Northern Ireland was created on 3 May 1921.
I am reluctant to use the word creation in the context of Northern Ireland right now, when the apparent front runner for leadership of the DUP is a creationists who seems to think the world no more than 6,000 years old, but it is also hard to avoid. Northern Ireland was created out of compromise, and with insufficient thought. The legacy has been tough.
What of today? We need to be as worried as ever about Northern Ireland. It is battered by political division from inside. The politics of English nationalists who have imposed unwanted new borders on it reveal an indifference 100 years after its creation that does not portend well.
So what of its future? That would seem to be the question to which, as has been the case for so much of its existence there is no obvious answer.
The Good Friday Agreement delivered peace, compromise and chances. The hope must be for more of the same. But with the greatest threat now coming from England - allegiance to which resulted in its existence - the signs are not good.
I wish I could be sure Johnson and his cronies understood what peace requires. I am not convinced that they do, or care. And that is yet another cause for deep concern.
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The Brexiteers never expected to win, and even when they did gave no thought to Northern Ireland, or indeed Ireland.
I suspect to be honest that so long as it remains tolerably peaceful the British State has little interest in The Province unlike Scotland and would happily see it go its own way.
I think that is about right, Northern Ireland is somewhere they have no interest in and wish would cease to be a problem.
It seems to me the dilemma about whether the Northern Irish identified as part of “Greater England” or “Greater Ireland” began to be resolved once both countries were in the Single Market so customs posts weren’t needed, and the Good Friday Agreement essentially allowed them to see they had a European identity which superseded both. But previous history had created such deep sectarian divisions that it would have taken at least two generations for conflict to be neutralised, and the Conservatives decided that the necessary time should not be given.
What next? A return to violence is sadly a real possibility. But there is also a possible faster drift to alignment with the Republic of Ireland which could be in business interests (and thus secondarily in the interests of ordinary employees) particularly if many members of both communities realise and use the advantage of an Irish passport when the UK government has created new obstacles for those of us stuck with British passports. Or, but much less likely, the UK could work to undo some of the worst effects of Brexit: alignment of Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary standards would massively ease the Irish Sea border issue and re-joining the Single Market (or a similar Swiss-style solution) would largely remove it.
Jonathan wrote “…there is also a possible faster drift to alignment with the Republic of Ireland…”
NI voted by a clear majority of 56% to 44% to remain in the EU in the 2016 Brexit referendum. However the DUP, by aligning itself with Teresa May’s Westminster Brexit supporting Gov, found itself at odds with the majority of the NI electorate. The ensuing commercial and diplomatic chaos wrought by Johnson’s government has further estranged the DUP from the NI majority. I never imagined that I’d suggest that Arlene Foster was a moderate voice, but her departure and probable replacement by someone with more-hardline views can only lead to further drift from the majority view of the electorate. This suggests Jonathan is correct — the drift towards reunification will probably accelerate.
As a Scot who loathes the whole sectarian issue, I dread the possibility of a reunited Ireland causing a large exodus of Unionists to Scotland (Arlene Foster suggested a while back that she’d do this if/when reunification happened), which would radically alter the sectarian divide in Scotland for the worse.
Northern Ireland was a greedy land grab by Churchill. A way of accepting the reality of an independent Ireland while clinging on to as much as he possibly could. It was to Michael Collins’ shame that he accepted the deal.
Still, happy anniversary Ireland and best wishes for the future.
I don’t blame Collins
He was given a hopeless remit by de Valera who never owned up to his having ducked the issue, so providing his tacit support for this outcome
Churchill was a loathsome and obnoxious little man, It’s a pity the British public don’t recognise this fact.
I think a lot of people are slowly coming to that conclusion
Speak for them not for me.
I am surprised we hear so little of Northern Ireland from the left these days. I well remember the likes of Ken Livingstone, Tony Benn, Jeremy Corbyn supporting a united Ireland in the 1980’s.
As Northern Ireland should not have been created in the first place, shouldn’t Labour state in its next manifesto that a future Labour government would immediately begin negotiations with the Irish government with a view to seeing a united Ireland within 5 years?
You are assuming Ireland would say yes.
It may not.
I think more broad minded approaches are required
@ Andrew James
Further to Richard’s comment, such a Manifesto commitment would so fly in the face of the Good Friday Agreement as to nullify that Agreement.
For the GFA provides for reunification of the island of Ireland only if such is the wish of the majority of the citizens of Northern Ireland (and forgive my ignorance here, perhaps also of the Republic?), expressed through a Referendum on that question.
For Labour to commit to breaking an international Treaty, for such the GFA is, would be to follow Johnson’s administration in being willing to break International Law.
.
Agreed
Well said
Yes, both sides need to vote in favour.
I wonder what representatives of the Conservative and Unionist Party would say in answer to the question “are you in favour of a united Ireland”? Would they say “yes”; “yes, if the peoples of Ireland, north and south, vote in favour”; “no, not until the peoples of Ireland, north and south, vote in favour”; or “no”?
I suspect it might be one of the last two, in which case, I can’t see any problem with the Labour party taking the first or second position here. There is a world of difference between paying lip service to the possibility of a border poll but refusing to countenance it actually happening any time soon, and advocating for it to happen when the peoples of Ireland are ready.
The manifesto commitment could involve commencing negotiations for a border poll to be held in the lifetime of the next Parliament, for example.
If I recall correctly that is GFA consistent
I’ve noted elsewhere that, much though they would loathe and reject the comparison, hard-line Unionists in NI are now the Palestinians of Europe. They are increasingly politically isolated. Like the Palestinians who can now rely only on support from a rogue state, Iran, and failed states, such as Lebanon and Syria, hard-line Unionists, having been shafted by the Tories, with NI now in the first (NI Protocol) stage of an inexorable process that will led to a UI, can rely only on hard-line British Empire nostalgics, some Trumpian white evangelicals in the US, a handful of irreconciliable Afrikaaners and another handful of similar types scattered across the Commonwealth.
Like the Palestinians, they are badly led and governed.
The latent and often overt irredentism of many people in Ireland has the broad support of the US and the EU and a United Ireland is increasingly being accepted as inevitable (and possibly desirable) by key elements of the British state and of the public. This irredentism is very similar to that of many Jews in Israel who desire the re-establishment of Eretz Israel. Political, economic and demographic forces are squeezing the Unionists in to ever shrinking redoubts.
NI never had a “demos”, defined by a common bond. It now seems to have three demoi. The irredentists with their supporters broadly defined by adherence to the RCC (either practising or culturally), the hard-line Unionists with their supports broadly defined by adherence to a range of Protestant sects and an increasing number of voters who call “a plague on both your houses”.
The only hope is that this third group will increase in political heft and democratic representation and sideline the political extremes. Unfortunately, the principal likely political beneficiary is the Alliance party which strongly resembles the Liberal Democrats in Great Britain (aka the Really Useless Party).
Hmmmm…..I am not sure I buy that
I feel sorry for both Northern and Southern Irish men and women in that having been messed about for years by ‘mainland’ Britain, the South has to me anyway a very Neo-liberal sovereign Government and the North have a Neo-liberal imperialist regime governing them.
It’s hardly a choice is it? I suppose home Neo-lib rule is better than that from ‘abroad’.
But Non-Neo-lib rule would be so much better.