to think of yourself as Swiss or Norwegian, but they (on the whole) think of their national identity first. The rest of Europe are their nearest neighbours and trading partners and that’s how their considered… not as brothers and sisters, but as people they do business with.
“There are plenty in the Brexit camp looking for a globalist view — Hannan, Boris, Fox.”
But they look for a globalist view of trade. Not cultural growth, not mutual benefit between European countries, not greater understanding of the world they live in (unless that would further an acquisitionist trading agenda) – they are purely interested in a wider market than they currently have access to. They literally want to own the world. It’s as ugly and pathetic as it is unachievable. So, whilst you’re not quite wrong about their view, you misinterpret their goals. Which means, IMO, that you’re still wrong.
“The British do have another identity that links them to other countries outside Europe — US, Australia, NZ, Canada in particular. No other European country has anything comparable.”
You’re wrong twice, here. Firstly, it’s not our separate identity that links us to those countries, it’s just that we share a common language. We speak the same language so we impute cultural similarities where (usually) there are none. GBS famously said that America and Britain were two countries separated by a common language and he was bang on. So, you’re wrong.
As for no other country having anything comparable to links outside the EU… If I were to say the words “Canada” and “France” to you, would that mean anything? Or maybe “Mexico” and “Spain”? Or “Spain” and “Pretty much everywhere in the Americas that isn’t Canada”??
So you’re spectacularly wrong.
Geearkay
“If you define European as being part of the great project attempting to unify the many nations of the continent, I suggest it’s unrealistic to say the Swiss are in any way European.”
Well, that is a loaded definition you’ve invented to suit your agenda. The Swiss are European at every level. They’d think of themselves that way. Their choice not to join this project doesn’t affect this one bit.
Next you’ll be saying Ukrainians aren’t Europeans. Or that Poles or Latvians were not European pre-2004.
As for the links with the US, Canada, Oz and NZ, well it’s a lot more than language. Legal systems, institutions (in Canada, Oz and NZ at least) you’ve conveniently forgotten. There are more British people living in NZ than any other EU country other than Spain. There are more British people living in Australia than in the EU combined. Go there – Australia is effectively Britain with sunshine, perhaps with a bit more US flavour.
Which other EU country has anything comparable – and no, Quebec is not the equivalent of Australia and NZ or the rest of Canada.
ames E says:
“There are plenty in the Brexit camp looking for a globalist view — Hannan, Boris, Fox.”
Disagree. Their view takes UK towards US isolationism.
Perhaps better described as retro-imperialists rather than globalists. They still have delusions of Empire. And the prejudices that go with that.
I would recommend the “Three Tribe” proposition advanced by Newton Emerson:
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/newton-emerson-remember-the-third-tribe-of-ulster-1.3203693
but even this abstracts from numersous underlying nuances, allegiances and prejudices.
Fintan O’Toole, coming from the South (or Ireland as it is properly designated), is extolling the perceived virtues of the quintessential Irish capacity to seek to suspend disbelief indefinitely, to believe two contradictory things at the one time, to project and to sustain the projection of elaborate optical illusions and to have “both/and” as he puts it. For most of the time the South/Ireland operates on this basis and it is perfectly understandable that Mr. O’Toole would encourage the citizens and residents of the North/Northern Ireland to pursue a similar approach. (Of course, disbelief cannot be suspended indefinitely and reality will break through or threaten to do so – as it did in during the economic stagnation of the ’50s that threatened the vability of the state, threatened to do in the late ’80s and did again in 2008. These crises successively generated revised dispensations with their own carefully crafted optical illusions that were sustained until the next crisis. Mr. O’Toole fits perfectly in to the various mutations of these dispensations in the South/Ireland as he employs his literary skills to excoriate the misdeeds of the leading lights of the previous dispensation and to conceal the crocodile natuure of his tears for the poor, the excluded and disadvantaged while being lauded and well rewarded by the influential and well-connected rent-seekers in the new dispensation.)
Unfortunately for the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement it was only the more moderate elements of the Irish/Catholic and the English/Anglican tribes that gave the agreement any effective substance with many more citizens happy to go along with it initially. But the ability to suspend disbelief was limited and the will to power of both SF and the DUP shrank the exercise to a power-splitting, rather than a power-sharing, arrangement. There is little hope of any movement with the Tories in Westminster reliant on the DUP and SF impaled on its desire for an Irish Language Act.
I post this with considerable disquiet and a warning that I consider it racist.
You reveal all the prejudice to which I refer and that diminishes hum relationships.
“I post this with considerable disquiet and a warning that I consider it racist.”
You neglect to mention that it also reads like bollox 🙂
Worth posting if only because it is illuminating of the depth of ignorance that needs to be combatted somehow.
As ever fine words from Fintan – a paragraph to be noted and stored for future reference.
It’s a reminder of how communities that saw themselves as separate, Protestand and Catholic, North and South, have come to see themselves more as members of a larger community. That was major factor in stopping the conflict.
Meanwhile we have seen the growth of politicians who interpret ‘community’ in the opposite, narrow sense – nationalist and populist, seeking to gain power by dividing and attributing the problems of the world to an ‘other’, or ‘others’. Unfortunately we see it not just on the Right but on the Left as well. It’s a clue when such parties cannot tolerate any dissent within their ranks – everyone must conform to the same ‘community’ norms.
There was a good reason why the the European Community was called a ‘community’, given the history of conflict driven by nationalism, populism and blaming ‘others’. For all it’s faults.
Just back from a weekend in Cumbria where I was brought up, meeting with old friends. A salutary reminder of that closed, narrow view of ‘community’. Back now sitting in starkly contrasting South London. The one is staunchly Tory and Brexit. It’s not a complete coincidence.
It is sometimes difficult not to despair about Northern Ireland but there is hope in the younger generation in that 55% of people under 45 consider themselves neither Nationalist or Unionist, despite the hard line taken by politicians.
http://www.progressivepulse.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/UnionistNationalist.png
I do not buy the either/or mentality, we could do with a lot more fuzziness
Fuzzy logic has a very great deal of appeal
And is how we actually work
I think you can put it more simply that at its most basic the two primary forces in life are predation and anti-predation. The predation stems from the fact living organisms have to eat something to obtain energy whilst at the same using that energy to avoid being the food source for some other organism. So life becomes a matter of balancing the two and from which we obtain the fluidity of association Richard mentions, the alliances of life, what you’re better off living with!
A bit like people who voted not to leave the EU offer fluidity of association to those people that voted to leave the EU, but the alliance hasn’t been fully accepted as yet! ; )